Rita began to weep, and her husband led her away. Eventually, Mollie mouthed the word “yes”—it was Anna. Mollie was the one in the family who always maintained her composure, and she now retreated from the creek with Ernest, leaving behind the first hint of the darkness that threatened to destroy not only her family but her tribe.
This scene shows the aftermath of the first of the Osage murders. Mollie and her sister, Rita, see that their sister Anna has been brutally murdered. Grann effectively sets the mood of the book by foreshadowing the terrible events to come. He shows not only the emotional impact this scene has on Mollie, but also clearly suggests that this is far from the last tragedy to befall the Osage. By framing this scene as the beginning of the story, Grann makes it apparent that a greater evil is at work.
Hale, who had an owlish face, stiff black hair, and small, alert eyes set in shaded hollows, had settled on the reservation nearly two decades earlier. Like a real-life version of Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen, he seemed to have come out of nowhere—a man with no known past. Arriving in the territory with little more than the clothes on his back and a worn Old Testament, he embarked on what a person who knew him well called a "fight for life and fortune" in a "raw state of civilization."
This is the introduction of William Hale. Hale is effectively the villain of the entire narrative. The reader later learns that Hale is the one who instigates the series of murders on the reservation. By referencing Thomas Sutpen, protagonist of the William Faulkner novel, Absalom, Absalom!, Grann highlights Hale's mysterious and sinister character. This introduction also underscores the fact that he arrives in Pawhuska fixated on making as much money as possible. The moment functions as a strong characterization of Hale, as it suggests both his drive and ruthlessness.
A bruising bulldog of a man, Bill had also expressed deep frustration over the authorities' investigation, and he began looking into the matter himself. Like Mollie, he was struck by the peculiar vagueness of Lizzie’s sickness; no doctor had ever pinpointed what was causing it. Indeed, no one had uncovered any unnatural cause for her death. The more Bill delved, conferring with doctors and local investigators, the more he was certain that Lizzie had died of something dreadfully unnatural: she’d been poisoned. And Bill was sure that all three deaths were connected—somehow—to the Osage’s subterranean reservoir of black gold.
This passage about Bill Smith, husband of Mollie's sister, Rita, gives the first intimation that Lizzie's death was premeditated. Likewise, his suspicions seem to suggest that there is a linkage between this poisoning and the murder of both Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn. This moment is important to the narrative as a whole in that it gives the reader the first inkling these murders are not isolated. Bill's assessment of the situation ends up being correct, he is unfortunately unable to find the real culprit and dies as a result of his actions. This touches on a larger motif of the book in which many characters are able to perceive individual aspects of the truth but aren't able to see the full picture.
But within four years Jefferson had compelled the Osage to relinquish their territory between the Arkansas River and the Missouri River. The Osage chief states that his people "had no choice, they must either sign the treaty or be declared enemies of the United States." Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of the ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-12-mile area in southeastern Kansas.
In this excerpt, Grann provides historical context for the forced migration of the Osage tribe. He notes that they were required to sign a treaty in which they gave up the majority of their ancestral land and had to make their home in a small corner of Kansas. While these events significantly predate the present of the story, they reveal an important irony to the Osage's history. While they lost vast tracts of land, they would ultimately be targeted even for the land they were forced to migrate to, as it happened to have oil on it. Grann shows how the sum total of these trades and treaties never favored them, as Jefferson, and his successors, sought to create deals that solely benefited the white population.
The murders had created a climate of terror that ate at the community. People suspected neighbors, suspected friends. Charles Whitehorn’s widow said she was sure that the same parties who had murdered her husband would soon "do away with her." A visitor staying in Fairfax later recalled that people were overcome by "paralyzing fear," and a reporter observed that a "dark cloak of mystery and dread… covered the oil-bespattered valleys of the Osage hills."
Here Grann portrays the atmosphere in Pawhuska following the series of murders. He shows how powerfully both fear and suspicion abound in the community, as no one is certain of who they can trust. This moment gives a sense of how pervasively these crimes shook the community and how widespread the panic became. In addition, it shows the extent to which the Osage felt unprotected by white authority figures, as many of them felt certain that nothing could stop these unsolved killings. At the same time, it demonstrates how their wealth did not shield them from this violence.
As White strove to be a modern evidence man, he had to learn many new techniques, but the most useful one was timeless: coldly, methodically separating hearsay from facts that he could prove. He didn’t want to hang a man simply because he had constructed a seductive tale. And after years of bumbling, potentially crooked investigations into the Osage murders, White needed to weed out half facts and build an indubitable narrative based on what he called an “unbroken chain of evidence."
