The title comes from this observation:
In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma... In May,...taller plants...begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. That is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.
In the 1920s, the Osage Indian Nation had become rich because it had retained oil, gas, and mineral rights to its land in an agreement with the US government. Each member on the Osage tribal roll received a headright--as a share in the tribe's mineral trust. Control of these headrights and the wealth they represented was the motive for the murders.
I was shocked that Osage adults were required to have white guardians to approve all their expenditures if the Department of the Interior decided they were "incompetent." A determination of incompetence was usually based on how much Indian blood the individual possessed. The corrupt system provided the framework for the murder conspiracies.
This is a powerful book of a tragic story.
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