The Murder of Elias Boudinot and the Ridges

I've previously written on this blog about the feud that developed in the early 1800s between the Treaty Party and the Anti-Treaty Party factions of the Cherokee Nation over the tribe's removal from its ancestral homelands in the southeast United States to what is now Oklahoma. One of the chapters in my book Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3Urovbn (scheduled for release on Monday) touches on the same subject. Specifically, the book chapter deals with the murders of Treaty Party leaders Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge, and his son John Ridge by members of the Anti-Treaty Party.

The murders, which took place in June of 1839, occurred in present-day Oklahoma, but they grew out of a feud that dated back several years to a time prior to removal of the Cherokees from the Southeast. When the federal government began pressing the Cherokees in the early 1800s to sign treaties ceding their lands in Georgia and other southeastern states in exchange for land west of the Mississippi, Boudinot and the Ridges were among the leaders who aligned with the Treaty Party, which favored removal. The Treaty Party was mainly composed of mixed-race Cherokees, who had intermarried with whites and largely adopted American and European culture. The much larger Anti-Treaty Party, led by tribal chief John Ross, was composed mainly of purebred Cherokees, who eschewed the ways of the white man and wanted to preserve tribal culture.

Even Boudinot and the Ridges had initially opposed removal. In fact, Major Ridge was among the tribal leaders who had adopted a resolution in 1829 calling for any member of the tribe who signed further treaties ceding Cherokee lands to be subject to the death penalty. However, he and other mixed-race members of the tribe had gradually come to see removal as the only practical step. 

Because they cooperated with the federal government, members of the Treaty Party received support and transportation when they removed to Oklahoma in 1837. The Anti-Treaty Party, on the other hand, had to be rounded up and removed forcibly in the fall of 1838, an infamous trek that came to be known as the "Trail of Tears." The ordeal the purebred Cherokees underwent during the trip further embittered them against Treaty Party members.

After the Anti-Treaty Party arrived in their new land, they, the Treaty Party, and the Old Settlers (i.e. Cherokees who had come west years earlier), met to try to reach a consensus government, but the meeting ended in impasse, as the Treaty Party insisted on retaining the government they had already established in the new land. 

After the meeting, held on June 21, 1839, broke up, some members of the Anti-Treaty Party met secretly and invoked the old "blood" law that Major Ridge himself had once espoused, calling for the deaths of Ridge, his son, and Elias Boudinot. A few of those present were appointed as executioners by drawing lots. 

The killings were carried out the next day. John Ridge was killed at his home on Honey Creek in the northeast part of Indian Territory near present-day Southwest City, Missouri. His father, who had left for Arkansas earlier on the 22nd, was overtaken along the road and killed near the state line. Meanwhile, a different party of executioners killed Elias Boudinot on the same day near his home at Park Hill, a Cherokee settlement in the Tahlequah area.

In the aftermath of the slaughter, John Ross was accused of authorizing it, but the best evidence seems to suggest that the killings were carried out in secret without the tribal chief’s knowledge. Stand Watie, who was Boudinot’s brother, and other Treaty Party members swore revenge, and federal troops were summoned from Fort Gibson to help keep the peace for a brief time. 

A tentative truce was fashioned, but the resentments left over from the feud between the Treaty Party and the Anti-Treaty Party continued for many years. During the Civil War, for instance, most former Treaty Party members sided with the Confederacy, while most Anti-Treaty Party members joined the Union forces, and both sides used the cover of war to discharge old grudges. Confederate general Stand Watie or troops under his command, for instance, are reported to have burned the John Ross home during the war.

The sketch above is a very condensed version of the events chronicled in my new book.

The Murder of Carl Steidle and the Hanging of the Hamiltons

Late Sunday night, March 30, 1884, the bloodied, mangled remains of a man were discovered lying across the tracks of the Missouri Pacific Railroad just east of the train depot in Warrensburg, Missouri. Although the man had been run over by a train, it was quickly ascertained that his death was no accident, as a bloody wrench with which the man had been bashed in the head and other incriminating evidence was found nearby.

The man was identified as Carl Steidle of Sedalia, and suspicion for his death quickly settled on Charles Hamilton, who had abruptly quit his job at a Warrensburg hotel earlier that same day and was now nowhere to be found. A couple of days later, however, the Johnson County sheriff located him in Sedalia in company with W. H. "Billy" Hamilton. Under questioning, both men confessed to participating in the murder, and the sheriff took them back to Warrensburg. where they testified before a coroner's jury.

The stories told by the two Hamiltons, who were not related, generally agreed, except that each tried to place most of the blame for the crime on the other. Billy Hamilton had made the acquaintance of Steidle at Sedalia, had come up with idea of robbing him, and had recruited his pal Charles Hamilton, whom he'd met when they were both prisoners in the Missouri State Penitentiary a year or two earlier, to help out in the crime. 