This is a description of Tom White, the FBI agent sent to investigate the Osage murders. Here Grann writes about White's single-minded determination to find out the truth in his cases, without any influence of gossip or hearsay. In particular, he seeks to bring an unclouded eye to the Osage case, as it had been handled so poorly before he arrived. This instance is important in that it shows the kind of law-enforcement official White is: methodical and focused, interested only in undeniable evidence. It marks him in contrast to many of the other figures in the book, as he has no other agenda besides this, and has little concern for his own gain.
Some of the schemes were beyond depraved. The Indian Rights Association detailed the case of a widow whose guardian had absconded with most of her possessions. Then the guardian falsely informed the woman, who had moved from Osage County, that she had no more money to draw on, leaving her to raise her two young children in poverty. "For her and her two small children, there was not a bed nor a chair nor food in the house," the investigator said. When the widow’s baby got sick, the guardian still refused to turn over any of her money, though she pleaded for it. "Without proper food and medical care, the baby died,” the investigator said.
This quote details a case in which a white "guardian" tricked a widow out of her money, leaving her penniless as she watched one of her children die. Grann includes this information to show the widespread abuse the Osage experienced, as cruel individuals sought to scam them out of their wealth and then leave them to die. He is also pointing out how Mollie's case, though uniquely horrifying, was not an isolated incident. Instead, it pointed to a broader pattern of systemic violence which targeted the Osage and also showed the terrible lengths those who exploited them were willing to go because of their greed.
Hoover was careful not to disclose the bureau’s earlier bungling. He did not reveal that Blackie Thompson had escaped under the bureau’s watch and killed a policeman, or that because of so many false starts in the probe other murders had occurred. Instead, Hoover created a pristine origin story, a founding mythology in which the bureau, under his direction, had emerged from lawlessness and overcome the last wild American frontier. Recognizing that the new modes of public relations could expand his bureaucratic power and instill a cult of personality, Hoover asked White to send him information that he could share with the press: “There is, of course, as you can appreciate, a difference between legal aspects and human interest aspects and what the representatives of the press would have an interest in would be the human interest aspect, so I would like to have you emphasize this angle.”
This passage is a description of Hoover's attempts to frame the success of White's case. Hoover shows a vested interest in emphasizing an image of the FBI as incorruptible and lawful, even when it involves covering up certain elements of the case. This marks him in clear contrast to White, who appears singularly concerned with truth and justice. This quote gives key insight into Hoover's careful approach to media relations and his generally controlling demeanor. It shows how despite working for Hoover, White had a complicated relationship with him, as their respective interests in the Osage case were rooted in different causes.
One summer day in 2012, after traveling from New York, where I live and work as a reporter, I visited Pawhuska for the first time, hoping to find information on the Osage murder cases, which, by then, were nearly a century old. Like most Americans, when I was in school, I never read about the murders in any books; it was as if these crimes had been excised from history. So when I stumbled upon a reference to the murders, I began to look into them. Since then, I had been consumed with trying to resolve lingering questions, to fill in the gaps in the FBI’s investigation.
In this passage from the ending section of the book, Grann brings himself into the narrative. He provides context for his discovery of this case and shows the general lack of historical coverage it receives. The final lines also suggest that he views his job as a reporter as somewhat similar to that of a detective, piecing together clues and revisiting evidence. This is important in that it complicates the story he had told up to this point in the book. Where before it seemed that White had essentially brought the Osage killings to a close, putting Hale and his henchmen behind bars, Grann reveals that there was a broader pattern of abuse that went completely unchecked. Grann inserts himself here to show that, sadly, there is a narrative beyond White's success, one that accounts for years and years of atrocities similar to those perpetuated against Mollie and her family.
Webb walked me outside, onto the front porch. It was dusk, and the fringes of the sky had darkened. The town and the street were empty, and beyond them the prairie, too. "This land is saturated with blood," Webb said. For a moment, she fell silent, and we could hear the leaves of the blackjacks rattling restlessly in the wind. Then she repeated what God told Cain after he killed Abel: "The blood cries out from the ground."
This passage is the book's closing paragraph. Grann stands outside and watches the sunset alongside Mary Jo Webb, a modern-day member of the Osage tribe. Webb's unsettling comments about the land being "saturated with blood," coupled with her quotation from the Bible, shows that she believes that the history of their land has an undeniable bearing on the present. What she means when she says that the "blood cries out" is that these past crimes cannot be ignored. Grann seems to choose her words to end the book because they throw into relief how haunted the landscape is by unresolved violence and loss. It is a somber note to end on, but clearly demonstrates the importance of acknowledging these awful crimes.
