Killers of the Flower Moon -- Book Review

On April 17, 2017, I was listening to NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Terry Gross. She was interviewing David Grann about his new book Killers of the Flower Moon, scheduled for release the next day. (To read a transcript of that interview click Killers of the Flower Moon.)

I am from Oklahoma and all public school students get one semester of Oklahoma History in the 9th Grade. I had my one semester. It not only didn't cover all the 'good' stories about Oklahoma, it certainly didn't cover any of the 'bad' stories about Oklahoma.

When I was well out of school and working for the Oklahoma Welfare Department in Logan County, I had the great good fortune of working with a woman from Marshall, Oklahoma, a very small town in the northern part of the county. She had long known a woman named Angie Debo who received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Oklahoma in 1933. Dr. Debo had been writing articles and books on the treatment of Native Americans by local, state, and federal governments. She named names many of whom were still living, which drew the ire of the powers that were and attracted death threats. 

Dr. Debo's books focused on mistreatment of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes -- the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole who had been forcibly moved from the Southeast United States to Oklahoma Territory pre-Civil War. But I knew some of her journalism dealt with the Osage. So I knew a bit about the Osage murders.

I had long entertained the possibility of writing a biography of Dr. Debo. The idea that someone else was writing about those days in Oklahoma and naming names, got my attention. I went right home and ordered David Grann's book, Killers of the Flower Moon. And it did not disappoint. 

Killers of the Flower Moon takes on the situation in the Osage Nation in the 1920's. 

Because the Osage were living in a nation of law, they were, in a way, much better off than most of the Native Americans who had been moved into Indian Territory. The Osage sold their lands in Kansas to the U.S. Government and they bought their lands in Oklahoma. That means there were deeds involved. Not treaties with highfalutin language that was so nonspecific that it could be twisted to fit whatever the U.S. Government wanted it to mean. The surface rights to the land were divvied up among members of the tribe and could be sold, but mineral rights were reserved to the tribe and could not be transferred except by inheritance.

As of 2017 this still means "The Osage Tribe owns all mineral rights located within Osage County and has an income from all oil and gas found in Osage County." according to the Osage Minerals Council. 

Oil was discovered and the Osage became the richest people on earth. Wikipedia says "From 1921-1925 an estimated 60 Osage were killed, and most murders were not solved."

Because local law enforcement was either unwilling or unable to deal with the situation and because it was gaining national notoriety, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation was brought in to it. In 1924 J. Edgar Hoover was named director. He came in determined to make the FBI a modern, national police force, free of corruption. The investigation of the Osage murders was "to be a showcase for his bureau." (Grann) 

He assigned a former Texas Ranger to lead the investigation. Tom White was an exemplar of the Old West Hero. Honest, fearless, compassionate. Grann couldn't have invented a better character for the hero.

When I heard they're making a movie of the story, I couldn't imagine why. I was looking at it as history, nonfiction which normally limits entertainment interests. My husband pointed out that it was a perfect Hollywood story -- super wealthy victims, shootings, bombings, poisonings, throwing witnesses off of trains; corruption in high places, and low ones; tall, good-looking FBI agents unraveling the conspiracies -- of course it's perfect for Hollywood.

The same day I heard the interview on NPR an article by Sean Woods in Rolling Stone (April 17, 2017) described Tom White "... born in a log cabin, policing the frontier at a time when justice was pretty raw. There's a picture for me that's so amazing: White's got a cowboy hat, he's riding a horse, and he's got a gun. In a later picture, you see him with a fedora, he's trying to use fingerprints and he's got to file paperwork, which I just always love, because he clearly hated the paperwork." Referring to photographs in the book.

"EXCLUSIVE: In a stunning end to the biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory, Imperative Entertainment has paid $5 million and won the rights to make a movie out of David Grann’s book Killers Of The Flower Moon: An American Crime And The Birth Of The FBI, which Doubleday is publishing next spring." So said Mike Fleming Jr., March 10, 2016, more than a year before the book was published, on deadline.com an online entertainment rag. 

IMDb names  Director: Martin Scorsese; Writers: David Grann (novel), Eric Roth; and Star: Leonardo DiCaprio. Pretty impressive names.

You know, any time a writer cashes in this big, it makes me happy, regardless of Hollywood's dismal record of handling really good books.

Here's hoping the movie is as good as the book.