Mean Spirit

Belle Graycloud is an Osage woman who lives with her family in Watona. Although she lives in town, she shares with the members of the Hill Community a deep respect for and connection to Osage traditions. When she is first introduced, she is immediately grounded within her cultural identity: She is wearing a sacred meteorite necklace and has a book by a traditional healer. Belle herself has visions of sorts, and even her “hunches” are often prophetic. Although several Osage embrace white culture and society in Watona, Belle prefers tradition. The pain and anger that she feels when she sees white hunters killing eagles speaks to the importance of Osage culture to Belle: Eagles are sacred and it is strictly forbidden to kill them. That she is willing to threaten hunters of not only eagles but also of bats (which are also sacred to the Osage people) reflects how important Indigenous culture is to Belle, and she serves as an important bridge between the customs of the Hill Community and the “urban” Osage people living in Watona.

Family is also important to Belle. She takes in Grace and then Nola Blanket, and lives with an extended network of family members including her husband, daughter, and granddaughter. Although she fiercely loves each and every member of her family, she is critical of Louise’s alcohol misuse and partying, and she feels an affinity toward Nola because the girl is, like Belle herself, deeply connected to Indigenous culture. She is also close to Michael Horse, another Osage person who also has the gift of prophecy.

Belle is both matriarch to her large family and a pillar of the community, and her character speaks to the importance of community within the narrative. She also embodies the pervasive, far-reaching damage done to the Osage people in and around Watona during the oil boom, for her life is touched in so many ways by the violence. She loses Grace, but also Sara. She is jailed when she threatens the men who killed the sacred eagles. She has to allow Nola to attend the assimilationist school in Watona or risk losing her to a worse boarding school further away, and then watch as both Nola and Lettie are courted by white men who very well might intend to kill them. John Hale bends the terms of his land lease to steal more and more of her pastures for his herd, and when she finds oil on her own land she tries to keep its presence a secret because she has learned that oil does more harm than good. That her house is ultimately blown up even after some of the murderers are jailed is evidence that the Osage people are not safe on their own land. Belle is under constant assault from the white people who seek to harm the Osage people, and her character thus represents how difficult it is for the Osage people to escape the violence.

Michael Horse is an Osage man and is one of the last in the area to still make his home in a traditional teepee. Like Belle, he is an elder and a pillar of the community. He is a firekeeper and has kept a sacred fire burning throughout his entire adult life, albeit with occasional help from members of his community. Also like Belle, he is a traditionalist with the gift of prophetic visions. For many years he has been recording the events and experiences of his Osage community in journals, and he is one of the men who writes to the US government to request investigative help.

Michael Horse has retained a deep connection to traditional Osage beliefs, values, and practices, even as the oil boom has brought the community into closer and closer contact with the white world. In addition to his duties as firekeeper, he collects medicinal plants and maintains a relationship with the Hill Community. He lives harmoniously with nature and is attuned to the way that the oil boom harms not only the Osage people but also their sacred land. Toward the end of the novel, Michael Horse moves to the Hill Community, choosing to fully reject modernity, oil money, and the white culture of Watona.

Michael Horse is also characterized by his commitment to his community. He has many close friends and acquaintances among the Osage people in both Watona and the Hill Community, and he is often shown helping others or being helped by them. He embodies the spirit of community that runs through the narrative, and it is in part through his help that characters like Moses and Stace Red Hawk are able to understand and investigate the murders. Michael is a keen thinker and problem solver, and he is able to see and identify patterns in the violence and the seemingly mysterious killings. Michael puts many of the pieces of the mystery together, and comes to conclusions that are later proven in court. Because he is further along in his assessment of the connections between the murders than other characters, Michael Horse is deeply affected by them, and acutely feels both the danger that his community is in and a sense of anger that local white people harm the Osage people with such impunity.

Like Belle, he embodies the far-reaching consequences of the oil boom for the Osage people. At the end of the novel, he is appointed a guardian, and the legal fees that he must pay the man entirely eat up the profits he has from his own holdings. He loses his car and other belongings, and this injustice is part of what motivates him to leave Watona for the Hill Community. Although Michael is an important community member, has a keen intellect, and shows himself to be more than capable of managing his own affairs, the state deems him incompetent. His fate illustrates the discriminatory nature of the US government’s treatment of Indigenous communities.

Stace Red Hawk is a Lakota man who works in Washington, DC, for the US Bureau of Investigation. Nothing is done about the murders in Osage country until Stace begins his investigation, and he consistently shows himself to be an ally to the Osage people. Stace is one of the few government officials to believe the Osage people are being targeted for their money and oil rights, and it is through his work in and around Watona that John Hale is brought to trial.

