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Killers of the Flower Moon


Book Review


 Title: Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Murder and the Birth of the FBI

Author: David Grann

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2017

Pages: 339

Human greed has no limits. Worse, greed can make people inhuman. David Grann’s book which is classified as ‘history’ reads more like a crime thriller. It tells us the bloodcurdling history of how almost an entire tribe of people, the Osage Indians of Oklahoma, were killed with meticulous planning by a few individuals whose greed overwhelmed their humanity. A few hundred people were killed and many of those deaths were passed off as natural. The author of this book quotes the Osage historian Louis F Burns, “I don’t know of a single Osage family which didn’t lose at least one family member because of the head rights.” The head rights refer to the legal grants given to the Osage people for selling the oil in their lands.

The whites in North America perpetrated many atrocities on the original inhabitants of those lands. Even in the beginning of the 20th century, the atrocities continued to be perpetrated though in apparently less cruel ways. The Osages were also victims of the white marauding. “In the early 1870s, the Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in northeastern Oklahoma,” the author tells us. These hapless people were pushed out of their own homelands, in short. But a few decades later, it was discovered that there were enormous oil deposits beneath the new Osage homes. Some vicious whites were quick enough to devise ways and means of grabbing money from the Osage people by cheating them. Some went to the extent of marrying Osage women and then taking possession of their wealth. Some did not hesitate to kill their Osage wives and relatives.

This book focuses on one particular family: that of Molly Burkhart, an Osage woman who married a white man named Ernest Burkhart. This Ernest looked the paragon of virtues so much so that Molly couldn’t even believe what he had done to her and her family when it all came to light later. Ernest and his uncle William Hale emerge as diabolic characters in this book of ‘history’.

But they are not the only killers of the Osages. There are many others. This book chose to focus on them because they present one of the darkest sides of human nature. They killed too many people, innocent and unsuspecting people, just for the sake of wealth all of which nobody would need in an entire lifetime.

What shakes us most, perhaps, is the fact that these white killers didn’t even regret their crimes when their wickedness was discovered and brought to the court of justice. They tried to bribe the judges and witnesses in order to escape arrest. They even killed an attorney and some of the witnesses.

They didn’t even think of the Osages as people, in the first place. One of the Osages remarked during the trial, “It is a question in my mind whether this jury is considering a murder case or not. The question for them to decide is whether a white man killing an Osage is murder – or merely cruelty to animals.”

This book touches the depths of human depravity. This is not history. This is much more than that.

Martin Scorsese has made a movie on this with the same title. I don’t know how shocking the movie is. The book jolted me. I shuddered again and again and found it hard to believe that some people could be as devilish as William Hale and Ernest Burkhart. And there are many others too mentioned in the book though briefly.

The book ends with a remark from one of the descendants of an Osage who was killed during ‘The Reign of Terror’ [as the Osage killings came to be known later]: “The blood cries out from the ground.” That is what the biblical God told Cain after he killed Abel.

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Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanDecember 21, 2023 at 1:41 PM

    Hari OM
    I recently read this... it stays with one for some time... It is not easy history. But the blood cries from many grounds even now... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 21, 2023 at 5:33 PM

      That's the saddest side, Yam, that we humans never learn... the meaning of being human!

      Delete
  2. DawnanddewDecember 21, 2023 at 4:35 PM

    Sounds something like that of Armenian tribes.Americans suffer from this Heart of Darkness that bears American Dreams only because of the white thirst for sucking red human blood. They are indeed cannibals. A very simple book review, prompting book lovers to read!👍

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 21, 2023 at 5:34 PM

      The Europeans had this notion that they were the torchbearers of civilisation. But history often shows them on the other side.

      Delete
  3. magiceyeDecember 21, 2023 at 6:38 PM

    It has been argued that the root of all evil is when man stopped being nomads and became settlers. I don't remember the name of the book.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Liz A.December 21, 2023 at 11:31 PM

    Oh, so that's what the movie is about! I kept hearing about it, but I got no details about the plot, so I heard a weird title with no context. I'm glad this has come out. There are so many more atrocities in the past that need to be known. Love of money is the root of all evil. Sadly, I think we're still working through this lesson.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Veronica LeeDecember 22, 2023 at 10:29 AM

    A stark reminder that humanity often struggles to learn from its own past, repeating the same tragic mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anupama JoshyFebruary 20, 2024 at 11:32 AM

    Not only was Ernest Burkhart excessively greedy, but he had ensnared Molly to such an extent that she did not even suspect him in the least, all the while claiming to be the embodiment of righteousness.

    ReplyDelete

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