| Summary: | The FBI's Osage Indian Murders files contain stores of data about life and attitudes of Osage Indians and their neighbors during the 1920s. The impact of oil wealth on northeastern Oklahoma is clearly documented. Of equal interest is the operation of state and federal law enforcement agencies in an era when, many assume, gangsters and bootleggers in major cities were society's sole villians. It is also evident from Osage Indian Murders files that the FBI at levels - especially including the young director, J. Edgar Hoover - actuely sensed heinous injustice and were determined to persevere in what became a most difficult task of investigation and prosecution. Sandbagged in a host of brazen but ingenious ways, the FBI nonetheless persisted, fought, and defeated charges of improper procedure and broke the congenial bonds of frontier silence to win convictions.
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