The richest nation on earth and the most murdered
For a few years in the 1920s, the Osage held both of those distinctions at once.
When oil was discovered beneath the Osage reservation in northeastern Oklahoma in the late 1800s, something rare happened: the nation owned its mineral rights outright, because it had purchased the land from the federal government rather than receiving it through the usual allotment system. As production surged, each enrolled member received a headright—a share of the nation's royalties. By 1923, the total annual payment amounted to what would be worth more than four hundred million dollars today. The Osage built mansions, bought cars, and hired chauffeurs.
Then they began dying. In May 1921 the body of Anna Brown was found in a ravine with a bullet hole in the back of her head. Her mother died two months later of suspected poisoning. A cousin was shot. A sister and brother-in-law were killed when their house was bombed. At least sixty Osage people were murdered or disappeared during what newspapers called the Reign of Terror.
The pattern was financial. Headrights could not be sold but they could be inherited—and white men had married into Osage families, been appointed as court-supervised guardians, and in at least one orchestrated case arranged a scheme of contract killings designed to funnel an entire family's wealth to a single heir. The Bureau of Investigation, the agency that became the FBI, built its first major undercover homicide case around the conspiracy. David Grann reconstructed what the investigation missed.