The Osage Murders

Another chapter in my recent book Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3OWWt4l concerns the Osage murders, made infamous by the book Killers of the Flower Moon and the 2023 movie of the same name. 

On May 27, 1921, the body of Anna Brown was found beside a road between Fairfax and Grayhorse in Osage County, Oklahoma. Brown had been shot through the head. Initial reports mentioned that, as a member of the Osage tribe, she was receiving about $1,000 per month in “oil royalties;” but the only theory of the crime local authorities could offer was that she had been the victim of highway robbery.

As it turned out, Anna Brown was not the victim of highway robbery but of one of the most diabolical get-rich schemes in American history. Because of a series of land deals made with the federal government going back to the late 1800s, the Osage held the rights to one of the largest deposits of oil in the United States. To divide up the profits from the commonly owned mineral rights, a system was adopted by which each Osage member would receive an equal share of the revenue. This came to be called a headright. Private companies could lease the land and then pay a percentage of their profits into a trust fund managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA would then distribute payments to the holders of the headrights.

During the Oklahoma oil boom of the early 1900s, the Osage people became some of the wealthiest in the world, as members of the tribe, like Anna Brown, received payments that today would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

The sudden wealth of the Osage people drew lots of swindlers looking to cheat tribal members out of their money; so, the U. S Government established a system that was supposedly designed to help the Osage protect their wealth. White guardians were assigned to manage the money of any members of the tribe who were judged incompetent. In practice, the guardianship program was a racist system under which simply being Native American was sufficient reason to be deemed “incompetent."

The guardians often paid themselves from money they were supposed to be safeguarding for the Osage, but this was not the worst of the abuses. The law allowed that headrights could not be sold but they could be inherited. This provision spawned the "Reign of Terror" during which many white people married into the Osage tribe and then killed or hired someone else to kill their spouses and/or their spouse’s relatives in order to gain their headrights.

Anna Brown was not the first victim of the scheme, but most of the murders occurred in the early 1920s, and her case was the first to receive much publicity. In total, at least 24 members of the Osage tribe were killed or died under mysterious circumstances during the "Reign of Terror," and some estimates place the number much higher. Most of the murders occurred in the Fairfax-Grayhorse area, and many of the victims were members of the same family, relatives of Anna.

Several people were arrested for questioning or as suspects in Anna's death, including Ernest Burkhart, who was married to Anna’s sister Mollie, but the coroner ultimately ruled that Anna had been killed by parties unknown. 

During the two years following Anna's death, her mother died under suspicious circumstances, her ex-husband was found dead with a gunshot to the back of the head, and a second sister (Rita) and her husband were killed when their house exploded.

The coincidence of so many members of the Osage tribe, especially members of the same family, dying so close together in time and place was too obvious to ignore, and the Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) finally initiated an investigation. The investigative team kept encountering the names of William K. Hale and Ernest Burkhart, the same Ernest Burkhart who was married to Anna's sister Mollie and who had been arrested for questioning in Anna's death. Hale, a wealthy, prominent citizen, was Burkhart's uncle, and he was eventually identified as the mastermind behind the murders of Anna and her family. The scheme was for Burkhart to inherit all the family's wealth and then turn a large portion of it over to his uncle. 

Hale and Burkhart were arrested for conspiring to kill the family members of Burkhart's wife, Mollie. Mollie herself was found to be dying of gradual poisoning, but the scheme was uncovered in time to save her life. Hale and Burkhart were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, but both were paroled after twenty years or so. 

My recent book contains a considerably more detailed account of the Osage murders than I've given here, or if you really want to delve into the subject, here's a link to Killers of the Flower Moon https://amzn.to/3DeN1qJ.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in NE Oklahoma book (https://amzn.to/3Zlvl3U) is about the Tulsa Race Massacre. On Monday, May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old African American, was accused of accosting Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white girl, in an elevator in downtown Tulsa. The next day, Rowland was arrested and placed in jail.

Rowland denied that he had molested the girl, but his protestations of innocence made no difference to many Tulsans when they heard of his arrest. Tension between Blacks and whites during the Ku Klux Klan era of the 1920s was high, especially in Tulsa, where many Black citizens lived in and around the thriving Greenwood business district, which was known as black Wall Street because of its economic success. Meanwhile, many poor whites just across the railroad tracks to the south were struggling financially and surely resented their prosperous neighbors.

Throughout Tuesday afternoon and early evening, rumors of a lynching were whispered from one white Tulsan to another, and by about 7:30 that evening, hundreds of angry whites had gathered outside the Tulsa County Courthouse. The mob demanded that law officers turn over Rowland, but Sheriff W.M. McCullough refused.

When a group of Black men showed up to help defend Rowland if necessary, McCullough assured them they weren't needed and they left, but their appearance alarmed and angered the white mob. By 9:30 p.m., the mob had grown to about 2,000. McCullough tried to talk to the mob into dispersing, but the crowd hooted him down.