Billy talked Steidle into leaving Sedalia with him, supposedly on their way to California or Colorado. When they got near Warrensburg, Billy left Steidle near the train depot with instructions to stay put while he went into town on the evening of the 30th. He returned after a while with Charles Hamilton, his partner in crime. Charles hit Steidle over the head from behind with a metal wrench. Billy grabbed Steidle as he started to fall and choked him, then laid him across the railroad tracks to let the next passing train finish the job if he wasn't already dead.

At their respective trials in May of 1884, Charles claimed he didn't hit Steidle hard enough to kill him and that it was Billy who had killed the victim by choking him and placing him on the tracks. Billy, on the other hand, said the only reason he choked Steidle and placed him on the tracks was because Charles was brandishing a revolver and he was afraid Charles would kill him, too, if he didn't finish Steidle off. 

Both men were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to hang on July 11. On the fateful day, a crowd estimated at about 10,000 people gathered to witness the double execution. The killers dropped to their deaths simultaneously shortly before noon.   

 

The Murder of Jerry White

I lived in Houston (MO) for a year in the 1970s, and my mother's family was originally from the Houston area. I always thought of the place as quiet, law-abiding community, but I guess even a quiet community can occasionally be disrupted by violence. Such was the case for Houston in the wee hours of the morning of October 30, 1874.

On Thursday night, October 29, Jerry White, John Hubbard, and two or three other men were playing cards in an upstairs room above White's saloon in downtown Houston. Sometime after midnight, Hubbard left the game to go after liquor as Oliver Kirkman took his place at the card table. When Hubbard returned, he shared the liquor with the others but did not resume playing cards. Instead, he just watched. 

After a while a shot suddenly rang out without warning, and White cried out that he had been shot. Hubbard dashed downstairs proclaiming, "I have shot Jerry White." He ran to a horse that was hitched to the courthouse fence, cut the rope by which it was tied, and sprang into the saddle to make his getaway, proclaiming once again as he rode through town that he'd shot Jerry White.

The gunshot hit White in the chest, just above the left nipple, and ranged downward toward the spine. He lived just a few hours before dying, but he was fully conscious during this time. He made final preparations for the disposition of his property and arranged other details surrounding his impending death. He even said he forgave his assassin. 

It appeared there had been no quarrel between the two men, and nobody seemed able to assign a motive for the crime, except that Hubbard had been drinking heavily. A son of the local doctor, Hubbard was said to have had a good reputation and a mild disposition except when he was drinking. 

A large posse went out in pursuit of the fugitive but without success. Nothing more was heard from Hubbard until about a year later when he and two other "rough characters" showed in the Houston area, where they laid low for a while, until lawmen from Newton County came to the Houston area in search of them for allegedly having killed a man at Newtonia. The three fugitives left Houston headed south, and one of them was overtaken and captured on the Eleven Points River. 

The captured man said Hubbard had mostly been in Arkansas since the White murder, and he acknowledged the killing the three of them had committed in Newton County. He said they killed the man for his money but found only 25 cents on his person. 

Apparently, Hubbard was never captured, or at least I have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that he was. 

 

The "Lynching" of Henry Duncan

Probably the most prevalent reason why black men were lynched during the late 1800s and early 1900s in America was for supposedly molesting white women. And often it didn't take very much to be considered molestation. For a black man even to associate with a white woman was seen as a blatant threat to white, male authority. Take the example of Henry Duncan of Webb City (MO). 

On Saturday, August 20, 1904, Henry sent an unsigned note to Mrs. Minerva Owens, a forty-two-year-old widow, stating that he would come by the Owens place on Sunday evening and asking her to meet him at the back fence. The letter was not actually addressed to Mrs. Owens but to "the woman in the hammock who smiled and nodded" at him. He said that he had "an important message" for her. 

According to newspaper reports, Minerva was "greatly shocked and unnerved at the receipt of such an epistle," and she notified the Webb City police. Two officers were dispatched to lie in wait at the Owens residence on Sunday evening. When Duncan showed up, Mrs. Owens asked him whether he was the person who had sent the note, and, when he replied that he was, the officers sprang from their hiding places and took him into custody.

Charged with disturbing the peace and of "low offensive conduct and indecent utterances against Mrs. Owens," Duncan appeared in police court on Monday morning, August 22, and pleaded not guilty. His employer, H. W. Currey, put up his bond, and Duncan was released with the stipulation that he return for trial at 7 p.m. that evening.

However, Currey, who was a lawyer, assumed he'd be able to get the case continued until Tuesday morning and told Duncan that he need not appear on Monday evening. The judge had other ideas, though, and when the case was called at 7 p.m., he denied Currey's request for a continuance, partly because angry sentiment against the defendant had been building throughout the day in Webb City and a mob of about 100 men jammed the courtroom demanding "justice." An equal number were milling around outside.

