David Grann explains the reasoning behind the title in the opening of his book, and Scorsese’s film has it narrated by Mollie Kyle. Every April, millions of tiny flowers like Johnny-jump-ups, sprint beauties, and bluets blossom over the Osage land. In May, the same time of the year when coyotes (the nickname Mollie gives Ernest) howl beneath a large moon, taller plants like spiderworts and black-eyed Susans begin to grow. These plants overtake the smaller blooms, stealing their sunshine and rainwater. The small flowers try to reach for resources, but their necks break, their petals fall, and they are buried beneath the taller plants. The Osage refers to this time period as “the time of the flower-killing moon.”
The story of the taller plants coming in and stealing the resources of the spring flowers, thus causing their deaths, is a metaphor for the way the powerful white men came in and brutally killed the Osage people for their own gains. The Osage had been dying mysteriously for a decade, but the start of William Hale’s Reign of Terror, as it is now called, is landmarked with the murder of Mollie’s sister Anna Brown, which took place in 1921. Osage poet, Elise Paschen, wrote about Anna’s murder through the eyes of Mollie in the 2009 poem “Wi’-gi-e,” which ends on a reference to the “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The title is a beautiful albeit tragic reference to the real-life events that took place as described by the descendants of the community harmed. The white people who invaded the Osage killed them for their own selfish desires. They were no better than the flowers that continually overtake the vibrant blooms.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is now playing in theaters.
