Killers Of The Flower Moon Mollie Quotes

At forty-four, Mollie could finally spend her money as she pleased, and was recognized as a full-fledged American citizen.

Mollie had become a traveler in the mist.

Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas. And it was in this place where Mollie’s mother and father had come of age.

At the meeting, Jefferson addressed the chiefs as “my children” and said, “It is so long since our forefathers came from beyond the great water, that we have lost the memory of it, and seem to have grown out of this land, as you have done….We are all now of one family.” He went on, “On your return tell your people that I take them all by the hand; that I become their father hereafter, that they shall know our nation only as friends and benefactors.” But within four years Jefferson had compelled the Osage to relinquish their territory between the Arkansas River and the Missouri River. The Osage chief stated that his people “had no choice, they must either sign the treaty or be declared enemies of the United States.” Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas. And it was in this place where Mollie’s mother and father had come of age. Mollie’s

The instruction was intended to assimilate Mollie into white society and transform her into what the authorities conceived of as the ideal woman.

Mollie watched the glistening white coffin sink into the ground until the long, haunting wails were replaced by the sound of earth clapping against the lid.

Mollie and her family placed enough food in the casket for Anna’s three-day journey to what the Osage refer to as the Happy Hunting Ground. The

Mollie, who was born on December 1, 1886,

So while Osage boys at other institutions learned farming and carpentry, Mollie was trained in the “domestic arts”:

When, the following year, Oklahoma entered the Union as the forty-sixth state, members of the tribe were able to sell their surface land in what was now Osage County. But to keep the mineral trust under tribal control, no one could buy or sell headrights. These could only be inherited. Mollie and her family had become part of the first underground reservation.

The three women spoke candidly about the family’s history and shared with me a video recording of Ernest that was taken shortly before he died, in which he talked about Mollie and his past.

As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar: Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy: Hide it in smiles and affability.  Ernest and Mollie Burkhart Credit 47

In 1894, when Mollie was seven, her parents were informed that they had to enroll her in the St. Louis School, a Catholic boarding institution for girls that had been opened in Pawhuska, which was two days’ journey

Mollie had reached Pawhuska. Although the reservation’s capital then seemed a small, squalid place—a “muddy little trading post,” as one visitor described it—it was likely the biggest settlement Mollie had ever seen.

members of the tribe were able to sell their surface land in what was now Osage County. But to keep the mineral trust under tribal control, no one could buy or sell headrights. These could only be inherited. Mollie and her family had become part of the first underground reservation.

Like others on the Osage tribal roll, Mollie and her family members each received a headright—essentially, a share in the tribe’s mineral trust. When, the following year, Oklahoma entered the Union as the forty-sixth state, members of the tribe were able to sell their surface land in what was now Osage County. But to keep the mineral trust under tribal control, no one could buy or sell headrights. These could only be inherited. Mollie and her family had become part of the first underground reservation.

John Wren, the Ute agent, had recently spoken to Mollie’s priest, who said that she had stopped coming to church, which was unlike her, and that he had heard she was being forcibly kept away by family members. The priest was sufficiently alarmed that he had broken the tenet of parishioner confidentiality. Soon after, the priest reported that he had received a secret message from Mollie: she was afraid that someone was trying to poison her. Given that poisoned whiskey had been one of the killers’ preferred methods, the priest sent word back warning Mollie “not to drink any liquor of any kind under any circumstances.

Mollie’s brother-in-law, Bill Smith, was one of the first to wonder if there was something curious about Lizzie’s death, coming so soon after the murders of Anna and Whitehorn. A bruising bulldog of a man, Bill had also expressed deep frustration over the authorities’ investigation, and he had begun looking into the matter himself. Like Mollie, he was struck by the peculiar vagueness of Lizzie’s sickness; no doctor had ever pinpointed what was causing it. Indeed, no one had uncovered any natural cause for her death. The more Bill delved, conferring with doctors and local investigators, the more he was certain that Lizzie had died of something dreadfully unnatural: she’d been poisoned. And Bill was sure that all three deaths were connected—somehow—to the Osage’s subterranean reservoir of black gold. 4  UNDERGROUND RESERVATION The money had come suddenly, swiftly, madly. Mollie had been ten years old when the oil was first discovered, had witnessed, firsthand, the ensuing frenzy. But, as the elders in the tribe had relayed to Mollie, the tangled history of how their people had gotten hold of this oil-rich land went back to the seventeenth century, when the Osage had laid claim to much of the central part of the country—a territory that stretched from what is now Missouri and Kansas to Oklahoma, and still farther west, all the way to the Rockies. In

KEY PLAYERS J. Edgar Hoover: Director of the FBI. Tom White: Agent in charge of the Osage murders investigation. William K. Hale: The so-called “King of the Osage Hills”—was later convicted of first-degree murder in the investigation. Ernest Burkhart: Nephew of William Hale. Conspired with his uncle to murder several Osage for their wealth. Byron Burkhart: Nephew of William Hale, and brother to Ernest Burkhart. Mollie Burkhart: Wife of Ernest Burkhart. Was almost a victim of the deadly conspiracy.