Inside the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the author noticed photos of members of the Osage Nation along with white settlers taken in 1924. He then spotted a panel of the photograph had been cut out, and he asked the museum's director why it had been removed.
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Here is the response the museum's director gave to Grann that made him curious about the entire history:
"She said it contained a figure so frightening she had decided to remove it. And I'll never forget this — she then pointed to the missing panel and she said, 'The devil was standing right there."
The museum's director would later show Grann the photo of William Hale, a white settler who was later convicted of murder.
Here is the author's reaction to seeing the photo of William Hale:
"I was so haunted by that moment and by that photograph, because the Osage have removed it not to forget what had happened, but because they can't forget. And yet there were so many people, including myself, who had never been taught this history."
And with that, Grann started writing a book that would be "Killers of the Flower Moon." A non-fiction book that looks into the dozens of murders of Osage and how the investigation into their deaths helped found the modern-day Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Grann's book has been adapted into a film. Martin Scorsese directed the feature while it stars Robert De Niro as William Hale, Leonardo DiCaprio as his nephew Ernest Burkhart and Lily Gladstone as his wife Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman.
The actual number of victims is still unknown, and according to Grann's book, William Hale was not the single conspirator. The author found discovered what he described as a "culture of killing." Grann believes dozens of deaths happened from at least 1918 to at least 1931, while most historical accounts said the deaths happened from 1921 to 1926.
In a documentary titled "Osage Tribal Murders", the historian Louis F. Burns, said "I don't know of a single Osage family which didn't lose at least one family member because of the head rights."
Source: Today.com