Who was Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon?
The story of Mollie Burkhart and her family is at the centre of a new Martin Scorsese epic, based on David Grann's 2017 nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon. We delve more into the history of the real Mollie…
Mollie Burkhart (played by Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon) was born on 1 December 1886, into the Osage Nation, whose lands were by then located in today’s northeast Oklahoma.
In the early 1920s, Osage began to be mysteriously murdered, one by one, for their oil money. Several of the victims were from Mollie Burkhart’s family.
David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book, Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI, tells the story of the Osage murders, the sinister events, and their long-lasting impact on Mollie’s family.
“It was unquestionably one of the more sinister crimes in American history, one of the worst racial injustices in American history,” said Grann on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast.
The real history behind Killers of the Flower Moon: author explains true story of Osage Nation
The real Mollie Burkhart
Her parents gave her the Osage name Wah-kon-tah-he-um-pah, and she grew up within a tribe that, in the late 19th-century, was changing – merging Osage customs and rituals with the Christian religion and values both encouraged and enforced through dealings with white settler communities.
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She later assumed the name ‘Mollie’ after white settlers trading with her father called her and her sisters by different names; the other young women adopted the names Anna, Rita and Minnie.
Mollie attended a Catholic school growing up, learning English alongside domestic tasks encouraged by white society such as laundering and housekeeping. Her education would influence her greatly, she later become a devout Christian.
The Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas in the 1870s, before Mollie’s birth, to a rocky tract of land presumed worthless. In 1897, vast oil deposits were discovered below Osage land. Having retained the rights to any underground assets, over the following decades as prospectors surged to the fields in search of ‘black gold’, the Osage became some of the wealthiest people in America.
Mollie and her sisters were included on the Osage roll, meaning that they were granted a ‘headright’, a share of all the wealth to come. These rights could not be bought or sold; only inherited.
Mollie Burkhart’s relationship with Ernest Burkhart
In 1917, she married Ernest Burkhart (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a white man who had grown up the son of a poor cotton farmer. He had moved to the Osage hills to be close to his uncle, William K Hale (played by Robert de Niro), and met Mollie when he worked as a livery driver, chauffeuring her around town.
In 1921, Mollie was at the centre of a conspiracy to steal her headright, as members of her family were murdered in order to funnel oil riches towards her. Mollie suffered greatly as her family members were picked off in a string of gruesome, mysterious murders.
She used some of her own fortune to fund private detectives and offered reward money, but in the corrupt system of power, she was unable to make any breakthrough.
In 1925, the case was finally taken up by the Bureau of Investigation, as a lawman named Tom White arrived in Oklahoma to take up the case.
*Warning: spoilers for Killers of the Flower Moon ahead*
What happened to the real Mollie Burkhart?
She divorced Ernest following his trial and conviction for his involvement in the murders, and Grann writes that “whenever her husband’s name was mentioned, she recoiled in horror”.
Her story embodies a transitional period in the history of the United States, explains Grann.
“She grew up in a wigwam, which is essentially a lodge. And when she was young, she spoke only Osage, and she wore a traditional blanket. And within 30 years, she's living in a mansion with a white husband, with chauffeurs and speaking English.
“And so even in her own life, she represents the straddling not only of two centuries, but in Molly's case, the straddling of two civilisations.”
After her divorce she remarried, to a man named John Cobb and, thanks to a 1931 ruling that decreed she was no longer a 'ward of the state', her guardian was removed. From the age of 44 she was finally able to control her own fortune.
Molly Burkhart died in 1937, aged 50, in unsuspicious circumstances.
David Grann was speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI is out now, published by Simon and Schuster
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