Skip to main content

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.

Labels:

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. 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
  5. 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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...
6 comments
Read more