Osage Murders

(somber music) - [Narrator] It was theirs.

By virtue of fee simple, the Osage tribe owned clear title to their entire reservation.

The Osage, unlike other tribes, bought their home in Indian territory, and moved to what would become Osage County in Oklahoma.

They hoped their new home would have nothing the white man would ever want.

The land was owned collectively by the Osage, an idea foreign to whites, whose attitude was, "Those savage Indians should divide the land."

Each tribal member would be worth more than 10 times the average American citizen.

But the Osage saw more value in a place all Osages could call home.

But discovery of black gold changed everything.

Oil was discovered in the 1890s, but the real boom didn't start until the 1910s and '20s.

The Osage Allotment Act of 1906 forced the tribe to divide their land, with each Osage citizen receiving an equal share.

The mineral rights, everything under the ground, would remain held in common by the Osage.

The royalties paid to extract minerals was divided among 2,229 headrights, one headright for each enrolled Osage.

The Osage enrollment was closed and there would only be 2,229 headrights.

- You have to remember that the oil and gas reserve helped fuel the fires of World War I in the United States.

And they paid royalties for this, for the privilege of extracting this oil and gas.

And this royalty was paid to the Osages.

And so these people supposedly became the richest people in the world per capita.

(lively saloon music) - [Narrator] Not surprisingly, the Osages enjoyed their money.

New cars, building fine homes, decorated in the latest style, and traveling to exotic locations.

The Osage became the envy of the world.

Major publications of the era printed articles on those rich Indians, the richest people in the world.

The public perception generated by the publicity fueled the fires of racism and greed.

- What they're doing is they're making fun of the Osage and the use of their money.

They're also saying, "Look, they don't deserve it, and they're wasting it."

And that's the two messages that come across.

This is going against the Puritan work ethic, you work hard and make money.

Here are people who are not doing anything and they have unbelievable wealth.

And so you're creating kind of this atmosphere, or this idea that somehow or another, taking money from the Osage is not wrong.

- It was just a reign of terror.

That's what they called it.

There was no other way to describe it.

If you were an Osage and you had money and you're a full-blood, you might as well have been walking around with a target on you.

Everybody in the world descended into this area to try to find every possible way to separate the Osage from their money.

- [Narrator] No one in government at the time believed Indians of any tribe could manage their own affairs.

Because of this racist belief, the Federal Indian Service would hold in trust the assets of individual Indians, including the Osage.

Guardians were appointed, and had complete control over individual Indian assets.

- I think there might've been a very nice little cottage industry of certain people, lawyers, who were guardians of people, and when I say people, more than one.

They were guardian of more than one person.

And they'd charge a nice little fee to do this.

And they probably...

I don't know whether they got wealthy or not, but they certainly didn't hurt their bottom line any at all.

- [Narrator] Many guardians with Osage wards took advantage of their position to separate the Osage from their money.

- Many of the whites who live in Osage County attempt to exploit the Osage.

It permeates all levels of Osage.

There are bootleggers.

There are prostitutes.

There are gamblers.

There are burglars.

There are rustlers.

There are armed robbers.

They go, and all of these people victimize the Osage.

But they're not the only ones.

The merchants create a two-tier pricing level, charing the Osage more than they're charging non-Osage customers.

Remember, it's not racist.

It's Osage.

- His name was Wakon Iron.

He was my grandfather's brother, and therefore he was my grandfather and he treated me like a grandson.

And the money was loaned to an entrepreneur from his account at the Osage Agency.

Today we call it IIM account, Individual Indian Money account.

And his money was just loaned to the local entrepreneur and they built the hotel.

And then he, at some point, was paid 10% of what was owed him.

They did that through a... What did they call it?

Bankruptcy.

A bankruptcy hearing where he wasn't well-represented.

He didn't know about it until after the whole thing was over and done with.

And then the guy that built the hotel then sold the hotel to his brother for the 10%, equal to 10%.

And then, through a circle of transactions, it came back to the original scam artist who ended up owning the hotel.

And it was kind of a funny story.

One time, my grandfather, he told me he wanted to show me something, so he drove me downtown in Pawhuska, in front of the hotel, and he stopped out in the middle of the street.

And he had arthritis, so he could drive well, but he had trouble pointing.

But he pointed up to this window and he said, "You see that window up there at the third floor and the second window over," something like that.

And I said yeah, and he said, "Well, in the end, that man who scammed me out of the money," he didn't use the word "scam," but he said the man that did him out of the money committed suicide.

He took the big jump from that third-floor window and landed on the sidewalk below.

And then he said, "But I'm still here," and so he felt that... And he was a very philosophical man.

He was a very good man.

To him, there was no trade-off there.

He simply got the better of the deal.

He lost some money in it, but he had a much better life than that man who was a scam artist.

(bell tolls) - [Narrator] One all-too-common scheme was to marry an Osage headright holder.

Upon an untimely death, the spouse would inherit unimaginable riches.

- Okay, about my grandfather.

He died at an early age.

He died, he was 29.

Supposedly he died of poisoned whiskey.

He came home one evening, laid down on the couch, and never woke up.

Supposedly, people told me years later, and this is probably second-hand information, that he was drinking, or had some drinks with some other people.

One of those people was Kelsie Morrison.

But it seemed to me that nobody else in that crowd, maybe it was just Kelsie Morrison by himself, nobody else in that crowd I ever heard of ever got sick from drinking that whiskey.

But Kelsie Morrison was a bootlegger.

He was a known bootlegger.

He was a convicted bootlegger.

There's a case called United States versus Morrison.

He's convicted of bootlegging whiskey on the old Pawhuska Road.

Purpose was for him to benefit, with my grandfather's death, of him either getting some headright money, or my granddad's wife, Tillie Powell, getting the headright money and Kelsie would benefit from it.

Because on Tillie's tombstone, it says: "Tillie Powell, wife of Kelsie Morrison."

- The Osages at that time knew somebody was killing them off but they didn't know who it was.

They tell me they would leave their lights on.

They'd put lights around their yards and they would try to get dogs, and some people hired guards and things like this because they were really scared.

And with good reason.

- [Narrator] Local law enforcement was of no use to the Osage.

The sheriff allegedly ran a brothel out of his jail.

The Osage tribal council knew they had to do something and hired the newly formed FBI to investigate.

The FBI determined a local banker, Bill Hale, and his nephews were responsible for many deaths.

But to convict Hale, they focused on only one of his murder schemes.

- Hale was not a smart criminal.

He was simply brutal.

And given the way that society was up there during those days, he didn't have to be.

He didn't have to cover his tracks, or he didn't have to, you know, take any precautions.

Because who was gonna catch him?

Who was going to testify against him?

- They called it the Reign of Terror, because you didn't know where it was gonna strike next.

You don't know whose house was gonna be blown up next.

You didn't know who was gonna be killed next.

You didn't know who was gonna be shot next.

No.

No.

They didn't have to kill us for the money.

If they'd have hung around long enough, we'd have given it to 'em.

We do that today.

- [Narrator] The current generation of Osage feels that the money was the least important of their losses.

The knowledge of traditions and ceremonies could not be passed down as it had for centuries.

The deaths of so many loved ones created a hole in the cosmos of Osage culture, a hole that can never be filled.

- But I think every Osage knows all these stories that I know.

And all the families have stories, all of the families have tragedies, and all the families have account of being taken advantage of.

It's just a part of our history now, and hopefully we're making progress of not being victims any longer.

We hope that over a period of time, we become a strong a group of people as we ever were.

(somber music)