A NEW FILM STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO TELLS A GRUESOME STORY FROM HISTORY
Legendary director Martin Scorsese is renowned for turning incredible real-life crime stories into some of modern culture’s best-loved movies. His latest film is three-and-a-half-hour epic Killers Of The Flower Moon. Based on David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction novel, it tells a shocking story of greed and murder.
BLACK GOLD
In the early 1920s, the crazy days of the Wild West and the Gold Rush may have been behind the United States, but there was a new treasure occupying every entrepreneurial American’s mind: black gold. Osage County, the largest county in Oklahoma, was rich in oil, and it didn’t take long for cash-hungry vultures to circle. But the oil was under Osage Nation ground, meaning it belonged to the Midwestern Native American tribe of the Great Plains known as the Osage.
The Osage Nation had long been aware of the oil and the potential riches it held. Not realising it was there, the land was otherwise of little interest to the men that had colonised America, and those in Washington DC were happy to sign large swathes of it over in negotiations. When knowledge of the oil broke to those outside the Osage Nation, deals were struck, but while some money was made by oilmen, the profits mostly went to the people who owned the land. White settlers in the state argued it was unfair for their Native American neighbours to get all the riches, while they lived on worthless land nearby. Legally, there wasn’t much they could do. Illegally, however, there was plenty.
The US Congress passed a law in 1921 requiring courts to appoint guardians for each Osage member, someone who would manage their financial affairs until they “demonstrated competency”. Guardians were chosen by the courts from among local white solicitors or businesspeople, many of whom were only too keen to exploit their new influence. To gain control of the oil, some prominent folk conspired tokillmembersoftheOsagecommunity.Murders were reported from as far back as 1918 and as late as 1931. The majority of the killings were carried out between 1921 and 1926, a time that was known as the Reign of Terror. Due to the poor quality of policing back then, the exact number of victims is unknown, although it’s believed more than 60 Osage Nation members were slain. Among the victims were Charles Whitehorn, believed to have been killed by his wife and the white man she went on to marry; Lizzie Q, who died along with two of her daughters; and Henry Roan, who had listed his friend William Haleas the beneficiary of his will–not knowing that Halewas at the head of the whole conspiracy.
