Title: The deaths of Sybil Bolton
Description: Dennis McAuliffe grew up believing that his Osage Indian grandmother, Sybil Bolton, had died an early death in 1925 from kidney disease. But sixty-six years later, he began investigating the circumstances surrounding her death and soon found himself peeling away the layers of a suppressed nightmare chapter of American history.

From the moment he discovers that the cause of Sybil's death was a gunshot wound, McAuliffe embarks on a journey that brings him face-to-face with the unspeakable brutality of the "Osage Reign of Terror." He learns that Sybil was the victim not of random violence but of a systematic killing spree in the 1920s, carried out by the white settlers of Oklahoma against the Osage Nation.

The Osages were not your typical Indians; in fact, they were the richest ethnic group in America at the time - they built mansions, rode in limousines, and sent their children to finishing schools in Europe and Ivy League universities. Their land sat atop one of the largest oil fields in North America, and the revenues from what one historian called their "underground reservation" provided each Osage Indian with an annual income equivalent to more than a million dollars today.

The white settlers wanted this money for themselves, even if they had to kill off the Osages to get it.

The Deaths of Sybil Bolton uncovers the true story behind Sybil's death and the full extent of the crimes committed against the Osages: how white lawyers appointed by Congress to protect the Osages systematically swindled the tribe; how a ring of prominent and envious whites poisoned or shot hundreds of Osages in order to seize their oil holdings - and then papered over the Reign of Terror with doctored death certificates; and how solving the mystery of his grandmother's death led McAuliffe to confront the mysteries of his own life.
Subjects: Murder, Petroleum industry and trade, Biography, Social conditions, Osage Indians, Government relations, New York Times reviewed
Places: Oklahoma, Pawhuska
People: Dennis McAuliffe (1949-), Sybil Bolton (d. 1925)