geeky
In Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the outstanding award winning journalist and author David Grann describes how a number of wealthy members of the Osage were defrauded and murdered by unscrupulous businessmen and how the murders were covered up through alarming means. It was a time when, in the words of one contemporary indigenous leader, "killing an Indian was more likely to be charged as cruelty to animals than as murder." Local law enforcement were either useless or in the pockets of those responsible for the crimes or both.
This was a time when unscrupulous oil men pursued the great wealth that came with the oil rights on Osage land. A naive President Warren Harding had been taken advantage of by oil men in what became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, and the law had yet to catch up with those whose money trumped the rule of law.
Grann tells the story of how one honest federal agent and his team were able to bring some of the killers to justice, confronted by the challenges of corrupt local law enforcement, threats to personal safety, and the constraints of working under the mercurial and self-promoting FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Grann describes how Agent Tom White was able to uncover the perpetrators of many of these crimes, even though they were living close to their victims undetected, and how White was able to secure sufficient evidence for conviction of some of the offenders, amid a corrupt justice system that repeatedly threatened to push the prosecution's case off the rails.
Calvin Coolidge, Harding's successor, would later sign legislation which allowed those living on reservations a right of full citizenship, enabling them to manage their own financial affairs. This relief came too late for the victims of the Osage murders.
Grann displays his genius as a meticulous investigative journalist as he visits with the descendants of many of the victims, uncovering the full extent of the systemic corruption and numerous murders, going well beyond what the FBI was able to learn, and in some cases making a forceful and persuasive case exposing other killers who escaped prosecution.
This book combines brilliant writing with a compelling story which has been buried in history's archives and which needs to be told. Grann's exceptional qualities as an author are shown in how he is able to be thorough in his research, sound and objective in his conclusions, while maintaining and displaying a genuine compassion for the Osage people of then and now. The confluence of Grann's professional integrity as a researcher and author, along with his talent as a wordsmith and the gripping human interest in this story makes this book deserving for consideration as the best non-fiction work of 2017.