Ernest and Mollie Burkhart married in 1917. Unbeknownst to Mollie, a member of the Osage tribe, the marriage was part of a larger plot to steal her family’s oil wealth.
In the 1920s, as many as 60 Osage, made wealthy by oil, were murdered one at a time in a complicated conspiracy to steal their money. Many were killed by their white husbands or relatives, who married them deliberately to kill them. Eventually, once white allies were killed, the FBI investigated; it was one of their first murder cases.
A new book is out on the subject, Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann. His interview on NPR’s Fresh Air outlines the story.
Memories of the People 
Hello, Stephen! I wish Linda Hogan’s novel “Mean Spirit”, published in the early 90s, had drawn as much attention as “Killers of the Flower Moon” and could have been transformed into a movie by a Native film director with a Native cast and crew. I thought it was a fantastic novel and when I read it maybe 12-15 years ago, I had never heard of this part of US and American Indian history. As you recently wrote on Native News Online, I agree with you that it would be wonderful to have many more Native stories told on film, whether short films, features or documentaries, from the indigenous perspective. I love Vision Maker Media, but I think they could use lots more funding. A while back, white people were upset about the graves of Indian/First Nations children that were found on sites of former boarding/residential schools and the media finally had to acknowledge the cruel treatment and abuse that children suffered at those schools. Native people of course knew this all along, and this reality is shown in feature films made by First Nations film directors Georgina Lightning and the late Jeff Barnaby (“Older Than America”, “Rhymes for Young Ghouls”). By the way, I just discovered your blog and will try to read more of what you write about un-erasing the true history of the indigenous peoples of the US. Warm greetings from Germany!