A little over a year ago, I wrote about a book, Batavia’s Graveyard, and talked about how disturbing it was to read. It disturbed me because it was incredible how those who claimed to be Christians could distort the teaching of Jesus to justify doing any action including murder. I recently read a similar book that once again proved Jeremiah’s point—“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV). The title of the book is Killers of the Flower Moon.
In the late 1800’s the Osage Indians were removed from their land in Kansas to land in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) which most white people regarded as “broken rocky, sterile, and utterly unfit for cultivation”. [1] The Osage wisely negotiated to keep the mineral rights for the Osage Nation. Each member of the tribe received a headright which was a share in the tribe’s mineral trust which no one could buy or sell; it could only be inherited. [2]
Trouble began when oil was discovered on Osage land. The federal government, in their infinite wisdom, decided that certain Indians must have a financial guardian. There were plenty of people who wanted the guardian position in order to fleece the Osage. Fleecing the Osage did not stop at charging them exorbitant prices. Soon a rash of murders attracted the attention of many. Financial guardians were murdering certain Osage in order to concentrate the Osage wealth in a few hands which would make it easier to control the wealth. Local and state governmental officials apparently were involved as the only convictions for these murders were obtained by the FBI. But even the FBI solved only a fraction of the cases.
What was disturbing to me was all the individuals—from family members, to prominent citizens, to local officials, to county officials, to state officials—all who participated in or turned a blind eye to these events. Nelson DeMelle, writing of his experiences in the war in Vietnam, summarizes what these individuals must have been like: “I’ve seen the most inhuman and brutal behavior you can possibly imagine from normal guys. . .it changes you forever because you went to that dark place in your soul, the place most people know exists but have never been to, but you’ve been there for a long time and didn’t find it so terrible, nor do you feel an ounce of guilt, and that itself becomes the fear. . .”[3]
Human nature has not changed in the thousands of years since Jeremiah gave us this assessment of the human heart and it is frightful.
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[1] David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon, New York: Doubleday, 2017, p. 40.
[2] Ibid., p. 53.
[3] Nelson DeMelle, Up Country, New York: Warner Books, 2000, pp. 500-501.
