Delphi Study Club members started their new year with a luncheon and a review by Marjilea Smithheisler of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, currently being filmed in Osage County.Drawing on original resources, Grann traces the background and motive for the murders of numerous Osage Indians in the 1920s and the uncovering of a killing conspiracy by Bureau of Investigation and former Texas Ranger Tom White and his undercover team.The discovery of oil under tribal lands made the Osages the wealthiest people per capita in the world at the time. Tribal members had negotiated that their land should be divided among the members of the tribe and that mineral rights should be reserved to the tribe. Each member received a headright, or share in the tribe’s mineral trust, and headrights could not be bought or sold. By law, financial guardians were assigned to any American Indian whom the Department of Labor deemed “incompetent”—practically every full-blood—thus giving non-Osages control over much of the wealth.In 1921, an Osage woman named Anna Brown was shot and her headright went to her sister, Mollie Burkhart, as did those of other relatives who were dying under suspicious circumstances. Authorities did little to solve the crimes. In fact, a number of investigators and potential witnesses were murdered. So many deaths attracted national attention, and the new director of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, assigned agent and former Texas Ranger Tom White to the case.White and his undercover team finally uncovered enough evidence to bring to trial the man behind the conspiracy to murder the Osages to gain control of their money and to eliminate witnesses and investigators. Because the state legal system was corrupt, the perpetrator was tried and convicted in federal court not for the Burkhart relatives but for a man murdered on allotment land.Further research by Grann showed that many other murders of the Osage for financial gain had occurred before and after the 1920s and were never solved. Practically every Osage family lost someone to these murders.Social Committee members Beverly Frazier, Ann Cales and Carolyn Ott prepared the luncheon in the Baptist Fellowship Hall Sept. 14. Carolyn Ott created the table decorations of tissue flowers in various colors.Attending the luncheon were Linda Brown, Ann Cales, Evelyn Coyle, Beverly Frazier, Carolyn Ott, Doris Osborn, Vivian Pemberton and Marjilea Smithheisler.Officers are Evelyn Coyle,
