2 An Act of God or Man?

An Act of God or Man?

In a ravine, a coro­ner’s inquest, reflect­ing a bygone era of cit­i­zen jus­tice, was con­vened to deter­mine whether Anna’s death was an act of God or the result of foul play. This assem­bly, led by a jus­tice of the peace and includ­ing jurors like Math­is, marked a con­tin­u­a­tion of a tra­di­tion that pre­dat­ed for­mal police struc­tures, born from a fear of state over­reach. Their task: to deci­pher the cause of Anna’s demise, and if mur­der was sus­pect­ed, to iden­ti­fy both the per­pe­tra­tors and their accom­plices.

The Shoun broth­ers, two doc­tors famil­iar with the fam­i­ly, under­took an autop­sy in an envi­ron­ment far removed from the ster­ile con­fines of a mod­ern morgue. As they metic­u­lous­ly exam­ined the body, they unlocked the silent tes­ti­monies that the deceased bore. The dis­cov­ery of a bul­let hole in Anna’s skull, invis­i­ble until her scalp was inad­ver­tent­ly moved, unequiv­o­cal­ly shift­ed the inquiry towards homi­cide. Math­is spec­u­lat­ed the bul­let to be .32-cal­iber, based on the entry wound’s dimen­sions.

The law enforce­ment fig­ures involved, Sher­iff Harve M. Freas among them, oper­at­ed in a land­scape where the line between law­man and out­law was blur­ri­ly drawn. Despite Freas’s rep­u­ta­tion as a feared law­man, sus­pi­cions about his asso­ci­a­tions with crim­i­nal ele­ments cloud­ed his lega­cy. This mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion, then, unfold­ed in an area where law and order wres­tled with the wilder­ness of the fron­tier.

The rudi­men­ta­ry foren­sic efforts, includ­ing a thor­ough but ulti­mate­ly fruit­less search for the bul­let, exposed the lim­i­ta­tions of the era’s inves­tiga­tive method­olo­gies. The dis­cov­ery of a moon­shine bot­tle near the crime scene sug­gest­ed a nar­ra­tive but yield­ed no con­clu­sive evi­dence.

Amidst this back­drop of inves­ti­ga­tion and spec­u­la­tion, the per­son­al tragedy for Anna’s fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly her moth­er Lizzie and sis­ter Mol­lie, was pro­found. The loss res­onat­ed through the com­mu­ni­ty, touch­ing on the spir­i­tu­al and the soci­etal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of such an untime­ly death. Mol­lie, sup­port­ed by her hus­band Ernest, faced not only the emo­tion­al toll but also the exor­bi­tant finan­cial cost of bur­ial cus­tom­ar­i­ly levied on the Osage.

The cer­e­mo­ni­al fusion of Osage and Catholic tra­di­tions dur­ing the funer­al under­scored a com­mu­ni­ty caught between worlds. Not only was the cer­e­mo­ny a farewell to Anna but also a poignant reflec­tion on the com­plex­i­ties and con­tra­dic­tions of life on the Osage reser­va­tion. The inscrip­tion “Meet Me in Heav­en” on Anna’s tomb­stone echoed a hope for a reunion beyond the grave, a tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing human spir­it amidst the omnipresent specter of mor­tal­i­ty and mal­ice.