About 10:00 p.m., a second group of armed Black men, after hearing of the growing mob, went to the courthouse to offer their help in maintaining order, but again they were turned away. As the black men were leaving, a white man accosted one of them and tried to disarm him. The black man, a World War I vet, refused to hand over his weapon. During the ensuing struggle, a shot was fired, and the riot was on.

The white mob opened fire on the African Americans, and the Black men returned fire. Greatly outnumbered, the Black men retreated toward the Greenwood district, skirmishing with a pursuing horde of whites along the way. Fighting broke out elsewhere as well.

Hundreds of whites, including some members of the mob, were deputized and told to "Get a gun, get a nigger.” In their fury, the white mob largely forgot about Dick Rowland.

Angry whites prowled the streets of downtown Tulsa looking for Blacks to exact vengeance on. They broke into stores and pawn shops to steal guns and ammunition. Some of the rioters included Tulsa policemen.

The armed Blacks were driven across the Frisco tracks that separated Greenwood from downtown Tulsa shortly after midnight. Outnumbered, the Black men made a determined stand, as the two sides exchanged gunfire for over an hour.

After the Black defenders were finally forced to retreat, a few carloads of whites conducted drive-by shootings through the Black neighborhoods while others in the white mob began setting fires to African American homes and businesses.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the National Guard was called out, supposedly to restore order, but they spent most of their time rounding up Blacks to hand over to police as prisoners.

With the coming of daylight, white rioters poured across the tracks into the Greenwood business district looting and burning homes and other buildings. Anyone who resisted was shot. Some policemen and even a few National Guardsmen joined the rioters.

By the time order was finally restored around noon on Wednesday, at least 60 and some say as many as 300 African Americans were dead. About 6,000 Black Tulsans had been rounded up and placed in temporary internment camps. About 10,000, almost the entire Black population of Tulsa, were left homeless. Over 1,000 businesses and homes were burned and many others looted but not burned.

Sheriff McCullough secretly whisked Dick Rowland out of town sometime during the riot. Sarah Page later declined to prosecute, and Rowland was exonerated. But, even today, Tulsa is still reckoning with a legacy of racial hatred that has stained the city for over a hundred years because of the senseless violence sparked by a casual encounter between the two young people.

Often called the Tulsa Race Riot or the Tulsa Race War in the past, this tragedy has come to be known more aptly in recent years as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Cherokee Bill and the Bill Cook Gang

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in NE OK book https://amzn.to/3B4XjJa is about Crawford Goldsby, one of the most infamous outlaws in the history of Indian Territory. He had his first run-in with the law in the fall of 1893 when he was just seventeen. He went to a dance at Fort Smith, where he got into a fight with an older man over a girl. A few days later, Goldsby went looking for the man and shot him three times, seriously wounding him.

Adopting the name Cherokee Bill, Goldsby soon joined the Bill Cook outlaw gang. In July 1894, the Cook gang held up a Frisco passenger train at Red Fork, Indian Territory. Later the same month, the gang rode into Chandler and robbed the Lincoln County Bank in broad daylight. A barber across the street from the bank was shot and killed by one of the gang members.

On September 17, four members of the Cook gang robbed the J. A. Parkinson store in Okmulgee at gunpoint. On October 9, three members of the Cook gang held up the Valley Depot at Claremore.
Two hours after the Claremore stickup, the same gang reportedly robbed the depot at Chouteau over twenty miles away.

In the fall of 1894, a newspaper article described Cherokee Bill as the “first lieutenant” of the Cook gang and also its "best shot and the most dangerous member.”

On November 9, 1894, Cherokee Bill and another man rode into the small village of Lenapah about ten miles north of Nowata and held up the Shufeldt store. During the robbery, Bill shot and killed a young man standing at a window in nearby restaurant.

On Saturday evening, December 22, Cherokee Bill and several partners held up the train depot in Nowata. A week later, Cherokee Bill killed his brother-in-law over the man's alleged mistreatment of Bill's sister. Two days after that, Bill paid a return visit to the Nowata train depot and single-handedly robbed it again.

Lawmen captured Bill Cook in New Mexico on January 12, 1895, and just a couple of weeks later, Cherokee Bill was captured near Nowata. Both outlaws were brought to the federal jail at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Cook was found guilty on several robbery charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Cherokee Bill was convicted of murdering the young man at Lenapah and sentenced by Isaac Parker, the so-called hanging judge, to die on the gallows. While awaiting the outcome of an appeal, Cherokee Bill killed a guard during an escape attempt. He was tried for that murder, too, and again sentenced to death. The fateful day finally came on March 17, 1896. According to one report, Bill seemed as indifferent to his impending death as he had been to life, and he remarked just before the lever was pulled dropping him into eternity that it was "a fine day to die."

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of Cherokee Bill's exploits.