How the Osage Tribe became rich before the Reign of Terror

The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by two writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel and Jimmie Tramel, to explore the history of the Osages and what led to the crimes committed against them.

Read all of the coverage of the film Killers of the Flower Moon and related stories here.

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Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona, who is taking some well-deserved time off. 

Our next few episodes are going to take us back to the late 1800s through the 1920s to Osage County in Oklahoma. With the help of and in partnership with reporters from the Tulsa World, the daily newspaper for the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and primary paper for the northeastern and eastern parts of the state.

Before we dive into those conversations, a tiny bit of background over the next set of episodes we're going to cover the Osage reign of terror, a series of murders of members of the Osage tribe and those who supported them that took place in the 1920s. By all accounts, these crimes are committed by people attempting to gain control of the Osage as oil rights and the profits from it.

We'll cover some of the history of the tribe, the crimes themselves, the investigation by the be a lie, which later became the FBI, and later a look at the crimes place and pop culture captured in books, newspapers and the soon to be released Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon, which was filmed in the same area that the events took place.

But back to the beginning, I spoke with Randy Krehbiel of the Tulsa World, someone we'll hear from several times as we tell this story about how the Osage tribe ended up in what is now Oklahoma.

My name is Randy Krehbiel. I've been at the Tulsa World since 1979. I came here as a sportswriter, did that for about 13 years, switched over to news. And over the years, I've written a lot of things. I've written about a lot of different subjects, but I've written a lot about history and the history of this area era.

I actually published the book several years ago on the 1921 race massacre, and I've written a book on the history of the Tulsa World and the city of Tulsa. And so all of these things are really interesting to me. And and some things, you know, you kind of know about for a while and some things you don't. My main job actually is covering state and federal government.

What kind of led you to writing about the Osage tribe, the the reign of terror and everything that goes into the story of killing of the flower moon?

You know, I had actually written a little bit about it probably 15 years ago or something like that. And there's nothing in-depth like, you know, the book or the David Green book or some of the other books that have been written about it. And I got into it and, it's just like a lot of other things. It's, you know, part of our our story.

It's part of how we we got here and, you know, I think I was probably somewhat fascinated, if that's the right word, by just just how terrible some of these people were. And also, you know, the people who were victimized by them, too, you know. So it's you know, it's part of who we are. And not only, you know, in Oklahoma, but really across the country.

And it's it's part of it's part of the history that, you know, we probably don't like to think about as much It does it doesn't make us feel as good as 4th of July.

Kind of, I guess, on that topic. I think people obviously in Oklahoma, but people of a certain age, I guess I should say, because I'm not sure that it's necessarily being taught as widely as it used to be, are aware of, you know, like the Trail of Tears and the establishment of, you know, Indian territory. But like people may not be familiar with the existence of the Osage people and everything they went through.

So can you just kind of talk a little bit about how they ended up in what is now Tulsa and kind of what what went into that?

Yes, ages originally were a very large tribe and they they're they're sort of their home grounds, at least at the time of, you know, European