Osage Indian Murders

The Osage Indian Murders were a series of murders of Osage Indians in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s, called the "Reign of Terror" by newspapers. Estimates are that 60 or more wealthy Osage were killed from 1921 to 1925. The murders appear to have been caused by the greed of white men for the great wealth of the Osage, whose land was producing valuable oil and who each had headrights that earned lucrative annual royalties.

In 1907 each tribal member received an allotment of 657 acres, and they and their legal heirs, whether or not Osage, earned royalties on the "headrights" from their portion of oil-producing land. The tribe held the mineral rights communally, and paid its members by a percentage related to their holdings. By a law of 1921, Congress required most Osage of half or more Native American ancestry to have court-appointed guardians until they demonstrated competency; all minors were required to have guardians appointed, whether or not they had living parents. The guardians were generally local white lawyers and businessmen. The Osage wealth attracted many opportunists, some of them with criminal intent.

In 1925 the tribal elders, with the help of James Monroe Pyle a local law officer, went to the newly organized FBI when local and state officials could not solve the rising number of murders. Pyle presented his evidence of murder and conspirency and requested an investigation. In its undercover investigation, the FBI found that several murders in one family were found to have been committed by a gang led by William "King of Osage Hills" Hale, with the goal of gaining the oil royalty headrights and wealth of tribe members, including his nephew's Osage wife, the last survivor. Three men were convicted and sentenced in this case, but most murders went unsolved. A late twentieth-century investigation by the journalist Dennis McAuliffe revealed deep corruption in the county at the time, with failure to have post-mortem exams, falsified death certificates issued by the coroner's office, and other activities among white officials to cover up the murders.

Osage county officials sought revenge against Pyle for his role in bringing the murders to light. Fearing for his life, Pyle and his wife fled to Arizona where he again became an officer of the law. He died there in 1942.

In 1925 Congress passed a law prohibiting inheritance of headrights by non-natives from Osage of half or more Native American ancestry, to reduce the threat to the Osage. From 1926-1929, Hale and an associate were convicted of the murders; one nephew pleaded guilty; and they were sentenced to life in prison. They later received parole, although the Osage objected. The investigation was an early, high-profile success of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover.