Welcome back to Week Four discussing the final part of Killers of the Flower Moon; Chronicle Three, The Reporter.
Chronicle Three opens with the author David Grann traveling to Pawhuska in 2012 and follows his various visits to the Osage Nation through 2015. When visiting a museum, Grann sees a large wall-sized photograph of prominent local leaders and the tribe in 1924, with one person’s face missing. He’s shown an original copy of the photograph with the missing man’s face – William Hale. The museum Director Kathryn Red Corn explains to Grann, “the devil was standing right there,” and that they didn’t remove him to forget, but because they can’t forget.
Do you think there’s power in making a choice like the one the museum staff made to remove Hale? Is there a right or wrong way to process the actions of a “problematic” historical figure, for lack of a better term?
Grann met Mollie’s granddaughter Margie Burkhart, the daughter of Ernest and Mollie’s son “Cowboy”. We learn a new disturbing part of her family’s story: Mollie and Cowboy were supposed to spend the night at the Smith’s house the night it was bombed, but Cowboy had an earache and they stayed home.
Mollie died aged 50 in 1937, only several years after winning the right to overseeing her own money and no longer be a ward of the state. Later that year Ernest got out on parole after only serving a little more than a decade of a life sentence. He robbed an Osage home and went back to prison. In 1966 he applied for a pardon to be able to return to Oklahoma, citing his confession and cooperation being the main reason Tom White was able to solve the case, and it was granted. Ernest died in 1986 with a wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the Osage Hills. Margie said, “Finally, one night my dad got real mad and took the box and just chucked it over a bridge.”
Could you imagine living with the knowledge that your father was willing to murder you, along with your mother, in order to inherit a fortune?
William Hale was released after twenty years due to his age of 72 and record as a good prisoner. He was forbidden to go back to Oklahoma.
The rest of Grann’s research went in to as much detail as possible with the limited resources he had about additional deaths and murders in the tribe. After Hale’s arrest, there were more potential murders by poisoning. Some of the people who were murdered, like Mary Lewis, were killed before the official timeline of the Reign of Terror (1921-1926). There are so many questionable deaths that weren’t investigated as homicides, and so many families who don’t have resolution; only suspicions of what happened and who did it. He ends the book with the quote, “This land is saturated with blood… the blood cries out from the ground.”
How are you feeling now that we’ve come to the end of the book? There is no “happily ever after” for anyone involved. As we just discussed, many of the families still have no closure. There were so many details I left out while discussing the chapters in order for brevity in these posts, and I imagine that an in-person book club could talk about this one for hours.
David Grann’s line “history is a merciless judge” hit me hard as I read it. On a smaller scale, it makes me think about my ancestors and what my future family down the line will think of me when I’m gone. On a larger scale, I wonder what future generations will think of the 2025 world, what parts of history get to be remembered for the decades to come, and if the Osage’s Reign of Terror will be more than a footnote in history books.
Has this book inspired you to read more indigenous stories? November is National Native American Heritage Month and I’ve made a list of fiction and nonfiction books available to check out here.
Watch author David Grann's interesting discussion about his book being turned into a film below!
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