GREENHORN VALLEY LIBRARY
Greenhorn Valley Book Club hostess and Manager of the Greenhorn Library, Linda Lewis said after the January 26 meeting that she had to report a problem of the best kind to her book supplier. It seems the book club membership has grown to the point that she needs more books sent each month. Corruption, greed, racism, and deception were reigning topics at the most recent Greenhorn Valley Book Club meeting as the club reviewed Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann.
Everyday racism motivated the killings of countless Osage during the Osage Reign of Terror, a period that stretched from the early 1920s to the 1930s, in which uncountable numbers of the oil-rich Osage Indian tribe were murdered.
Grann’s book explored how after being pushed off of their ancestral lands the Osage were forced onto a relatively infertile slab of hilly land in what would soon become the state of Oklahoma. The Osage, savvy enough to know that oil deposits existed beneath the land, secured a guarantee from the government that not only would their reservation encompass the land they’d been given, but whatever minerals lay beneath it as well. When white Americans discovered the oil and began drilling, they had to obtain permission from the tribe and pay for use of the land rightfully belonging to the Osage.
The Osage’s wealth expanded, and soon they were considered “the wealthiest people per capita in the world.” Some of the American public became outraged as most white Americans were disdainful of the culture and customs of the various Native American tribes throughout the land.
Many saw the Osage’s wealth as gaudy and undeserved.
The widespread racism towards the Osage seemed sanctioned by the government as they installed racist and offensive policies to control the Osage. By assigning guardians to the “incompetent” (there was no established definition of “incompetent” but women qualified simply via their sex) members of the tribe and refusing them access to their own bank accounts, white officials in power exploited and used the Osage.
Highlighting how dangerous racism truly is, Killers of the Flower Moon follows the demise of nearly an entire family and the terror of a whole community, as an influential mastermind, with the help of one of the family’s own husbands, kills off the family members to gain control of their oil money.
Victims were shot, poisoned, and involved in car accidents, and investigations by the authorities and private agencies seemed to lead nowhere.
Filled with stoic Texas Rangers, corrupt robber barons, private detectives, and murderous gangs the book details the investigation led by Tom White who was sent to investigate by J. Edgar Hoover. The investigation contributed to the birth of the FBI with White as its first director.
The next meeting of the Greenhorn Valley Book Club will be held on February 24 at 1:00 p.m. at the Greenhorn Valley Library.