Leo DiCaprio’s new movie is about how corporations violently wrested control of rich oil reserves from indigenous Osage people in Oklahoma.
National Geographic:
The Osage Nation came into massive wealth after oil was discovered beneath its reservation in the 1890s. Worth about $400 million dollars annually in modern currency by the 1920s, oil transformed the daily lives of the Osage people and turned them into what was then considered the richest nation on Earth.
At the time, prevalent attitudes held that Native Americans were naive, primitive, and in need of white oversight lest they squander their wealth. The government also historically considered Indian tribes to be dependent nations in need of federal protection: promoting laws designed to “protect,” not empower, Native people.
These laws often did not protect Native interests—and instead served as ways for white settlers to seize and retain control over Native people and their ancestral lands. In 1887, for example, the Dawes Act broke tribal lands up and gave them to Native families with tribal claims willing to undergo cultural assimilation. However, the law also sold “excess” land to white settlers, dramatically reducing the amount of land owned by Native nations.
The Osage nation sidestepped this “allotment” system, since it had bought 1.5 million acres of Oklahoma land outright from the federal government when the group was driven out of its ancestral lands in Kansas in 1872. The Osage nation gave all the land to members, each receiving 657 acres. The nation itself held on to the mineral rights of the land, granting each member an inheritable “headright” to the share of the nation’s mineral wealth. As the nation’s oil brought in more and more money, each Osage was entitled to more wealth—drawing the interest, then interference, of non-Osage Oklahomans.
In May 1921, the bodies of Anna Brown and her cousin Charles Whitehorn were discovered on the same day in different parts of the county. Two months later, Brown’s mother Lizzie Kyle, who had inherited headrights, was killed by poisoning. Then, Lizzie’s nephew was killed in February 1923—and on March 10, Lizzie’s daughter, her son-in-law, and a domestic worker died in a mysterious explosion at their home. The deaths sparked panic throughout Osage County and became known as a “reign of terror.” Meanwhile, the massive wealth of the Kyle family was inherited by the only survivors—Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded Osage who was Lizzie’s last remaining daughter, and her white husband Ernest Burkhardt.
The Kyles weren’t the only Osage people who died around this time, all under suspicious circumstances that included suspected poisonings, supposed suicides, and even being thrown off a train. Between 1921 and 1925, at least 60 Osage people were murdered or disappeared. All possessed wealth due to their headrights—and the Osage Tribal Council suspected that a prominent local white cattleman, William K. Hale, might be to blame.
Hale, originally from Texas, was known for his exploitative financial dealings with Osage people, and he was of outsized influence in Osage County. He owned or partially controlled the bank, the local general store, the funeral home, and even served as a reserve sheriff. Hale’s nephew, Burkhardt, was married to Mollie Kyle, who had now inherited her family members’ millions. Though the murders continued, local investigations and law enforcement efforts to solve the murders failed.
Journalist Greg Palast tells more.
It was good he took the time from his vacation around the world in his gas guzzling yacht.