The Osage murder spree is one of the least known outrages in American history. David Grann, author of the LOST CITY OF Z, insists that the FBI only scratched the surface.

The Osage Indians were one of the largest tribes in the Midwest. When events got intolerable in Kansas, they purchased land from the Cherokee in Oklahoma, 1.5 million acres at 70 cents per acre. It was worthless agricultural land, but beneath the ground was one of the largest oil reserves in the country. Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it. Many of the Osage began spending money like it was going out of style. Of course, whites were jealous and outraged. Soon most of the Osage were deemed too childish to handle their own affairs and given a guardian, usually a white businessman. That's when the poisoning started. Most were misdiagnosed, and sometimes the doctors were implicated.

Grann centers on the Burkhart family. Mollie Burkhart was a source and the only survivor. Three of her sisters and her mother were murdered, one of them was so frightened she convinced her husband to move to town where they built a big house. Soon after someone blew it up, killing them both.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Investigation and its new director, J. Edgar Hoover, got wind of the case. Hoover needed a win after earlier misfirings. The best thing he did was hire Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, to investigate the murders, some of which were more overt than the poisonings. For instance Anna Brown, Mollie's sister, was shot in the back of the head. The best thing White did was to hire former criminals to go undercover. They made inroads in what was still the wild west and some of the gangs that cause lawmen a lot of grief. That's when he began to uncover information that pointed at one of the elite businessmen in the area.
We need to go back for a minute. I think most people with an interest in history know that the government tried to get the Native Americans to assimilate into American society. They took children from their families and sent them to vocational schools as they did Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes to ever play a game, was sent to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which became a football dynamo. They also divided up a tribal society into 160 acre allotments. The danger there was that whites would cheat the Indians out of their land, and they did with the Cherokees. James Bigheart, wary of what had happened to the Cherokee in the Oklahoma land rush, negotiated larger allotments, almost a section for each member of the tribe, and insisted on keeping mineral rights, “the underground reservation.” The Osage might lose their allotments but it was impossible to steal their mineral rights, or so Bigheart thought. Indian women and some men married white spouses. Sometimes that person would be after the “headright” or mineral rights the woman or man owned. Some of the guardians had several Osage wards. Grann did research on what happened to them. In many cases, the ward died an early death.

Tom White got little recognition or appreciation from J. Edgar Hoover but he was picked to be the new warden at Leavenworth. A similar story is that of his father who was a Texas sheriff. As sheriff it was his job to serve as hangman when a criminal was sentenced to death. White's father asked the man if he could do anything for him before the sentence was carried out. The man asked for a new suit of clothes. White's father got it for him. Tom White learned from his father. When the two culprits who broke open the case arrived at Leavenworth he shook hands with them and treated them like any other inmate. Here was one Christian who truly lived by the golden rule.