Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the Daniel Grann book of the same name, looks at a gruesome period of history for the Osage Nation as well as what happened after the hundreds of murders between 1910 and 1931 that became known as the Reign of Terror. Killers of the Flower Moon’s true story occurred at a time of racial violence in America, and what happened to the Osage Nation at the hands of opportunistic men like William Hale (Robert De Niro) and his nephew Ernest Hale (Leonardo DiCaprio) didn’t receive the attention of the nation until years after Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) buried her entire family.
Men like the Hales, who had made their money in cattle but not in oil, sought the headrights to the “black gold” discovered on Osage land, and married into Osage families in order to obtain them by brutally murdering each member until they inherited the assets. This systematic eradication of the Osage people, the majority of whom were women, happened at the cost of their agency as well as their culture, and while 80 murders were solved, it’s estimated that hundreds were not and may never be. By the end of Killers of the Flower Moon, justice is served to some extent, but nowhere near what the Osage Nation deserves.
Who Are The Osage Nation? Real-Life History Explained
The Osage Nation, a French interpretation of the tribe’s name Wazhazhe (roughly translated to “calm water”) is a First American tribe of the Great Plains originating in the Midwestern area of Ohio and Mississippi in 700 B.C. In the 17th century, they migrated towards the meeting place of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and by the 19th century, the tribe had become the dominant group in the region. The Osage were feared by neighboring tribes between the Ozarks, the Wichita Mountains, and Missouri and Red Rivers, and subsided mostly on agriculture and buffalo hunting.
The Osage Nation was forced to relocate from what is now Kansas to Indian Territory in Oklahoma by the United States, where they discovered the oil that would change their fortunes. Due to their communal mineral rights, many Osage gained their wealth through leasing fees from their headrights before their white neighbors saw opportunities to manipulate, defraud, and murder them. In 2011 the Osage Nation received a settlement from the United States government that addressed the mismanagement of its oil funds, providing aid for its 20,000 registered members, only a third of which still live in their jurisdictional area.
The Osage Nation’s Guardianship & Headrights
After the Osage Nation appeared to frivolously spend their oil money, Congress determined that the tribe wasn’t fit to handle its own wealth, so they passed a law in 1921 that appointed white guardians to each family with headrights to the oil on their land. The guardian determined whether a family member was “competent” or “incompetent” and from there whether or not their purchasing power was restricted or unrestricted. Where once an Osage man or woman could purchase a new Pierce Arrow or send their children to the best schools in Europe, now they had to get approval from a stranger to buy a toothbrush.
The Osage Nation’s headrights passed down to next of kin in “half-blood” or “full blood” members of the tribe, which is what enticed guardians (and other white men) to try to marry Osage women. Once this was done they would either administer poison to them (referred to as a “wasting disease”) or have them killed, usually by passing vagrants who wouldn’t connect them to the crime. The estate and all its money would then pass to the Osage children and by default, the husband who cared for them, who would assume control of all their accounts.
How Rich The Osage Nation Is
At the time of the Osage murders, the Osage Nation included the richest Americans per capita, and members of the tribe could purchase luxury cars, hire drivers, feast on imported oysters, and live in mansions. After guardianship was put in place, their spending was closely monitored, so even groceries and medicine were scrutinized severally if deemed in excess. Slowly, interlopers and infiltrators used and abused Osage oil money until the descendants of anyone alive during the Reign of Terror never knew what sort of lavish lifestyles their ancestors once enjoyed.
Today, the Osage Nation lives on a reservation that is 1,470,559 acres and isn’t nearly as wealthy as it used to be, and like many reservations in America, relies on federal assistance to operate. Fortunately, the benefits of the oil industry allow many Osages to receive their quarterly royalty payments that represent the headrights of their ancestors, even if these payments don’t provide any luxury. The the five prominent tribes in Oklahoma, the Chickasaw remain the wealthiest.
How Many People Died In The Osage Murders
Over 80 people died in the Reign of Terror that included William Hale, Ernest Hale, Byron Hale, and other opportunistic men, but these are only the known victims. As several Osage elers point out in KIillers of the Flower Moon, hundreds of Osage died under mysterious circumstances to gain access to headrights, but not all of them could be identified or their bodies even found. They simply disappeared, while local law enforcement and county officials covered up the grisly murders with bureaucratic red tape so convoluted that the family members could only grieve and worry which of them would be next.
Even now, there are members of the Osage Nation today combing through family records to discover, to their horror, that falsified coroner reports stating suicides and accidents were in fact brutal murders. As Killers of the Flower Moon makes clear from the beginning, many bodies were dumped in gulleys, left on the side of the road, thrown into rivers, or buried, never to be seen again, while coroners reported bullets to the back of the head as self-inflicted rather than executions. The film has brought to light the appallingly widespread reality of the Osage murders.
What Happened To The Osage Nation After Killers Of The Flower Moon
After the Bureau of Investigation sent agents to Oklahoma to ferret out the perpetrators of the Osage murders and various courts convicted William, Byron, and Ernest Hale as the ringleaders, the Osage Nation tried to move on from the tragedies. Radio dramas, such as the one staged at the end of Killers of the Flower Moon, made the rest of the nation aware of the injustice and pain they suffered, and they garnered support for their cause, but widespread racism and prejudice still made it difficult for the Osage Nation to recover their own land and accounts.
Scorcese chose to include other significant historical events like the Tulsa race riot and the rise of the Klu Klux Klan to highlight that abhorrent hate crimes were rampant in America at the time the Osage Nation was fighting for justice. William Hale died an elderly man at 87, and Ernest and Byron served their time and lived out the remainder of their days together. Several books were written about the Osage murders, including the one Killers of the Flower Moon is based on, but unfortunately, even with renewed interest, records that would help surviving relatives reclaim their inheritance have been lost or destroyed.
