![]() Another Osage, Henry Roan, was shot in the back of the head. CorbisĪnd it wasn’t just Mollie’s family that was being systematically eliminated. Rita and Bill Smith’s house after the blast. Someone had planted a bomb under her sister’s house that killed everyone inside, including Rita. CorbisĮarly one morning in 1923, Mollie heard a loud explosion. She lived with her husband Bill and a maid in this house, not far from Mollie: Rita and Bill Smith’s house. Mollie had a third sister named Rita Smith. ![]() At the Osage Nation Museum, I discovered this picture of Mollie with her mother and her sister Anna: Mollie (right) with her sister Anna and their mother, Lizzie. Within two months, Mollie’s mother died of suspected poisoning. Courtesy the Federal Bureau of Investigation The ravine where Anna Brown’s body was found. Courtesy Raymond Red CornĪnna’s body was subsequently found in this ravine on the reservation. Mollie (right) with her sisters Anna (center) and Minnie. One night in May of 1921, Mollie’s older sister, Anna Brown, disappeared. Courtesy the Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoman Collection She grew up in a lodge, speaking Osage within a few decades, she lived in a mansion and was a married to white settler. In many ways, Mollie, who was born in 1886, straddled not only two centuries but two civilizations. The family of one Osage in particular, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target of the conspiracy. Courtesy the Bartlesville Area History MuseumĪs the Osage’s prosperity increased, members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. Getty and Frank Phillips, would bid in the shade of a stately tree, which became known as the Million Dollar Elm. The footage below-recorded by an Osage in the 1920s and shared with me by a descendant, Meg Standingbear Jennings-provides a glimpse of what the region looked like during the oil boom.ĭemand for access to the vast oil deposits under the reservation was so great that there were regular auctions for leases held in Pawhuska, a city in Osage County. One of many vehicles owned by members of the Osage Nation. At the time, it was said that whereas a typical American might own a car, each Osage owned eleven of them. ![]() In 1923, these Osage received collectively what would be worth today more than $400 million. To extract that oil, prospectors had to pay the 2,000 or so registered members of the tribe for leases and royalties. 231.Īround the turn of the century, oil deposits were discovered under this land. Courtesy the Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Finney No. This photograph shows an Osage camp on their new reservation: A camp on the new reservation. In the early 1870s, the Osage were driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in what was then Indian Territory, and would later become part of Oklahoma. What follows is a collection of some of the most revealing photographs, as well as a clip of related film footage. They provide another essential means of documenting a crime largely forgotten by history. It was among the F.B.I.’s first major homicide investigations.ĭuring my research, I collected an extensive archive of photographs. In 1923, after the death toll reached more than two dozen, the case was taken up by the Bureau of Investigation, then an obscure branch of the Justice Department, which was later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then they began to be mysteriously murdered off. In the early 20th century, the members of the Osage Nation became the richest people per capita in the world, after oil was discovered under their reservation. My new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, grew out of trying to understand who that figure was, and the investigation led me to one the most sinister crimes in American history. She then pointed to the missing panel and said, “The devil was standing right there.” When I asked the museum director why, she said it contained the image of a figure so frightening that she’d decided to remove it. ![]() Taken in 1924, the picture showed a seemingly innocent pageant of members of the tribe alongside white settlers, but a section had been cut out. One day in 2012, when I was visiting the Osage Nation Museum, in Oklahoma, I saw a panoramic photograph on the wall.
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