Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here just a heads up. This episode deals with an important story of crime and violence against Indigenous people. We don't get supergraphic, but if you're not up for that today, go on and skip this one and take care of yourself. Okay. At the turn of the twentieth century, the sum two thousand members of the O s Age Nation were some of the wealthiest people in America, after being forcibly removed from their
homeland decades earlier and resettled on land no one else wanted. Twice, the O s Age had struck it rich in the Rocky Hills of what's now Oklahoma when oil was discovered on their land. But what should have been a triumph
became a tragedy in its own right. From in what's now known as the Reign of Terror, corrupt local officials teamed with grifters and scam artists defraud the O Sage of millions of dollars, and they murdered dozens or perhaps even hundreds of Native people in the process, in order
to exploit inheritance laws. The investigation was handled by the relatively new Bureau of Investigation or b o I. Under a young JEdgar Hoover, this department would become the FBI, But to this day, the O Sage are still seeking justice for their ancestors who disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances during this dark period. Like virtually all Native American people's, the Oh Sage were driven from their ancestral lands, which
included large swaths of what's now Oklahoma. In the eighteen hundreds, they were forced to relocate first Kansas and then ironically back to Oklahoma, known then as Indian Territory. The forced removals were devastating and many people died, but the O Sage managed to buy their land in the territory with money from the sale of their reservation in Kansas, and when cattlemen from Texas needed grazing land to fatten their herds on the way to Kansas City, the O s
Age leased them grasslands, providing excellent revenue. The O Sage were the only Native group in the territory that wasn't required to comply with the eight seven DAWs Act. It divided reservation lands into allotments, and most of which were sold off to white colonists, but then oil was discovered on O Sage land in when Oklahoma became a state a decade later, allotment was forced upon the O Sage, but by that time they had money and bargaining power.
For the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Tera Dameron, who is Osage herself and program director of the White Hair Memorial Learning Center. As she said, as much as they could, our leaders were trying to fight for the rights of our people because we had seen what had happened to the other tribes in Oklahoma
who were completely decimated. The leaders negotiated allotments of six hundred and forty acres for each of the two thousand, two hundred and twenty nine registered O Sage people, without any surplus land sold to white settlers, and critically, they retained mineral rights for all oil, coal, and other resources beneath their land, the profits from which would be shared collectively among tribal members. Each share was called a head
right and could only be inherited, not sold. The O Sage auctioned off oil drilling rights to the highest bidder and collected a percentage of all oil revenue. The tribe was soon earning ten million to thirty million dollars a year, which is nearly four hundred million in today's money, quickly making millionaires of each individual owner of an O Sage head right. A common sentiment reported in nineteen twenties newspapers was that the O Sage were the richest group of
people per capita on Earth. All of this made land that white Americans hadn't wanted look a lot more. Tempting outsiders warmed into Oklahoma boom towns like Fairfax, where they could either make money drilling for oil or by squeezing cash directly from the O s Age themselves by any means necessary. White merchants charged higher prices to OH Sage members. Doctors and pharmacists got their O Sage patients hooked on
expensive medications. The lawyers descended on Oklahoma in droves, charging exorbitant fees to assist the O Sage in their business dealings. Things went from bad to worse in when Congress passed a law requiring all O Sage to pass a competency test to see if they were able to manage their own finances. Under this insulting law, Dameron says Virtually all full blooded oh Sage were automatically deemed incompetent and in
signed a guardian to handle their money. Guardianships over O Sage people were assigned by corrupt local judges who gifted the positions to relatives, cronies, end political supporters. These guardians often swindled their wards out of their head rights or spent the oil money themselves while giving the ward of pittance as an allowance. There were even cases where an O Sage ward had to borrow money from their guardian
and fell hopelessly into debt. Marriage was another way that outsiders could make a claim at a head right, especially if the O Sage spouse unexpectedly died, which started to happen with shocking frequency. Dammon said, you have these intelligent, healthy people who all of a sudden die from poisoning or from these really vague diseases like consumption. Jim rone Gray, a former OH Sage chief, set in a PPS documentary that a full blooded Oh Sage with money was basically
walking around with a target on their back. A quote. The sense of fear must have been horrible. Local police and judges were often involved and thus no help. So the leaders took their pleas to Washington, d C. Where they were able to convince the Butting b o I, led by twenty nine year old Jager Hoover, to take on its first murder investigation. The victims in question were
several members of an extended o s age family. Anna Brown, a young and vivacious woman, was the first to be killed, her body found by hunters with a gunshot to the back of her head. Brown's death had been ruled accidental by local authorities. Not long after, Brown's mother died from suspected poisoning. Then her cousin, Henry Rowan was also shot and killed. That left just two of Brown's surviving sisters,
Rita and Molly, with all of the family's valuable head rights. Then, on March tenth, an explosion ripped apart Rita's home, killing her and her family. Molly was now the sole survivor. What she didn't know was that her white husband, Ernest Burkhardt, was slowly poisoning her. Burkhart was the submissive nephew of
an influential and charismatic cattleman named William K. Hale. Through undercover agents, the b o I learned that Hale had ordered the killings of Anna Brown and her family so that his nephew would inherit all of their head rights
were worth half a million dollars a year. When Burkhart and other accomplices confessed, Hale was convicted of ordering Henry Rowan's murder and sentenced to life in prison, but due to his powerful connections, Hale was paroled in ninety seven, and Burkhart, despite pleading guilty, was fully pardoned by Oklahoma's governor in n and Damren reminds us quote that was just one family and one conviction. All of us O Sage have family stories about relatives dying or disappearing under
mysterious circumstances. Estimates of the total number of O s Age killed in the nineteen twenties ranges from twenty four into jewels to several hundred. The truth Dammaron says is that there's never been any closure, There's never been any justice. Furthermore, the descendants of the corrupt guardians and scam artists who stole O Sage head rights back in the nineteen twenties are still collecting royalties on O Sage oil and gas revenue by O Sage, accounting of the head rights owners
are non O Sage. In law finally made it illegal for non O Sage people to inherit head rights, but some of those head rights were gifted to churches, universities, and other institutions that have no descendants per se. Damaron says that the O Sage Nation is strong and because of its mineral wealth and leadership, the O s Age have been able to help other Native peoples and sustain their own future. She said, there are a lot of
successful O Sages. We overcame the terror of the nineteen twenties, but we're still fighting to get back what's rightfully ours. In the U. S Government agreed to a three hundred and eighty million dollar settlement with the os Age Tribe for a mismanagement of funds. Also in the Native American Rights Fund donated twenty acres of ancestral land back to the os Age Nation. And at the very least more
people know the story. Some of my colleagues at iHeart Radio and Bloomberg published an eight episode podcast mini series this fall diving deep into the history and present of the O s Age Nation. The podcast is called in Trust, and journalist David Graham published a book in eighteen about the Brown family's plight called Killers of the Flower Moon. It's now being made into a movie by Martin Scorsese.
Today's episode is based on the article Reign of Terror, The Forgotten Story of the os Age Tribe Martyrs on house toff works dot com, written by Dave Rooves. If you'd like to learn more, check at the podcast in Trust, available wherever you get your podcasts. Brain Stuff is production of ire Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works
dot Com, and its produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.