Killers of the Flower Moon

shelves of apothecaries and grocery stores, and unlike a gunshot they could be administered without a sound. ...

twenty times, his skull had been beaten in, and he had been stripped naked, except for his so ...

6 MILLION DOLLAR ELM Even with the murders, they kept on coming, the greatest oil barons in the world. Ev ...

too, for the Osage Indians...often are stoical but interested spectators,” the Associated ...

pocket. He presided over all the Osage sales, and his moniker, Colonel, made him sound like ...

“Fortunes were being made—and lost—daily.” The oilmen anxiously pored over geological maps and tried to ...

nodded at Colonel and walked off triumphantly with the lease. A reporter said, “Veterans of the New Y ...

Colonel was known for his ability to detect even the slightest nod or gesture from bidders. At auctions, Frank ...

Pawhuska was transformed during the oil rush. Credit 25 He returned to the first bidder, the man with the map, ...

from Harper’s Monthly Magazine wrote, “Where will it end? Every time a new well is drilled the In ...

with a gold-leaf ceiling and Waterford crystal chandeliers), twelve bathrooms, seven fireplaces, three kitchens, ...

Many Osage, unlike other wealthy Americans, could not spend their money as they pleased because of t ...

more or less familiar with their filthy sores and iniquitous cesspools. Yet I never wholly apprecia ...

and we do not want our money held up from us by somebody who cares nothing for us.” He went on, “We ...

7 THIS THING OF DARKNESS In the first days of February 1923, the weather turned violently cold. Icy wi ...

identifying the victim: Henry Roan, a forty-year-old Osage Indian who was married with two children. He’d once ...

Henry Roan Credit 27 A couple of weeks before his death, Roan had phoned Hale, distraught. Roan had le ...

Once more, the macabre rituals began. The deputy and the marshal returned to the ravine, and Hal ...

Many people in the county turned out for Roan’s funeral. The Osage elders sang the traditional songs for the ...

stealthy approach of a grim specter—an unseen hand—that has laid a blight upon the Osage land and ...