Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation (Conclusion)

CJ:  The personal trend the author took in this book was ahead of its time as far as history is concerned. He wrote this way before we realized that "history" is more than a list of Presidents and battles in wars long gone. Thank goodness we have trended away from such drudgery and are now looking into social history, which is what the author shares with us. I would love to see Ken Burns pick up the Osage story!  

FM:  Good point, though I see some of both approaches here.  At some point in this narrative, the “play-by-play” recitation of details that can be such a grind in some history books subtly morphs into a rather synoptic detective story; still a bit terse in its structure, but beginning to display some of the background tension that a well-told detective story contains.  When the Feds (even the term G-Men is conjured!) come into the picture, the plot really begins to take off.  The FBI sends in undercover agents who “posed as an insurance agent, a Texas cattle buyer, a real estate agent and…an Indian ‘medicine man.’”  Sweet! 

CJ:  I was particularly drawn to the poetry McAuliffe used to describe the town of Pawhuska. I remember the first time I was there feeling a sadness for the triangle building and imagining what it must have looked like when the town was vibrant. Now having read his descriptions of the places in his story I want to go back and find them for myself. Though the house is gone, I want to see the place where his grandmother was murdered and stand where she might have stood. I don't know if I believe in spirits roaming earth or not, but I think her presence can probably be felt in that place. 

FM:  The author continues to give us his personal perspective, including an in-depth look at his struggle with alcoholism throughout the ordeal of collecting the facts for this book.  The beer (his only drink of choice) in Pawhuska is so limited in its variety that he frequently drives to Bartlesville – often drunk both ways – to obtain some higher quality imported beer.  There, his choice of watering holes is the Hotel Phillips “where you can use your Phillips gas card at the bar.”  It’s a bonus when reading a historic account for it to include places you’re familiar with.  This was especially fun for me, as the Hotel Phillips in Bartlesville is the place where I met my wife; at a chess tournament being held there!  When he gets back home, his alcoholism continues to be such an issue that, at one point “I called my immediate supervisor… and told her I was an alcoholic and needed help.  She helped me get into [a] treatment center.”  This was an opportunity to flesh out a moment of real personal drama; which he does in several other passages of the book on other topics, to great effect.  Not here though.  Perhaps this one was a little too painful to share, but it was a missed opportunity never-the-less. 

CJ:  I truly enjoyed the depth of his investigation. As an Oklahoma History teacher I knew of the FBI agent who was murdered, but never knew the details. Now I have more information to share with my students. This book has really set a fire for me to learn more about the Osage and the terror that overtook them.  I drove to Pawhuska yesterday to see one of my students show her goats. She won grand champion by the way. I couldn't help but wonder about the stories that are untold as I crossed into Osage county from the Cleveland side and saw the beautiful fields with sparse outcroppings of sandstone and black jack. In the show barn I looked into the faces of people I assumed were Osage and the whites wearing cowboy hats and imagined what underlying hatred might still linger between them. 

FM:  There is a comparison he makes that was nothing new to me, but made in a way that drove the point home in a way I had never considered.  He mentions that Indians tend to know their ancestry back many generations, able to describe what each ancestor was like and perhaps tell interesting stories about each one.  “White people” in America tend to know about their grandparents, maybe a little something about a great-grandparent or two, and that’s about it.  I know that my mother’s mother had a father who dabbled in poetry – I have a booklet that contains some – and that my father’s father was born in a crude shack in what was “Indian Territory” at the time (Oklahoma now – my son is a fourth generation “Okie,” a relatively rare animal at the time of his birth).  But nothing beyond that.  An Indian would probably think that’s shameful. 

CJ:  Osage county is still a sad place, from this story I would imagine it will always be burdened by the underlying pain left by such a terrible history.  I was hoping to find more books by this author, but apparently he was satisfied with his discovery that his grandmother did not commit suicide. 

FM:  I took Oklahoma History in the eighth grade.  I still remember the teacher pretty vividly; Herman Horn.  I had the impression at the time that he disliked me even more than I disliked him, although I was careful not to get on his bad side.  I think he knew I “hated” History (meaning I didn’t have an appreciation for it in my almost total ignorance of it).  If I had read this book or books like it at that age, it would have made a world of difference.  The textbook we used was like a piece of history itself, seeming to have been printed in the 1920’s.  They could do a lot worse than to throw all those musty tomes out, and replace them with this book.  I, for one, would have been much better off for it!

CJ:  Whoa! I just went to Amazon to look for more on the murders & the FBI investigation is available for Kindle! Those are now on my must read list!






March’s book: Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr.   “A stunning mystery set against the high-country trails of the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas, where the age-old battle of man against nature is fought with a frightening twist.”  [Should be open for comments on Chapters 1-5 by March 1st.]