Two officers, in company with Currey, were dispatched to the Currey residence to bring Duncan back to court. Some of the mob made threats of what might happen if Duncan wasn't brought back pronto. 

After a half hour or so had elapsed and the officers still had not returned with Duncan, some of the mob traipsed to the Currey residence and learned that Currey had convinced one of the officers to take Duncan to Joplin for safekeeping. 

The mob found the officer and Duncan at a nearby streetcar stop waiting for the next streetcar to take them to Joplin. The crowd started making threats that Duncan should be taken back to police court or else they would take the law into their own hands, and the officer decided that it would "be best to yield to the wish" of the mob and take the prisoner back to court rather than risk inciting them further. The officer managed to get Duncan back to the police station by holding the crowd at bay with a drawn handgun.

By the time they got back, however, the judge had tired of waiting and postponed the hearing until the next morning. The mob dispersed, but in the wee hours of August 22, a smaller, less boisterous but more determined crowd formed and took Duncan out of the unattended city jail. They whipped him severely with a bull whip and drove him out of town with orders not to come back. 

So, in titling this post "The 'Lynching' of Henry Duncan," I am using the word "lynch" in its strict meaning of any extralegal punishment, not in its popular sense of being hanged to death. 

 

 

Murder of A. L. Smith and Hanging of Dr. Harbin

On the Fourth of July 1888, a crowd of people gathered to celebrate the holiday at Potter's Grove on the banks of the Black River near Poplar Bluff (MO). Between eight and nine o'clock in the evening, a shot rang out a half mile or so from the picnic grounds, followed by a yell. Then a second and a third shot rang out. A few people suspected trouble, but most didn't think much about the incident, figuring it was just some boys shooting off fireworks. So, nobody bothered to investigate.

A couple of days later, however, a man's body was discovered lodged at the edge of the river in the area where the shots had come from. The dead person was identified as A. L. Smith, and an autopsy revealed that he had received at least two mortal gunshot wounds.  

One man was arrested and released after being cleared, but the investigation continued. About a month later, in August, a Dr. William Harbin was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Harbin had not lived in the Poplar Bluff area long, but he had already earned a reputation as a bad man. According to one report, "He claimed to be a doctor and succeeded in filling the minds of many ignorant people with whom he associated with the belief that he had some supernatural power." Apparently, Smith, who also had a less-than-spotless reputation around Poplar Bluff, had sold some land to Harbin, but Harbin had paid only part of the price, while Smith carried a note for the rest. Supposedly, an argument broke out between the two men when Smith demanded a payment on the land. 

Later facts revealed that the Harbin had been in the company of John Hinderlighter and his wife at the time of the crime. Hinderlighter "bore a fair reputation, but...his wife, it seems, did not deserve a good reputation." Shortly after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter's wife began visiting the accused man in the Butler County Jail. This seemed to irritate Hinderlighter, who made "some serious charges" against Harbin. However, neither Hinderlighter or his wife were willing to testify against the prisoner. About this same time, Harbin gave a confession, admitting he had killed Smith, but some people suspected that he was just trying to protect the Hinderlighter woman. A few weeks after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter and his wife disappeared, and the case against Harbin was continued.

Several months later, Hinderlighter was located and arrested in Arkansas, but his wife had died in the meantime. Hinderlighter was brought back to Missouri, where he gave a statement incriminating Harbin. By the time Harbin's trial finally rolled around in November of 1889, however, both Hinderlighter and Harbin had repudiated their previous statements. Many people felt Hinderlighter retracted his statement out of fear of Harbin. 

Even without the statements, there was still enough other evidence that had been uncovered to convict Harbin of first-degree murder. A couple of days later, the judge sentenced him to hang. The sentence was postponed pending an appeal to the state supreme court. After some delay, the high court upheld the verdict, and Harbin's date with death was reset for August 21, 1891. The governor granted three different stays in order to give himself more time to consider Harbin's case, but he finally announced in early January 1892 that he would interfere in the case no more. The execution date was then set for January 15.

On the fateful day, Harbin calmly smoked a cigar as he was led to the gallows. Still proclaiming his innocence, he was dropped through the trap at 11:27 a.m. and pronounced dead six minutes later.

The Murder of Belle Lucas and Hanging of Howard Underwood

When an African American named Howard Underwood killed one of his neighbors, a black woman named Belle Lucas, in Mississippi County, Missouri, in early August 1881, the crime was scarcely noted in the white press, but when he was hanged in Charleston twenty months later, the event was a spectacle that drew over 5,000 curious onlookers. The murder of a black person by another black person, it seems, was little cause for excitement, but the chance to see a man launched into eternity from the gallows was a festive occasion not to be missed.

