This cautionary tale is based on David Grant's book Killers of the Flower Moon and produced

in association with Apple original films. The film of the same title is now exclusively

in theaters.

Once upon a time, the Osage Nation stretched across the centre of the North American continent.

From the Rocky Mountains through to what is now Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, President

Thomas Jefferson viewed the Osage people with wary respect. When in 1804 he met with

the group of towering Osage chiefs at the White House, he remarked that they were the

finest men we have ever seen. The wary respect did not last. By 1870 the Osage people had

been pushed into buying land that one observer described as broken, rocky, sterile and utterly

unfit for cultivation. Ravaged by smallpox, the death of the buffalo and brutal attacks

from settlers only a few thousand of them remained alive. The Osage chief Wati Ankar tried

to look on the bright side. My people will be happy in this land. He said, there are

many hills here. White man does not like a country where there are hills and he will not

come. But the white man did come. Osage children were forcibly enrolled in Catholic boarding

schools days travel away from their parents and made to change their names and their clothes

to the European style. The United States policy was that the Indian must conform to the

white man's ways, peacefully if they will, forcibly if they must.

In 1906 the US government wanted to create a new state, Oklahoma, and handed over to white

settlers. They pressed the Osage nation to agree to a new deal concerning the rights to the land

they purchased. The Osage negotiators played a weak hand well. Under the deal that they agreed,

the entire tribe of 2,229 souls collectively held the rights to whatever lay beneath their land.

And what lay beneath? As the Osage negotiators suspected, then the white man had not guest,

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