Shame and scandal in the American west

In the early 1920s, while the United States was entering its crazed phase of prohibition and prosperity, a group of Native Americans had also just struck it rich. The Osage were a tribe who had been driven west (like others), and had settled in a rocky region of northwest Oklahoma. Unlike other Indian nations, they purchased their new land (which meant the federal government couldn’t move them along again), and in 1906 they had the foresight to include a covenant to the title of what became the Osage nation. Land could be sold, but no matter who owned an individual plot, all mineral rights were retained by the Osage.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann describes in detail how the subsequent oil boom made the Osage the richest group in America per capita. The revenue from oil leases was shared among enrolled members of the tribe as ‘head-rights’. After decades of being pushed around by the US government, the Osage’s ship had finally come in. They could build nice houses and drive fancy cars, all with their shares of the oil money. They could afford to employ servants — white servants — to the consternation of many observers. The ‘rich Osage’ became figures of fun and curiosity in newspaper accounts.

But their sudden wealth made them prime targets for price-gougers and scammers from all over the country. The chance to chisel some cash from the Indians, or get in on the oil boom itself, drew precisely the kind of shady character you’d expect. An added bonus for the villains who pitched up in Osage territory was that it was a long way from any police department’s notice. What law enforcement existed was at best limited, and more often corrupt.