Osage Indian murders

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Osage Indian Murders - Between 1921 and 1923 over a dozen[1] people on the Osage Indian Reservation died under suspicious circumstances. The Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved after the Department of the Interior wrote to Director William J. Burns requesting assistance in investigating these deaths. William "King of Osage" Hale was suspected of being involved in the deaths. Posing as medicine men, cattlemen, and salesmen, FBI agents infiltrated the reservation and eventually solved the murders. Hale and other members of the Osage Nation were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. The murders were committed in an attempt to collect insurance money and gain control of valuable oil properties owned by the deceased persons.

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[edit] Murder in Osage County

In the early 1920s the West was shaken with the mysterious murders of eighteen Osage Indians in Osage County, Oklahoma. The regional Colorado newspapers reported the murders as the Osage “Reign of Terror” and the question of boundaries in the western frontier was rekindled.1 Beginning in 1921, locals discovered the body of twenty-five year old, Anna Brown. Unable to find the killer, local authorities put the case aside until February 1923, when Henry Roan, the cousin of Anna Brown was found shot in the head and partially frozen in his car. A month later, a nitroglycerin bomb demolished the house of Bill and Rita Smith, located in Fairfax, Oklahoma. The blast killed Rita and her servant girl, Nettie Brookshire, instantly. Bill Smith died a week later due to massive injuries from the blast. Thirteen other deaths of full-blooded Osage men and women occurred between 1921 and 1923, until the Tribal Elders of the Osage Nation hired the assistance of the Bureau of Investigation(FBI).

[edit] Investigation of the Murders

Four agents were sent by the Commissioner of the Office of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Working undercover for two years, the agents discovered a crime ring of petty criminals led by Bill Hale, a wealthy rancher, known in Osage County as the King of the Osage Hills. He and his nephews, Ernest and Roy Burkhart, had migrated from Texas to Osage County to find jobs in the oil fields. Once there, they discovered the immense wealth of the Osage Nation due to its being an oil rich reservation. In 1897 oil was first discovered in Osage County and by 1920 the market for oil had grown dramatically. In 1929 $27 million dollars was reported being held by the Guardian System, an organization set up to protect the financial interests of 883 Osage families in Osage County.2 To take part in the wealth, Ernest Burkhart, persuaded by his uncle, married a full-blooded Osage woman named Mollie Kile, sister of Anna Brown and Rita Smith.3 As the evidence unfolded, Bill Hale had organized the deaths of Mollie’s mother, Lizzie Q, her cousin, Henry Roan, Anna, and the Smiths in order to cash in the insurance policies and oil head rights of each wealthy family member.4 Bill Hale, his nephews, and the ranch hands hired by the rancher to murder the Osage Indians were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Mollie Kile’s family in 1925.

[edit] Osage Frontier

Readers of the Oklahoma newspapers were shocked to discover the wildness of the west in an area they thought tame.5 The murders were linked to the idea that the “Wild West” still existed and the concept of a “frontier” was open to debate. Frederick Jackson Turner, the American historian that conceived the “Frontier Thesis” in 1893, gave insight into the definition of the Western frontier as a meeting ground where expansion of civilization meets the wilderness of potential growth. As events in the development of the West became more cultural and economic, the strength of F.J. Turner’s thesis has been argued by several American historians. Jack D. Forbes, a Native American and American West historian, compared both sides of the frontier debate in his article, Frontiers in American History and the Role of the Frontier Historian published in 1968. He determined the term "frontier" to be defined as the “inter-group contact situation” and that it can be as closely classified as having a “lack of stability.”6 The occurrence of the Osage Indian Murders assisted in the ongoing effort in centralizing the image of an American frontier.

[edit] References:

1. Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Tulsa World, 26, November, 2006.

2. Garrick Bailey, Art of the Osage, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 142

3. Louis F. Burns, A History of the Osage People, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989) 439-442

4. Ibid, 441

5. Ibid, 440

6. Jack D. Forbes, “Frontiers in American History and the Role of the Frontier Historian,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring 1968), 207