By David Grann
Vintage Books 2017
377 pages History
The subtitle is: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In anticipation of seeing the movie Killers of the Flower
Moon this week, I decided to read the historical book of the same name by
David Grann. The book is the horrific study of a time in American history when
white men chose to steal the money and the lives of members of the Osage tribe
of native peoples in Oklahoma.
In the early 20th century, the Osage were pushed
out of Kansas into what appeared to be sterile and unoccupied land in Oklahoma.
After suffering for several years, the tribe discovered that the land they had
been forced to settle was rich in oil, and the tribe became very rich—rich enough
that they exposed themselves to the greed and avarice of white America.
Grann tells the stories of several families who became so wealthy
that most of them had to have appointed white guardians to watch over them and
determine how their money would be spent. After a few years, natives, both
women and men, went missing, were found dead, or died of poisoning at alarming
rates. Federal officials were called in to solve the murders, and the young J.
Edgar Hoover was delegated to solve the mysteries. Thus the beginning of the
FBI.
It is history told in great detail with a huge number of
characters, all very well drawn. Sometimes, I felt that there were too many
characters, but I kept reading and trying to keep it all straight. Tom White, a
former Texas Ranger, put together an undercover team that, along with Osage
help, began to “expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American
History.” The reader tries to keep up with the details.
The most interesting part of the book to me was when the
author David Grann tells the story of how he began to do the research for the
book, including interviewing descendants of the people massacred. By doing so,
he found evidence of crimes and conspiracies that were never discovered by
Hoover’s men, 90 years previously. The reviewer on the Book Forum concludes, “Remarkably
he succeeds. But there’s nothing triumphant or Agatha Christie-like about the
end result. What we’re left with, instead, are circles of complicity that widen
and widen until, terrifyingly, they grow to encompass the reader as well.”
I am very much looking forward to seeing the movie later
this week. My thinking is that the many names in the book will be easier to
identify when we are looking at visuals, rather than reading the names. Hoping.
Additionally, I have an unsolved question in my own life. My
great aunt Helma taught American history in Tulsa Oklahoma in the 1940s and 1950s.
Did she know about this part of Oklahoma history, or the part about the murders
in Tulsa’s Black Wall Street? I know we will never know the answer. My guess is
that both of those horrific times were never discussed and she never taught
them.
David Grann website.
Another review of the book in the New
York Times by Dave Eggers.
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