Why the ‘devil’ decided to slaughter a tribe of Native American oil millionaires in shocking saga of greed, deception and murder
Discovering who that 'devil' was would unravel a tale of vast oil riches, greed, murder and a Wild West-style lawman hell-bent on uncovering the truth
WHEN author David Grann visited the museum on the Osage Native Americans’ reservation in Oklahoma five years ago, a photo caught his eye.
Taken in 1924, it was an epic panorama of the locals — but with one section removed.
When David asked a museum worker why, he was told chillingly: “The devil was standing there.”
Discovering who that “devil” was would see David unravel a tale of vast oil riches, greed, murder and a Wild West-style lawman hell-bent on uncovering the truth.
In the early 1920s, the Osage tribe became super-rich after oil was found on their land.
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Very soon these people, who had always lived off the land, were enjoying chauffeur-driven limos, terracotta mansions, fancy clothes and hiring white people as servants.
Then, one by one, Indian bodies began showing up across their land. Murdered. Newspapers at the time dubbed it the Reign Of Terror and it prompted one of the first major FBI probes.
This forgotten chapter in history is now the subject of David’s new book Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Geoffrey M. Standing Bear, chief of the Osage tribe, told The Sun: “This may have happened 75 years ago but it remains as painful to us as if it occurred last week.
“It was terrifying. It is estimated that five per cent of our people were assassinated.”
The killings began in May 1921, with 25-year-old Anna Brown. Her decaying body was found by hunters in a ravine.
Police suspected alcohol-poisoning — until a coroner found she had been shot between the eyes.
The same day, her cousin Charles Whitehorn’s body turned up — and two months later her mother Lizzie Kyle died, her death blamed on whiskey.
Then in early 1923, Brown’s cousin Henry Roan was shot in his car. The next month Brown’s sister Rita Smith and her husband Bill died when their house exploded.
But the murders went far beyond just one family. The FBI estimated 60 Osage Indians died violent or suspicious deaths. A mother was found dead on her lawn. A sympathetic local lawyer was thrown from a speeding train and a white oilman who travelled to Washington D.C. to report on the crimes was stabbed 20 times.
David said: “This is an extremely sinister episode in US history, that few know of. So fearful were the community, they strung lamps outside homes to ward off the evil.”
Geoffrey Standing Bear told how his great-grandfather Fred Lookout, tribal chief at the time of the killings, even hired an outlaw and his gang as bodyguards. He said: “Lots of families who could afford them got bodyguards.”
By 1923, as local police seemed unwilling to investigate, the tribe demanded justice. Luckily, the then fledgling FBI was looking for cases to earn them publicity, so from 1923 to 1925 they quizzed more than 150 people in relation to the Osage killings.
But David said: “For two years the FBI bungled. Their clean-cut college boys didn’t have experience delivering justice on the wild frontier. But when J. Edgar Hoover was made FBI director, promoted from deputy, he knew it would be embarrassing not to solve the case.”
Tom White, a stetson-wearing, Texan lawman who had spent his youth tracking bandits on horseback, was called in to lead the hunt.
David said: “He was born in a log cabin and watched his sheriff dad mete out justice with a gun.”
When he found Osage locals afraid to talk, four agents were sent in undercover, as an insurance salesman, cattle buyer, oil prospector and herbal doctor, to turn up evidence. White realised the tribe’s wealth was also their curse. Oil was found in the late 19th Century and by 1923 the land had 8,579 wells, making it America’s richest production area.
A 1906 Act of Congress then gave each person on the Osage tribal roll a “headright” to their resources. But this could not be sold, just inherited, so the only way an outsider could get ownership was to marry an Osage.
By the 1920s, locals reaped the present-day equivalent of £320million a year by leasing land to aspiring oil barons, and boom towns grew which were as rough as the old Wild West.
The press dubbed the Osage the “richest nation, clan or social group of any race on Earth”. It was reported how Indians would park their limos around campfires.
Chief Standing Bear said: “My grandmother owned a Duesenberg and a Buick — both luxury cars.
She had one of the earliest forms of air-conditioning, involving servants loading blocks of ice into a fan.”
Eventually, Tom White traced the start of the crimewave to Anna Brown’s brother-in-law, a white man called Ernest Burkhart — and his domineering uncle Bill Hale.
Dubbed the King of Osage Hills, Hale was one of numerous white ranchers who flocked to the area after an 1887 government act allowed surplus land to be given to non-Indians. A charismatic figure, he portrayed himself as a pillar of the community, wore a bow-tie and called himself a reverend. He was in the section of the 1924 museum photo which had been removed.
The FBI found he had hatched a plan that saw his weak-willed nephew marry Anna Brown’s sister Mollie Kyle. Hale then fixed the murders of her family in just the right order that oil rights would pass to Burkhart and himself. Meanwhile Burkhart had been poisoning his wife. Hale even had the audacity to act as pallbearer at victim Henry Roan’s funeral.
Burkhart finally confessed, recanted following intimidation by Hale, then confessed again. The FBI discovered Hale had threatened and paid off locals and planted false leads.
David said: “Hale really was a biblical figure of evil. He arrived in Osage in rags, carrying a Bible. He ended up incredibly powerful and left a trail of blood. That the FBI were able to get him convicted by a white jury is testament to Tom White.” Hale was in 1929 found guilty of the death of only Henry Roan, got life and was released on parole in 1947. Burkhart was given life for the explosion at the Smith family home. He was paroled in 1959 then pardoned in 1965.
The rest of the murders remain unsolved. David said: “The FBI got convictions so viewed it as a victory, but there was also the injustice of all the deaths that didn’t end this way.”
Chief Standing Bear said of the cursed oil legacy: “Children of my father’s generation were sent away to boarding school because parents were afraid. While they received a great education, it had a devastating effect as traditions and language were not kept up. Today, just 4,000 Osage live in old reservation lands, out of a possible 20,500.”
A law passed in the 1920s saw the government appoint white guardians to Osage residents deemed “incompetent” to handle their own finances. But a study later found that by 1924 nearly 600 guardians had swindled millions in oil funds.
The tribe chief, a retired lawyer, explains that a third of headrights have now fallen outside the tribe.
He said: “Every man, woman and child used to get more than £145,000 per quarter in modern money, from oil rights. Now just 6,000 Osage have rights, which yield £1,500 per quarter.
“We use the money we generate from casinos on our land for programmes to revive our language, college scholarships and healthcare.
“That period of history taught us a lesson. We got wealthy, let our guard down and were exploited. We must never let that be repeated.”
Killers Of The Flower Moon by David Grann is published by Simon & Schuster.