Native Americans

According to my three DNA analyses, I have less than 0.1% Native American ancestry.  That's fine with me.  I do know, however, that one of my ancestors had a Native American wife (illegally) in Virginia in the 1650s, and I descend from his (unlawful) daughter.  Her grandchildren were placed onto Native American Tribal Rolls, for which, they had to prove their ancestry.  I write the above because I wrote several research papers while in high school and in college about the history and treatment of Native Americans - 10 years before I discovered that I have a teeny smidgen of their blood in my veins.
   Last night, I decided to begin reading Killers of the Flower Moon - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI written by David Grann.  I didn't turn out the light until I had finished reading the entire book.  When the Osage tribe was moved to what is now Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1870s, the treaty agreement said they would hold that land in perpetuity.  The Osage had watched, with horror and wonder, the Oklahoma Land Rush.  They had seen the US government slowly go through the tribal reservations, taking back the land, and giving each family an allotment of 160 acres, or less.It became their turn, and they fought it for several years.  The chiefs and attorneys finally acceded to the governments demands to allotments - but a knowing leader made certain that the Osage tribe, as a people, would continue to own all of the mineral and ground rights for all of the original territory.  The tribe knew that oil was under this land due to a few seeps into small creeks.
   Once the allotments were made, white people could purchase the rest of the county, and cattle ranchers and merchants moved in.  Then oil - black gold - was "discovered" on the land, and the Osage people, as a whole became rich.
   Of course, the white man decided that the Osage tribe were a simple people, and that they could not manage their new-found wealth.  Almost every single member of the Osage tribe was assigned a white "guardian" to oversee their spending.  If you were an Osage, you paid 50 to 500 times the price that other people paid for simple items.  One "guardian" purchased a new car for his ward - the car cost $250; the "guardian" charged his ward $1,250 for the automobile, and the white man pocketed the difference...
   After 24 Osage people died in less than three years - from strange wasting sicknesses, from bullets, from explosions, some with no known cause - the Bureau of Investigation was called upon for help.  At that time, the the Bureau had just been taken over by a young man named J. Edgar Hoover, and he was "cleaning shop" after previous leaders had made it known that they were easily bought.  The search actually centered upon the deaths of six people - five Osage and a white serving woman.  And the agents were able to catch and convict two of the men who had done the planning of the deaths.
   Near the end of the book, the author talks about the other deaths, and the probable killers of the first designated death.  Then he admits to looking at the records of the tribe - and finding that many more people died than he had supposed....   It's an awful look at humanity...
    I highly recommend this book!