Osage Nation Museum Photo

Once, in 1920s, members of the Osage Nation rode high . . . and then they began being killed

Common threads beyond mere proximity bind Pawhuska and other Osage County communities with Nowata, another small-town governmental heart of an Oklahoma county by the same name. Those threads, strong and true, include:

• Oil (For years, it greased the economies of Nowata and Osage counties)
• Sports (The lifeblood of small towns with too little else for young and old to do)
• The Native American Nations—Osage for Pawhuska, Cherokee for Nowata

The uncommon thread might surprise. It does not seem a fit. That’s because it’s Hollywood. Tinsel town. The movies. Who could imagine rolling out the Red Carpet in the Land of Red Dirt and the Big Red Oklahoma Sooners without blushing. Unreal as it seems, it has happened before. In 2013 August: Osage County was shot in Pawhuska.

Earlier, in 1997, Hollywood came to Nowata. Compared to what is happening in Pawhuska now, it amounted to toe-dipping. One toe, a pinkie toe. Possums, the sweet football fable made in Nowata that year, was embarrassingly small budget, low profile, and going nowhere. Except, on its small scale it was well-received, even respected. It was the focus of a chapter—“When Football Imitates Reel Life”—in my book Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns: A Memoir Straight from a Broken Oklahoma Heart.

My book, like Possums itself, may be small time but has heart. The book that brought Hollywood to Pawhuskathis year, David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, is so far beyond the other end of the spectrum that it cannot be seen even standing atop today’s rejuvenated Pawhuska focal point—The Pioneer Woman’s Mercantile—looking into the distance toward the famous and impressive Drummond Ranch and the Osage Tallgrass Prairie, which has outlasted oil.

While my book contains its share of sadness and death—even murder—Grann’s reconstructs a great mystery from a time (the 1920s) when the people of the Osage Nation were the richest per capita in the world. It made them targets—something Native Americans had become used to as the White Man took their land and their lives—if in a different way than during the “Reign of Terror.” Before, our immigrant ancestors had invaded what became America and seized Native American land, but in the 1920s they wanted the riches deep in that land and the chauffeured cars and mansions it brought.

After the people of the Osage Nation began to die in inexplicable ways yet surely victims of greed that had become common, J. Edgar Hoover and the newly created FBI came to the rescue (with a lot of help, from Native Americans themselves). What they and then Grann found was a great conspiracy and the source for Grann’s book that Martin Scorsese has adapted and is in the process of filming, largely in Pawhuska. (The county seat is a cinematic stand-in for Fairfax, another Osage town to the southwest.)

To say this is big budget movie would be a vast understatement. Scorsese’s stars include Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and (thank goodness) Lily Gladstone, a Native American. Scorsese and crew are working with members of the Osage Nation. In a 2020 interview with The Oklahoman, the state’s largest newspaper, Grann praised the director for caring about “getting it right, about being sensitive, and being authentic.” These concerns no doubt are at the heart of Scorsese’s decision to film in Oklahoma.

When J. Max Burnett, Possums writer and director, sought a site to film his story about a high school football team so bad it could not score much less win, he turned to his native Oklahoma. Other small towns, including Idabel, one Burnett grew up in, may not have been interested in being associated with a losing team, and Nowata embraced Burnett and his colleagues and won them over with its appearance and the friendliness.

Whereas Pawhuska had a championship basketball reputation, Nowata had a history of good football—and a 1970 state championship—that overcame whatever reservations might have existed. The town and townsfolk were all in on Possums, and even the small budget production added needed dollars to an economy struggling post-oil. The film crew transformed—at least temporarily—local businesses for the movie. Now the same is happening in Pawhuska but on a grander scale. This comes on the heels of downtown Pawhuska revitalization launched by The Food Network’s Ree Drummond. In addition to her Mercantile, she has added the P-Town Pizza and the Pioneer Woman Boarding House, a boutique hotel for modern-day cowboys and cowgirls.

Even before filming began, the Killers of the Flower Moon crew had taken over stores along main drag Kihehaw Avenue and transformed them for the movie. They have turned The Honey Pot boutique into a 1920’s jewelry store. The mother-and-daughter co-owners Penney Johnson and Amber Hurd told Oklahoman reporter Brandy McDonnell that they will get enough money for the use of their store to have a 2½-month vacation. Curiosity-seekers already are turning up in Pawhuska to star gaze.

Both Nowata and Pawhuska have interesting and attractive historical museums, Nowata’s having moved in recent years into the former Landers Bros. Grocery building and Pawhuska’s, according Garrett Hartness, docent and director, having benefitted from the 2017 publication of Grann’s book and anticipating a profound effect from the movie’s released, particularly if it should turn out to be a blockbuster.

“It had gotten now,” Hartness told McDonnell, “to where [attendance is] probably 50 percent . . . because of the Pioneer Woman and probably 50 percent because of the movie or the book.” No offense to Hartness, I’m sure, but Kelly Bland, Osage County Tourism executive director, added that “from a tourism standpoint, I feel like if anyone benefits from this movie, I want it to be the Osage Nation.” Its people suffered. The Osage Nation Museum, also is located in Pawhuska (the photo above from its website).

Hollywood can knit together small towns, even if the thread is not spun from gold. Possums did not tell a true story but a sweet one and left a true mark of life in Nowata. The book Killers of the Flower Moon tells a terrible but true story and if the movie adheres to it, more of us who are not members of the Osage Nation may have gained respect for those who are and what they have endured. That is as good as gold.