The book explores the “Reign of Terror” against the Osage Native American tribe--a series of dozens (maybe hundreds) of murders committed against the Osage from the 1910s to the 1930s by white people in Oklahoma determined to rob tribe members of their oil wealth.
Grann’s examination of this dark period is riveting, often reading more like a Western or murder mystery than a deeply researched work of non-fiction. As I read, I felt I was witnessing something revelatory--a master journalist working at the top of his game. Grann leaves no stone unturned, even managing to uncover new information about the vastness of the conspiracy against the Osage a century after the fact.
The murderous scheme at the heart of the book is so sweeping that it would likely be considered too outlandish if it were proposed as the plot of a work of fiction. The book introduces us to cold-blooded killers-for-hire who murder the Osage at the behest of a wealthy cattleman, William Hale, an evil mastermind who comes across like a James Bond villain. But Hale is just one piece of the puzzle. The book also introduces us to doctors who served as accomplices in a widespread effort to poison the Osage and blame their deaths on natural causes or alcoholism. It introduces us to judges and lawyers who helped cover up the crimes, state and local law enforcement officials who worked to sabotage federal investigators, white husbands willing to murder their Osage wives and children for their oil rights, and unwitting witnesses who refused to speak out. “It seemed impossible to find twelve white men who would convict one of their own for murdering American Indians,” Grann writes (p. 217).
The killings were systematically planned to allow whites to inherit the vast wealth the Osage had accumulated after oil was discovered on their reservation, with much of white society in Oklahoma viewing the Osage as sub-human and undeserving of their riches. Hale and other perpetrators used marriages, life insurance policies, and other means to position their family members as heirs to Osage oil royalties, known as “headrights.” Grann grimly notes that “the world’s richest people per capita were becoming the world’s most murdered” (p. 95).
Just about every facet of white society in Oklahoma was in some way complicit in the murders--and engaged in a mass cover-up. With all the levers of justice in Oklahoma corrupted, only a strong federal police force could get to the bottom of the atrocity. As Grann details, Hoover saw the murders as an opportunity to demonstrate “the need for a national, more professional, scientifically skilled force” (p. 221) that would bolster the case for enlarging his domestic law enforcement agency. After bungling initial efforts to crack the case, the FBI director assigned a talented and fearless agent to oversee the investigation--Tom White, who quickly becomes the book’s most endearing character.
Ultimately, White succeeded in overcoming enormous obstacles to win convictions against Hale and some of the other worst perpetrators of the conspiracy, though Grann shows through his reporting that investigators only managed to scratch the surface. Nonetheless, the case became a major success story for Hoover’s FBI against state-level corruption.
White, Hoover, and the FBI are the “good guys” in this sad tale of human depravity. And yet, at a macro level, Hoover has largely become viewed as a villain of U.S. history for committing his own heinous abuses of power as he weaponized the FBI as his own private police force, using it to exact revenge on his many perceived political enemies.
This, of course, raises a question often asked in comic books and other literature focused around themes of crime and punishment: If federal intervention was required in this case as a check against corruption at the state level, what happens when a check is needed against corruption at the federal level? In other words, who watches the watchmen?
Grann, through his dogged determination to expose the truth a century later, offers an answer--albeit one that will provide little comfort to present-day victims of corruption. The perspective of time often renders its own verdict, upending legacies and forcing future generations to reckon with past wrongs. “History is a merciless judge,” Grann writes. “It lays bare our fragile blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset” (p. 256).
The best paragraph (p. 24):
At the grave site, standing with Ernest, Mollie could hear the old people’s song of death, their chants interspersed with weeping. Oda Brown, Anna’s ex-husband, was so distraught that he stepped away. Precisely at noon--as the sun, the greatest manifestation of the Great Mystery, reached its zenith--men took hold of the casket and began to lower it into the hole. Mollie watched the glistening white coffin sink into the ground until the long, haunting wails were replaced by the sound of earth clapping against the lid.
