Anna Kyle Brown

Osage
Ne-Kah-Wah-She-Tun-Kah Band

• Married 1st: Wah-tsa-tun-kah or Bigheart
• Married 2nd: John 'Moh-shon' Kenny of the Ne-Kah-Wah-She-Tun-Kah Band
• Married 3rd: Otis 'Oda' Brown
• Partner: James Moss. The F.B.I. files for the investigation into the Osage oil murders reveal Anna/Annie Kyle, one of those murdered, was pregnant at the time by Jim Moss and that they were planning on being married. The census shows that in 1920 Jim Moss was a lodger at the William K. Hale household, the mastermind of the murders. Jim Moss was not a suspect.
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/31845551/anna-brown
• Osage Indian victim during the Reign of Terror. Anna Brown as she is known in the book Killers of the Flower Moon, was murdered by Kelcie Morrison at age 36. Her body was found in a ravine by hunters three miles outside of Fairfax, OK. Her families story and murders is well documented in the book Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and also a movie in production by Martin Scorsese. She was also married to John Kenny, listed as his wife in the Ne-Kah-Wah-She-Tun-Kah Band in the 1908 census.
• United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7TB7-VFW2 : Wed Oct 04 18:51:53 UTC 2023), Entry for Wah-Hrah-Lum-Pah

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It was May 1921 when the decomposed body of Anna Brown—an Osage Native American—was found in a remote ravine in northern Oklahoma. The undertaker later discovered a bullet hole in the back of her head. Anna had no known enemies, and the case went unsolved.

That might have been the end of it, but, just two months later, Anna's mother Lizzie Q suspiciously died. Two years later, her cousin Henry Roan was shot to death. Then, in March 1923, Anna's sister and brother-in-law, Rita and Bill Smith, were killed when their home was bombed. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/osage-murders-case

[Anna] Brown’s body was found at the bottom of a ravine near Fairfax, Oklahoma, in 1921, with the cause of death ruled as “whiskey poisoning.” In truth she’d been murdered for her share of the hereditary mineral rights that had made her wealthy. Years later, a widespread investigation would reveal that Brown clearly died by gun violence and her cause of death was a cover-up.

Brown was one of many Osage people murdered for their money in 1920s Oklahoma. Accurate numbers of the victims are hard to come by, but Geoffrey Standing Bear, the Osage Nation’s current principal chief, estimates that at least 5% of the tribe were murdered, or roughly 150 people.

In 1923, the Osage Nation asked the Bureau of Investigation – the predecessor to the FBI – to look into a string of mysterious deaths. After a long investigation, the bureau uncovered a massive conspiracy masterminded by white men like William King Hale, Ernest Burkhart and other non-Osage members in the community of Fairfax, Oklahoma, particularly those in positions of authority. By 1929, Hale, Burkhart and some of their co-conspirators had been tried and sentenced to prison. https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/for-the-osage-nation-the-bet...

William K. Hale encouraged his subservient nephew Ernest Burkhart to marry Mollie Kyle, an allotted full-blood Osage. Her mother, Lizzie Q. Kyle, resided with Mollie and Ernest in Fairfax. At the time of Lizzie's death in July 1921 (poison was suspected), she possessed three full headrights in addition to her own, having inherited those of her deceased first husband and two daughters. Lizzie had recently lost another daughter, Anna Brown, who had been shot to death during the early hours of May 22, 1921. Henry Roan, Lizzie's nephew, met a similar fate in January 1923. (It should be noted that Hale was the beneficiary of Roan's $25,000 life insurance policy). And, on March 10, 1923, Lizzie's daughter Rita Smith, Rita's husband William E. "Bill" Smith, and their housekeeper Nettie Brookshire died when their Fairfax home was destroyed by an explosion. With Rita's death, Mollie and Ernest Burkhart inherited a fortune from her mother's and sisters' estates. Had there been no intervention, in all probability Mollie, already ill from poison, and Ernest would have soon died, with the manipulative Hale receiving the Kyle-Burkhart estate. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS005

Wi’-gi-e
BY ELISE PASCHEN
Anna Kyle Brown. Osage.
1896-1921. Fairfax, Oklahoma.

Because she died where the ravine falls into water.

Because they dragged her down to the creek.

In death, she wore her blue broadcloth skirt.

Though frost blanketed the grass she cooled her feet in the spring.

Because I turned the log with my foot.

Her slippers floated downstream into the dam.

Because, after the thaw, the hunters discovered her body.

Because she lived without our mother.

Because she had inherited head rights for oil beneath the land.

She was carrying his offspring.

The sheriff disguised her death as whiskey poisoning.

Because, when he carved her body up, he saw the bullet hole in her skull.

Because, when she was murdered, the leg clutchers bloomed.

But then froze under the weight of frost.

During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga Tze-the, the Killer of the Flowers Moon.

I will wade across the river of the blackfish, the otter, the beaver.

I will climb the bank where the willow never dies.

published in “Bestiary” (Red Hen Press, 2009)

Sources

• https://genealogytrails.com/oka/osage/cen_1921_indian_osage_pg1.html
• https://utulsa.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/44535
• http://files.usgwarchives.net/ok/nations/osage/land/osgroll1.txt
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Indian_murders
• https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/osage-murders-case
• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/this-osage-writer-remember...
• Grann, D., (2017) "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI." Doubleday, New York.