Reviews with content warning for Violence - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Y'all WHAT. How did I never hear about this??? (Which is rhetorical because obviously the essentially genocide of the Osage would of course not be covered in my white history classes.) I'll definitely be revisiting this book because a lot of the sentiment toward Native people still exist today and we need to be much more aware of the total destruction that racism can cause. God. If this was a novel, I would have a hard time believing it. It's that intricate and horrific.

Content Warnings

stevia333k's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

Look this is a history book, not a fictional mystery novel, this whole review is spoilers because I used the book for studying, not entertainment.

most of my review discusses the 1st & 3rd chronicles because I did not understand what happened in the 2nd chronicle at all. The 2nd chronicle is the longest & it gives context about the limitations on David Grann's investigations, but again, it was too complicated which spoiler

it's because there were multiple scalping businesses involved with a limited number of rubber stampers, which means from a dictatorship of the white bourgeois patriarchy perspective things were working as intended (such as with settler colonization) even if at the surface, it appeared to just be terrorist attacks. Basically take note in the 1st chronicle of what Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her memoirs about how her father & the adults in her community were operating with disregard to the laws of the "Indian country" they moved to. So this meant that the assumptions the investigation had at the beginning did not match the reality of what was happening, so it just read to me of violence & corpses instead of being able to keep track of what was up.

Please consider these limitations.

---

So the book is very informative, in fact, I'm using it to get a gist on other "custodial" arrangements. I do need to say that I'm a white person studying anti-racism & therefore you'll need to listen to people of color when needed. I usually read history books to get a sense of the systemic. I don't like spending a lot of time on single crimes... I wanted to learn about the syndicate because I had learned before reading this book that native americans are wary about marrying settlers because of the risk of femicide, MMIWG2SMB/MMIP cases.

The 1st chronicle explains how the media coverage of the Osage described them as wastefully wealthy & also explains how this was a continuation of the settler colonization that sent the Osage & other nations onto smaller & smaller reservations. Among other examples, it cites "little house on the prarie" where the dad explains to the daughter that the moved onto "indian" territory with the intent to not only disregard the laws of the "indian" nations because they wanted to be among the first in line for USA federal homestead rations basically. This is in addition to describing various femicides against the Osage nation.

Also mind you, while this book doesn't quote it, I have read a political-economy book called "red meat nation" & the first part of a biography called "black elk: the life of an american visionary" by joe jackson, and basically the gist of a tactic of USA's colonization was to basically destroy the land & foodstuff access of the first nations, run them into reservations/concentration camps, and then in order to play up how the first nations were "unproductive" with their land (which then plays into the sort of liberalism/capitalism that's behind "eminent domain") would then give as promised rations (the promises were usually broken, but the rations USA did give) would include things like raw meat or bad meat, and the starving captives would eat eagerly. This starvation was then played up in USA's media as being some sort of confirmation of the "degeneration" trope, used to uphold white supremacy. Like the starvation was so bad that it was famine. Even among the buffalo, Joe Jackson's book shared that the pecking order among buffalo used to reduce conflict & death was being rejected ending with the predictable death, which if we've seen anything from "late victorian holocausts" by mike davis & "night" by elie wiesel this is in line with that. I think if we're going to look for other examples within non-settler colonization, then look at how the media plays into Orientalism when it comes to other places with oil.

So yeah, the media about the Osage nation's oil boom was basically propaganda seeking to encourage settler colonization through taking away the oil rights of the Osage people by any means necessary. Usually this has been done via the private sector through contracts, because the public domain of say eminent domain & signing away mineral rights (like we see with various examples of environmental racism) would require governments that look more racial capitalist patriarchal like USA's as opposed to say something like the Haudonsaunee Kayanereko:wa where they've have a more consultative government.

The 2nd chronicle because the subject matter lends itself to diagrams as opposed to spoken word. I couldn't keep up with that portion. The word format might be good for conveying the generational trauma that's been inflicted onto the Osage & other nations, as well as showing the limits of the FBI investigations. But again it felt like trying to explain what happened on a battlefield without a map to diagram with. Also admittedly, I don't like watching cop procedurals because of how systemically bastardly they are. My struggle with reading comprehension with this chronicle is why this book is only 4 out of 5 stars.

The 3rd chronicle ends up explaining how settlers would work in packs in order to secure custodial rights of Osage people's mineral rights & then kill said Osage people. They worked in packs like small businesses, and some of the "corruption" of white-coat doctors recording opium poisoning as alcohol poisoning & black-coat undertakers burying the bodies quickly, was functionally notaries for these scalping businesses. The money was so large that the killer settlers could just split the money many ways.

I guess basically, when you're looking at how accomplices of mass incarceration & colonialism work, recognize that the white-coats, the blue-coats, and the black-coats are all complicit agents. "Follow the money" means in more sociological mapping: There are other complicit areas, but basically recognize that the fungibility of cash & the consolidation of various currencies into 1 standard, mean not only is cash an assilimation method of racial capitalist patriarchy, but its interchangeability will show relationships which develop into abuse. The same cash can be used to buy baby formula & ammo for a massacure. The custodial policy is literally how they were able to make the capital part fall back into white supremacist control, as well as say capitalism's ableism, etc. Another similar technique for this sort of thing is inflation & the bourgeoisie collectively raising prices in order to keep their positionality/rank if not just increase profits.

Content Warnings

booknerdsinmn's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

heathen's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.0

This book was well paced and thoroughly researched. The writing made it read like a novel but always with the understanding that this impacted soamy real people and we've (US residents) haven't been exposed to a lot of these stories. I loved how the author brought the impact of these murders up to the modern day, showing how these traumas can echo through generations. I'm looking forward to reading other books by this author.

Content Warnings

emoryscott's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Incredible, heart-breaking story of the greedy murders of the Osage people perpetrated by white settlers. I couldn’t put this book down. I’m sad, angry, and frustrated at the horrors that this country continues to cover up. Every American should read this and reckon with the trauma we inflicted on so many.

Content Warnings

More...