When audiences travel to the theater to see Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the Flowers Moon, they'll likely experience a brutal piece of American history for the first time. Though the Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro-starring film will dramatize certain events, the story is based on a real series of murders in Oklahoma's Osage Nation during the 1920s. For nearly a century, the story was largely suppressed—until journalist David Grann published his book of the same in 2017, which led to a massive uncovering of the region's dark history. "They suffered one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, yet many people, myself included, weren’t taught about it," Grann told The Telegraph in October. "We’ve effectively exorcised it from our consciousness."
The horrible story began roughly fifty years before the murders, when the Osage were driven off their land in Kansas—and relocated to a Oklahoma reservation that was unfit for cultivation. To the Osage's surprise, they found that lands were rich with massive oil reserves. This brought enormous riches to the Osage, who maintained "head rights" over the area, meaning that the land could only be inherited, not purchased. Soon enough, the revelation led to a criminal conspiracy in Oklahoma's Osage Nation wherein white entrepreneurs would marry into the Osage, then murder their spouses—just to flee with their family's wealth. J. Edgar Hoover, the future director of the FBI, sent the Bureau of Investigation to uncover the conspiracy and expose the masterminds behind the killings
Fast-forward nearly 100 years, when Grann researched the historical event for his book. After digging through the Fort Worth archives, he found something even more sinister at play. Grann told The Telegraph that he found a ledger listing deaths that "defied any natural death rates" of the time. Grann concluded that this was evidence of a systematic murder of the Osage people. "I don’t know of a single Osage family which didn’t lose at least one family member because of the head rights," Grann added.
The mastermind at the time was reportedly William Hale, a wealthy rancher who married his nephew, Ernest Burkhart, to an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart. De Niro plays Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon, and DiCaprio stars as Ernest. DiCaprio was originally set to play investigator Tom White—who worked with Hoover to organize an undercover operation in Oklahoma—but Scorsese rewrote the entire film to have him take on Ernest. “Where’s the heart of the film?” DiCaprio reportedly asked Scorsese, with the director responding, "Well, the heart is with her and Ernest."
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So, the two traveled with actress Lilly Gladstone—who plays Mollie in the film—to visit the Osage and gain their approval. "You deal with Native Americans and Indigenous people, you gotta make sure everything we do, everything we do, is as authentic," Scorsese told CBS Sunday Morning. DiCaprio added, "We did our absolute best to listen to the Osage community."
Scorsese reportedly hired many Osage to work both in front of and behind the camera, and the crew maintained a healthy relationship with Osage Nation Chief Standing Bear. "They really worked hard at this and earned our respect," Standing Bear said. "If you're not comfortable with Martin Scorsese, you're not going to be comfortable with anybody!" DiCaprio also learned to speak a bit of their language for the film, with Gladstone joking that he, "did an incredible job of doing it the way a white man would say it!"
During a press conference following Killers of the Flower Moon's world premiere at Cannes Film Festival, Chief Standing Bear took part in the film's panel. He praised the director's efforts, stating that he hoped the film would be a lesson about the dangers of trust. "My people suffered greatly, and to this very day, those effects are with us," Standing Bear said. "But I can say, on behalf of the Osage, Marty Scorsese and his team have restored trust, and we know that trust will not be betrayed."
Assistant Editor
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
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