17 THE  QUICK-DRAW  ARTIST, THE

YEGG,   AND THE SOUP    MAN

During the fall of 1925, White tried to reassure Hoover that

he’d gather enough evidence to put away Hale and his
accomplices. White sent Hoover a memo reporting that an
undercover operative was on Hale’s ranch that very moment,
spying. White was feeling pressure not just from Hoover. In the
short time that White had been on the case, he had seen the lights
burning each night around the homes of the Osage, and seen that
members of the community wouldn’t let their children go into
town alone, and seen more and more residents selling their homes
and moving to distant states or even other countries like Mexico
and Canada. (Later, one Osage called it a “diaspora.”) The
desperation of the Osage was unmistakable, as was their
skepticism toward the investigation. What had the U.S.
government done for them? Why did they, unlike other
Americans, have to use their own money to fund a Justice
Department investigation? Why had nobody been arrested? An
Osage chief said, “I made peace with the white man and lay down
my arms never to take them up again and now I and my fellow
tribesmen must suffer.”

White had come to understand that prejudiced and corrupt
white citizens would not implicate one of their own in the killing
of American Indians, and so he decided to change his strategy. He
would try to find a source, instead, among the most disreputable,
dangerous group of Oklahomans: the outlaws of the Osage Hills.