On Saturday, August 6, the 48-year-old Underwood, a married man with five kids, was walking along the road with Belle, the 36-year-old wife of Ike Lucas, in the Lucas neighborhood near Belmont. When they drew near the Lucas home, Underwood turned and shot Belle in the head with a shotgun. According to the next week's issue of the Charleston Enterprise, Underwood then "beat her over the head until he broke the gun to pieces..., knocking her brains out." In its brief report of the crime, the Enterprise said it was unknown why the deed was committed. 

Underwood took off to parts unknown, and a reward of $150 for his capture was offered. Nothing was heard from the fugitive until almost a year later, when Underwood was taken into custody near Champaign, Illinois, in mid to late June 1882. A week or so later, the Mississippi County prosecutor traveled to Illinois and brought Underwood back to face a first-degree murder charge.

It was revealed at that time that Underwood had been "criminally intimate" with his neighbor's wife, who "preferred the caresses" of her paramour to those of her husband. Everything went along swimmingly for some considerable time, it seems, until an African American man named Phillips, who was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, arrived on the scene, and "Belle transferred her affections to the minister." Angry at having to play second fiddle to the preacher, Underwood lay in wait on the fateful day near the Lucas home for Belle and her new lover. When Belle appeared alone, he confronted her, demanding that she quit paying attention to the minister. When Belle refused to take Underwood's advice, he killed her in a fit of passion.

Tried at the August 1882 term of court in Mississippi County, Underwood was found guilty and sentenced to hang in late September 1882. The verdict was appealed, and the sentenced was stayed, pending the outcome of the appeal. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the verdict in late 1882 and reset the execution for December 29. However, the court granted Underwood a rehearing, and the sentence was again postponed. In early March 1883, the sentence was once again affirmed and the execution date set for April 6.

On the appointed day, an estimated 5,250 people flooded the streets of Charleston to witness the hanging. After walking up the stairs with a "firm step," Underwood made a short speech to the horde of spectators and then was joined in singing "Take the Name of Jesus with You," by two fellow prisoners, who'd been allowed to accompany him on his death walk. After the song, the condemned man's spiritual advisor offered a prayer, and then a hood was slipped over his head. The trap was sprung, and Underwood dropped through the trap at exactly one p.m.  

Crime on the Increase?

The record of crime in this country is without parallel. There is scarcely a newspaper from the most quiet retreats of the country to the most crowded and bustling thoroughfare of the city but is filled with sensational accounts of bloodshed and murder. No age, sex or condition are excepted. The bludgeon of the assassin falls alike on the innocent babe and the infirm octogenarian--the gentle and confiding maiden, wife or mother and the man of strong muscle and manhood.

...In Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, Cincinnati and almost every other city of the United States...assassins are on the warpath. The daily papers have each day reports of "Horrible Outrages," "Horrible Tragedies" and "Brutal Murders" until the heart sickens....

We are almost ready to believe that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are prepared to take human life. And whilst crime is so rampant in the land, its punishment is inadequate and uncertain. It is hard to convict a man with money and friends of the crime of murder, no matter how plain the proof. The courts furnish so many dodges such as emotional insanity, so that it is impossible to convict the most cold-blooded assassin.

No, the above opinion is not mine, and it's not even recent. It's from the Iron County (MO) Register in June of 1873. I've been saying for a long time that the rate of crime per capita is not that much worse nowadays than it was 100 or 150 years ago, and this editorial is just one more suggestion that I might be right. The one thing that is different I think, is that today's crimes sometimes involve multiple victims, whereas 100 years ago, it was rare for a killer to take the lives of more than one or two people at the same time.  

The immediate impetus for the Register's righteous indignation was an attempted murder that had recently happened in St. Louis. A man named Joseph Fore had tried to kill his wife, not out of rage or because he was drunk, but out of coldblooded, diabolical malice. 

It seems Fore had been acquitted of killing his brother-in-law a year earlier on the grounds of insanity. His wife stood by him during the trial, and, after his acquittal, she tried to reclaim him and their marriage. They moved to Kansas to start fresh, but Fore neglected his wife and spent most of his time in a saloon near their farm. Finally, she returned to St Louis, and he followed her. They met, and she told him she would go back to him and not carry through with the divorce she was seeking if he would promise to reform and give up intoxicating drinks. 

Instead, he took off for Mississippi, and Mrs. Fore took a job to support herself, since her husband would not. When he came back to St. Louis, he went to her place of employment, apparently angered by her independence, and struck her three times in the head with a hatchet. She fell to the ground insensible and bathed in blood. She was alive at the time of the Register's editorial, but her condition was critical. Fore was locked in the Four Corners Jail, where he was again "attempting the insanity dodge."