This is a blackeye on America and is now coming back into the spotlight and the story can't be swept under the rug any longer.

It is both an interesting and sad story and I highly recommend you at least give it a look and here is part of one article of many on the subject:

Revisiting the "Reign of Terror" on the Osage Nation
It was called the Reign of Terror. Sounds ominous, and it was ... a chapter of American history that's been largely forgotten, but now is getting a second look. Lee Cowan reports:

In an out-of-the-way corner of Oklahoma called Gray Horse, down a road you wouldn't take unless you knew what was at the other end, sits a small cemetery.

It's unremarkable in many respects -- until you look at the dates. 1923 seems to have been a particularly bad year. And when you look at the ages, it appears few died simply of old age.


Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman married to a white man. One by one her family members were killed off after gaining a fortune in royalties from oil drilling on the Osage reservation.
Exactly what killed them out here on the Great Plaines has captivated journalist and author David Grann for the last five years. And what he's written has left him with a discomfort he still can't quite shake.

"This is a story that has real evil in it," he said, "evil like I've never covered or ever experienced."

"Really? It was that dark to you?" Cowan asked.

"Yeah, yes. The villain in this story, or one of the villains, and the people complicit, are as evil as anybody I've ever encountered."

• Read an excerpt from David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI"

His quest took him to the Osage Nation, a remote territory in Oklahoma about the size of Delaware. Like much of the area that was set aside for Native Americans, it wasn't exactly prime real estate.

But in the early 1920s, something happened out here that no-one expected: an oil rush.

"Most white settlers saw it as the ground as being rocky and infertile," said Grann -- which led the Osage to believe they would be left alone. But then, "low and behold, this land turned out to be sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States."

Almost overnight, the Osage -- who owned the land's mineral rights -- went from being among America's poorest to the richest people, per capita, in the world. One Osage writer later described them as "the Kuwaitis of the 1920s."

And how rich were they?

"Oh, they were drawing millions," Grann said. "By 1923, the Osage collectively received that year more than $30 million, which today would be worth the equivalent of more than $400 million. And this was being split up by a group of about 2,000 people."

With the oil royalties, the Osage built mansions, hired white servants, and drove the finest cars. Osage towns like Pawhuska became busting cities, flush with cash and the biggest oil barons of the day.

Pawhuska was famous across the West as one of the most booming of towns because, Grann said, "there was so much money here."

The U.S. government, however, didn't let the Osage control that money. Each ward (as the Osage were called) was assigned a white guardian, supposedly to protect the Osage from mismanaging their new-found wealth.

But the law actually just invited abuse.

"There were kickbacks, there was skimming, and in many cases there was just outright stealing, where they would just abscond with millions of dollars from these Osage, and the Osage never saw this money again," Grann said.

But the worst of the worst conspired to do far more than steal, as Grann found out when he uncovered a dusty ledger in the archives: "I opened up the book, and it had the name of the guardian, and underneath it had the names of the wards. And next to many of the names of the wards, it simply said the word dead. And then you go down to another Osage ward, and next to the name, it said dead, dead, skip a few more, dead, dead, dead."

One by one, it seemed, the Osage were being murdered. Between 1921 and 1925, the official number was 27. It became known as the Reign of Terror.

"There were shootings, there were poisonings, one man was thrown off a speeding train, there was a bombing," said Grann. "The terror was enormous, because nobody knew who would be next. But also, nobody was doing anything to stop it."

Few families suffered more than Mollie Burkhart's family. She had married a young Texan named Ernest Burkhart, who was the nephew of the most powerful man in Osage County: William K. Hale.

Hale wasn't entitled to any Osage oil money, but as Mollie's husband, his nephew, Ernest, was.

They hadn't been married long when Mollie's older sister, Anna, was found murdered in a ravine. She was last seen heading there with two white men.

"One of the killers held her up," Grann said, "and the other killer shot her right in the back of the head."


David Grann with Lee Cowan at the scene of the murder of Mollie Burkhart's sister Anna.
Two months after that, Mollie's mother, Lizzie, died suspiciously. Mollie believed she had been poisoned.

Two years after that, another sister, Rita, died when her house exploded from a homemade bomb.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/killers...ting-the-reign-of-terror-on-the-osage-nation/

 

I can't wait to see what your next hit piece is...

 

Yes.

 

The political left must find this story to be very satisfying.

A bunch of filthy rich oil barons getting killed off like that. They became obscenely rich by raping the land, while putting forth almost no actual work of their own. I guess these one percenters got what they deserved, eh? Those filthy rich, big-oil bastards.

 

yepper--I remember ---think I was in the 3rd grade....

 

If you would take the time to understand the ramifications that this event brought about including the recent Dakota Pipeline fiasco and the way that the indigenous peoples there were manhandled like lesser citizens and other examples all of N America and not just in the USA. There is also an interesting FBI connection to this story ... the book is an excellent read but I know you have Netflix so might want to watch the film instead ???

 

Sorry. I went to public schools. The teachers told me it never happened.

 

This was land discarded by the masses and thought to be a good place to herd the Natives to until they realized that the land under them was paved with black gold ...

Has fuck all to do with the left stupid.

 

Sadly, this story could be told any number of times. The genocide of the American Indians is a blot on the history of the United States. As is the genocide of native peoples in Canada, Central and South America, Australia, Africa and yes, my own nation, New Zealand, on their respective histories.

Wherever great wealth is perceived or found, there will be those who will use any means and go to any lengths, to dispossess the holders of it. It is part and parcel of the human story.

 

I know it's not a story about the stupid left. I didn't say it was a story about the stupid left. I'm just saying that the stupid left must love this story.

It's about a bunch of filthy rich oil barons who get rich by raping the land. And rather than use their money to help mend the land they have defiled, they build mansions and drive fancy cars. Sounds more like a story about the people rising up and killing these big oil bastards. That's why it's a story that the stupid left will love.

 

Granddad drilled the Seminole Oil Boom in 1923 Oklahoma and it for sure never happened....

a short while later oil went to a dime a barrel so there was really not that much money.....