Stace is a spiritual man with deep ties to his Lakota heritage. He believes strongly in the importance of ceremony, and often gives offerings of tobacco. Although he is Lakota rather than Osage, he feels a kinship with the Osage community because of their shared Indigenous identity. In this way, Stace also speaks to the importance of community within the narrative because his conception of community, writ large, includes all the Indigenous groups living on the land that has come to be known as the United States of America.

Because of his identity as a Lakota man, he experiences discrimination at work, specifically from his supervisor, Agent Ballard. Ballard assumes that Stace only wants to investigate the Osage murders because he himself is Indigenous, and Ballard perceives this to be a kind of limiting bias rather than a commitment to truth and justice in marginalized communities. Because Stace is no stranger to such discrimination, he treats the Osage people with special care, and in doing so he earns their trust. By the time he arrives in Watona, it is a generally held belief that various members of law enforcement, business, and the government are conspiring to murder the Osage people, and no one is sure who can be trusted. Stace listens carefully and respectfully to community members, and because of that he is able to ascertain John Hale’s guilt.

Although he lives in both white and Indigenous worlds, Stace ultimately rejects the corruption of white society in favor of Indigenous community. He, like Michael Horse and Benoit, grows increasingly committed to Osage causes, and eventually quits his job in Washington. He finds a greater sense of self among Indigenous than white people, and in this way embodies the theme of Modernity and White Culture Versus Traditional Indigenous Practices. By the end of the novel he has resolved to remain in Osage country and the Graycloud family, and his former Bureau partner leaves Watona without him.

John Hale is one of the novel’s few white characters and its primary antagonist. Hale, because he is behind the murder of Grace Blanket and so many other Osage men and women, emerges as the most in-depth representation of both The Exploitation of Indigenous People, Land, and Resources and Greed, Corruption, and Anti-Indigenous Racism. He is a tall, lanky oilman who is almost stereotypically “western” in both mannerisms and dress. He is usually depicted wearing a large Stetson hat, and he was a rancher prior to the oil boom.

John Hale, modeled after the real-life William Hale, one of the few men ever convicted in the Osage murders, is inseparable from oil, racism, and greed. Hale grew up among the Osage people, but that familiarity did not produce appreciation or respect. Hale is steeped in anti-Indigenous racism, which he uses to justify a variety of unethical acts. He stretches the bounds of legality by increasing, bit by bit, the amount of grazing land that he uses on Belle’s property and colludes with a variety of other men intent on stealing from the Osage people, illustrating how little concern has for the wellbeing of the Osage community.

The greed that initially drives him to engage in small acts of fraud and theft is shown to be much more nefarious through the murder of Grace Blanket. This murder is ultimately revealed to be part of a wider plot to gain control of her land and its oil rights, but he initially helps to spread the rumor that Grace died by suicide. He is responsible for staging the murder to look like a “drunken” suicide, and in doing so he plays into some truly vile stereotypes about the Indigenous community. Hale’s evil intentions toward the Osage people do not stop with the murder of Grace Blanket, for it is ultimately revealed that he had been paying various members of the Osage community to let him take out life insurance policies on them. When these men begin to turn up dead, a new fear takes hold in the community, although this brazen murder plot also garners the attention of Stace Red Hawk and leads to Hale’s trial and imprisonment.

Hale is shown to be entirely unrepentant, arrogant even. During his first trial, those in the courtroom cannot help be struck by how little remorse his calm attitude shows. He is responsible for countless deaths and feels no guilt or shame, nor does he seem to be worried about accountability. Although Hale is ultimately brought to justice, he is one of the only men held accountable for the murders, and after his imprisonment, the terrorism does not stop. Although Hale is just one piece in a much larger network of corruption and murder, his character embodies the dangers of racism.

Benoit is an Osage man. He is a horse trader and is a valued community member. Although he is married to Sara, it is a marriage of convenience and the entire community, including Sara, understands that he is really Lettie’s partner. Benoit is framed for the murder of Sara and Grace. The authorities stage a fire at his home that kills Grace, and although there are witnesses who can testify that he was elsewhere, he is imprisoned.

Benoit, like many other characters, represents the deep familial and community ties among the Osage people. He is close with the entire Graycloud family, and is often in the company of Belle or Moses. He is also a loving partner to Lettie, and after he is jailed on suspicion of murder, the two marry. The way that he is seen by the white people in Watona is markedly different from how he is seen by his fellow Osage men and women, and his character becomes another example of the way that racism and prejudice cloud judgment: Benoit is a kind, decent man, and he does not deserve his mistreatment at the hands of white community members and law enforcement officials.

That Benoit is presumed to have been killed by his jailers further speaks to the theme of Greed, Corruption, and Anti-Indigenous Racism. He becomes yet another Osage person to be killed by racist violence, and because of widespread corruption, the truth about his death is suppressed and justice is never done.