State of Oklahoma

The State of Oklahoma is the setting for the book’s account of the Osage people’s oil wealth and the violence directed against them. Its northeastern reservation lands, once regarded as rocky and worthless, sat above immense oil deposits; later, the state’s response to the murders in Osage County showed how the machinery meant to pursue justice could itself be compromised.

Land and seasonal setting

The opening locates the Osage territory in Oklahoma’s blackjack hills and broad prairies. In April, small flowers spread across the landscape; by May, taller plants overtake them, while the smaller blooms break and disappear beneath the ground. The Osage name for May, the time of the flower-killing moon, gives this seasonal change a stark resonance as the account turns to disappearances and deaths.

Reservation and oil wealth

In the early 1870s, the Osage were driven from Kansas onto a rocky reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, land outsiders presumed to be of little value. Its history reached back much further: Osage claims had once extended across a broad territory from what is now Missouri and Kansas through Oklahoma and west toward the Rockies. The contrast between that earlier expanse and the later reservation frames the dispossession behind the story’s setting.

Oil transformed the reservation’s fortunes. Prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties, and registered members of the tribe received quarterly payments. What began as checks of a few dollars grew, as more oil was tapped, into hundreds and then thousands. In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, an amount the book compares to more than $400 million today; the Osage were regarded as the wealthiest people per capita in the world.

The public fixation on this wealth also shaped how the state’s Indigenous residents were portrayed. Reporters described the Osage as “red millionaires,” emphasizing mansions, chandeliers, diamond rings, fur coats, chauffeured cars, and fashionable clothing. The spectacle of prosperity stood against older stereotypes of Indigenous poverty, while leaving the violence and unequal power surrounding that wealth in view.

State response and corruption

In April 1923, the governor sent Herman Fox Davis, the state’s top investigator, to Osage County to address the growing murder cases. Many Osage had lost faith in local authorities and hoped an outsider might cut through the corruption. Instead, within days Davis was seen with notorious criminals; another investigator caught him taking a bribe from a gambling syndicate in exchange for permission to operate illicit businesses.

Davis pleaded guilty to bribery in June and received a two-year sentence, but was pardoned a few months later. He then joined conspirators in robbing and murdering a prominent attorney and received a life sentence. That same year the governor was impeached and removed from office, partly over the use of pardons and paroles to release criminals and partly over illicit contributions from oilman E. W. Marland that funded a lavish home. Oklahoma thus appears not only as the land beneath the oil, but also as a political setting where official intervention failed—and where corruption reached into the very effort to investigate the killings.