THE REIGN OF TERROR

Quiet Canines Podcast · Sep 5, 2026 · 2m

In the 1920s, the Osage Indigenous Nation in Oklahoma became the wealthiest people per capita in the world after oil was discovered on their land. Then, they began to die. Dozens of Osage citizens were mysteriously poisoned, shot, or bombed in a coordinated plot to steal their oil rights, a period known as the Reign of Terror. Local authorities were bought off, and the early investigators failed. It was out of this crisis that the modern FBI was born.

At the time, the agency was called the Bureau of Investigation, a small, weak department plagued by corruption and patronage. In 1924, J. Edgar…