Killers of the Flower Moon is now a blockbuster movie starring Leonardo Di Caprio, and this image from the film is on the cover of the edition I read. But I wonder if it gives a fair representation of the book? A movie in which DiCaprio, a handsome white man, marries an Indian bride to steal her share of the tribe’s oil rights is grist to the Hollywood mill. There are so many ways to bring in sex, seduction and violence.
But the non- fiction account I read is a drier affair, concerned mostly with the facts of several key murder cases, and the possible motives of different suspects. David Grann occasionally explains how the Indian victims might have felt, but rarely puts them at the centre of dramatic and exciting events. Yet there are so many incidents in this book that could be dramatised for cinematic effect: Indian houses blown up or set on fire so as to obliterate their owners; Indians plied with drinks until they are unconscious, then shot, execution style, in the back of the head; Indians fed poisoned alcohol, their death appearing to be accidental. Filmed in the saloons and bars of Osage County Oklahoma in the 1920s, then the richest place in the world, there would be nodding donkey oil pumps, plenty of wild characters, western sheriffs brought in to root out the corruption, and outlaws living rough in the fag end of the wild west. Bootleggers too! So much drama.
But the murders that match the tone of the book involve the slow administration of poison, or corrupt doctors, slowly betraying a diabetic. No one was sure if the Shoun brothers, both doctors, were really administrating insulin, or something a little more lethal, or if many other mysterious deaths were poisonings, and that’s the case in the whole of this book. William Hale was convicted of several Indian murders, and Ernest Burkhart coughed up in the end, wracked by guilt. But there was much more to the murders than this. So many remained unsolved, and so many deaths that might have been murders were overlooked, that we are left not with a Hollywood ending – death or redemption or whatever Scorsese chose to give us. Instead there are only unanswered questions, and sadness.
A glance at the cast tells me there’s not even a place in the film for Tom White, the Texas ranger brought into Osage County to sort out the truth from the lies peddled by corrupt politicians and local businessmen on the lookout for a quick buck. The film must contain nothing of this, or of White’s connection with J Edgar Hoover, who used these unsolved murders as a way to extend the power of the FBI at a time when the law was implemented by local officials, and might not always provide justice.
Of course Killers of the Flower Moon is a book about racism, about Indians driven from pillar to post, and left rot in the most desolate, least fertile part of Oklahoma. Only that turns out to be the wealthiest spot on the earth because it’s on top of massive oil fields. And because the Osage bought the land from the government it’s theirs, and so is the oil – though many are labelled as drunken savages, too weak to manage their riches and given only pocket money by their guardians.
Killers of the `Flower Moon was definitely worth reading – but don’t expect it to be anything like the film. The book is a leisurely, thoughtful and detailed account in which Grann deals honestly with the events, piecing them together like a true detective. He explores the history of the Osage tribe, and the impact of the murders on those who are alive today, and he shares their story with tact and sensitivity, not with Hollywood drama.
If that sounds interesting, this book might be for you.
Senior Reader 