Everything You Need to Know Before Watching ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

​How rich were the Osage?

​Very. The Osage Roll was a register that denoted every member of the tribe entitled to leases and royalties from the sale of the oil beneath tribal lands. These entitlements were known as “headrights.” The tribal roll, a census of those individuals and families with Osage blood, had 2,229 members when Oklahoma became a state in 1907. What began as a trickle of quarterly royalty payments in the early 20th century grew to be valued, in 1923, at $30 million. Adjusted for inflation, that annual amount was $400 million.

​Where is Osage County?

​The largest county in the state of Oklahoma at 2,304 square miles, Osage County is roughly the size of the state of Delaware. Established in 1907 when Oklahoma was declared a state, the county roughly follows the outline of the reservation lands of the original Osage Nation. Pawhuska is the county seat, now notable for being the site of celebrity chef Ree Drummond’s the Pioneer Woman Mercantile bakery, restaurant and general store just down the street from the Ben Johnson Cowboy Museum. Ree married into the fourth generation of the Drummond family, currently the largest landowners in Osage County and whose ancestors served as financial guardians during the Reign of Terror.

(Left to right) Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone star as Ernest and Mollie Burkhart.

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Who was Mollie Burkhart?

​Mollie Burkhart is the film’s diabetic heroine, played by Lily Gladstone. (The 37-year-old American actress grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation.) Like Mollie’s parents and three sisters, the full-blooded child, born in 1886 and known as the Marked Woman, was inscribed on the Osage Roll and entitled to its bounty. However, this wealth did not protect her family from government intervention.

At age 7, Burkhart was plucked from her parents and sisters and sent to a distant Catholic school for reservation children where she was discouraged from wearing native clothing and learned English. Once grown, she owned her own home and had luxury motorcars and servants — but was still beholden to a white financial guardian who controlled her money. Burkhart married four times. Her second husband, Ernest Burkhart, was the father of her three children. They divorced during his murder trial and she died in 1937.

​Who was Ernest Burkhart?

​The native Texan moved to Oklahoma with few marketable skills and sought work under the patronage of his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro, 80), a local notable considered a friend to the Osage. Burkhart was two decades younger than DiCaprio when he worked as an occasional chauffeur for Mollie Kyle, and seduced her. Contemporary sources describe him as a tall, wiry, attractive blue-eyed charmer with a singular defect: a nose flattened by too many brawls.

While Burkhart introduced his wife to life-giving insulin for her diabetes, he is also suspected of slowly poisoning her to gain access to her wealth. He was also implicated in the deaths of two of her sisters, Anna and Rita. Burkhart was a central actor in the plot to steal the Osage oil rights by a conspiracy of lethal violence masterminded by his Uncle Bill. Sentenced to life in prison in 1926, Burkhart was paroled in 1947 and pardoned by Oklahoma Gov. Henry Bellmon in 1965. He lived until 1986.

(Left to right) Robert De Niro as William Hale and Jesse Plemons as FBI agent Tom White.

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​Was there a connection to the Tulsa Race Massacre?

​The race massacre in nearby Tulsa occurred contemporaneously in 1921. But that historical tragedy involving the murder of prosperous Black citizens and the razing of their town was largely, in today’s parlance, a hate crime. In the case of the Osage, ingrained prejudice against Native Americans was a part of the conspiracy, but that old devil greed was the driving force in the conspiracy concocted by rancher William “Uncle Bill” Hale to fleece his prosperous neighbors.

​Is the Osage Nation still wealthy?

​Over the years, the tribe’s wealth has fluctuated with the value of oil. The Osage are no longer the wealthiest people per capita in the world. That honor of the highest average wealth per person goes to the Swiss, who possess approximately $685,000 per person. In Oklahoma, the dilution of the original headrights, the first tribal members entitled to royalties in the Osage Roll, occurred over generations through intermarriage and skulduggery, but many still receive quarterly checks.

​Did the government act to prevent another ‘Reign of Terror’ on the Osage?

​In 1925, the government ratified a law that prohibited non-Osages from inheriting headrights, insisting the rights to oil leases and royalties remain with individuals who could prove they were at least half-blood members of the Osage Nation.