time. One had eleven Osage wards, eight of whom had died.
Another guardian had thirteen wards, more than half of whom had
been listed as deceased. And one guardian had five wards, all of
whom died. And so it went, on and on. The numbers were
staggering and clearly defied a natural death rate. Because most of
these cases had never been investigated, it was impossible to
determine precisely how many of the deaths were suspicious, let
alone who might be responsible for any foul play.
Nevertheless, there were strong hints of widespread murder. In
the FBI records, I found a mention of Anna Sanford, one of the
names I had seen in the logbook with the word “dead” written next
to it. Though her case was never classified as a homicide, agents
had clearly suspected poisoning.
Another Osage ward, Hlu-ah-to-me, had officially died of
tuberculosis. But amid the files was a telegram from an informant
to the U.S. attorney alleging that Hlu-ah-to-me’s guardian had
deliberately denied her treatment and refused to send her to a
hospital in the Southwest for care. Her guardian “knew that was
the lone place she could live, and if she stayed in Gray Horse she
must die,” the informant noted, adding that after her death the
guardian made himself the administrator of her valuable estate.
In yet another case, the 1926 death of an Osage named Eves Tall
Chief, the cause was attributed to alcohol. But witnesses testified
at the time that he never drank and had been poisoned. “Members
of the family of the dead man were frightened,” an article from
1926 said.
Even when an Osage ward was mentioned as being alive in the
log, it did not mean that he or she had not been targeted. The
Osage ward Mary Elkins was considered the wealthiest member of
the tribe because she had inherited more than seven headrights.
On May 3, 1923, when Elkins was twenty-one, she married a