Bob Rogers: A Desperate Outlaw and a Reckless Villain

Another chapter in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/48W8aRZ, is about Rob Rogers and his gang. Rogers is not as well-known nowadays as several other desperadoes who infested the Indian Nation in the latter part of the 19th century, such as Henry Starr, but Rogers was quite infamous in his own time.  

Born about 1873 in Arkansas, Bob, who was part Cherokee, moved to the Nowata area of Indian Territory with his father, Frank, and two younger brothers when he was still a boy. Some sources say Bob first became involved in criminal activity when he was scarcely 18, but details about these early incidents are scant.

Rogers’s first criminal exploit that can be well documented occurred on November 3, 1892, when he killed forty-year-old Jess Elliott, a lawyer from Vinita. On the fateful day, both men had been drinking when they got into an argument at a billiard parlor in Catoosa, and Rogers, going by the name Bob Talton, knocked the older man down and started beating him. Bystanders separated the combatants and put Rogers out of the parlor. Rogers waited outside, however, and when Elliott finally emerged, Rogers knocked him off his horse and slashed his throat with a knife. Elliott died before medical help could arrive.

Eight months later, the Bob Rogers gang, which now included his younger brothers, robbed the Frisco depot at Chelsea (Oklahoma) of $418 on the evening of June 30, 1889. 

About noon on July 13, Rogers and two partners in crime robbed the Mound Valley (Kansas) Bank, making off with about $800. 

On Friday evening, October 20, two men entered the depot of the D. M. & A. Railroad at Edna, Kansas, and forced the agent at the point of a revolver to open the safe. Recognized as Bob Rogers and Dick Brown of “the Wooten-Rogers gang of outlaws,” they made off with about $50. 

An outlaw gang tried to hold up a Missouri, Kansas and Texas train at the Kelso switch about six miles northeast of Vinita on December 22, 1893. The robbery attempt failed, but the escapade was later credited to the Rogers gang.

Bob Rogers and his crew struck again two nights later, Christmas Eve, when they held up an Iron Mountain Railroad train at Seminole in Indian Territory about five miles south of Coffeyville, Kansas. The gang cleaned out the mail and express cars and also went through the passenger cars "securing valuables of every description."

On the early morning of January 23, 1894, US deputy marshals surprised the Rogers gang at the home of Frank Rogers on Big Creek between Vinita and Nowata. Bob Rogers and another gang member were captured, while two members of the gang were either killed outright or mortally wounded. 

One newspaper opined that this episode would mark the end of Bob Rogers's criminal career, but Rogers wasn't ready to hang up his holster. Released on bond, he came back home and soon started organizing another gang. By very early March 1895, the new Rogers gang had already committed “several small depredations” in the area of Nowata, and just a day or two after this report circulated, the Rogers gang held up a store at Angola, Kansas. 

Rogers’s new notoriety didn’t last long. On Friday evening, March 15, a posse led by US. marshal James Mayes trapped Rogers at his father's home. Rogers killed one of the posse members before the lawmen retreated and called on Rogers to come out and surrender or else they would burn the house down. Rogers agreed to give up and was allowed to carry his gun out with him as long as kept it pointed down. When he got out onto the front porch and was ordered to drop the weapon and throw up his hand, he instead raised it and began backing toward the house. He got off just a single shot before he was riddled with bullets by the posse. 

Celebrating Rogers's demise, one newspaper said that his death would "rid the country of a desperate outlaw and reckless villain.”

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Bob Rogers gang's activities.

 

Ned Christie, Hero or Villain?

Another chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/40Azy65, chronicles the escapades of Ned Christie, a Cherokee Indian who waged a personal war against Federal authorities during the late 1800s. Much like Zeke Proctor, whom I wrote about last week, Christie was viewed in a completely different light by much of the Cherokee Nation from how he was characterized in the American press. To newspapermen, Christie was a notorious desperado who’d killed a deputy US marshal from ambush, but to many Cherokees, he was wrongly accused of murder by a repressive federal government and his resistance to arrest was nothing short of heroic.

A well-respected member of the Cherokee tribe, Christie first ran into trouble when he killed a man with whom he was hunting after the man supposedly called him an S.O.B. Charged with manslaughter and tried in a Cherokee court, Christie was acquitted in 1885 and went on to serve on the tribe's Executive Council.

Around the first of May 1887, US deputy marshal Daniel Maples was killed at Tahlequah while Christie was there for a tribal meeting, and he and three other men were eventually charged with the crime, partly because they were known to oppose federal authority in Indian Territory. The other three men were arrested, and one of them accused Christie of being the trigger man in the shooting of Maples. Christie said he was innocent and was willing to be tried in a Cherokee court, but he refused to surrender to federal authorities.

Thus began a years-long "war" between Christie and his allies on one side and deputy marshals on the other, as Christie, from his so-called fort east of Tahlequah, defied attempt after attempt to arrest him. After numerous futile attempts to kill or capture Christie, deputy marshals finally surrounded his home/fort in early November 1892 and killed him during a day-long siege and a furious exchange of gunfire.

Christie’s body was taken to Fort Smith for identification and then released to his father for burial in the family cemetery at Wauhillau, Oklahoma. Since his death, Christie has often been sensationally depicted in books and articles as a violent, bloodthirsty desperado. On the other hand, at least one story emerged in the early 1900s purporting to exonerate Christie completely of the Maples murder, the crime that catapulted him into outlawry, and many Cherokees today honor him as a hero for standing against US government encroachment on tribal properties and rights.

This is just a brief summary of the chapter about Christie in my new book. Check out the book for a much more extensive version of Christie's story.

Goingsnake Gunfight

Like the Boudinot and Ridge murders I wrote about last week, the Goingsnake gunfight that left eleven people dead near Christie, Oklahoma, in April of 1872, is something I've previously written about on this blog. However, since one of the chapters in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ, is devoted to the gunfight, I'm going to summarize the event again. 

Exactly what happened is a matter of dispute to this day, because the two sides involved in the gunfight, Cherokee tribal members and the US Marshals Service, told markedly different stories. What we know for sure is that Ezekial "Zeke" Proctor, a member of the Cherokee tribe, was scheduled for trial in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation on April 15 on a charge of having killed Polly Beck two months earlier.

Polly, who was married to a white man named Kesterson, was also a member of the Cherokee tribe, but a combination of family and tribal resentments had cast her and Proctor on opposite sides. Polly's family had sided with the Treaty Party (see last week's post) over thirty years earlier when the tribal members were removed from their homelands in the Southeast to present-day Oklahoma, whereas Proctor's family had sided with the Anti-Treaty Party. Also, Kesterson had previously been married to Proctor's sister, and Proctor reportedly blamed him for the breakup of the marriage.  

Most important, perhaps, was a jurisdictional dispute between Proctor and his allies on one side and Polly's family and friends on the other. After Proctor killed Polly and wounded Kesterson, Kesterson had journeyed to Fort Smith to enlist U.S. authorities in the matter, while Proctor and his allies felt strongly that the matter should be left to Cherokee tribal authority. The US Marshals Service now claimed jurisdiction in the assault on Kesterson, but the Cherokee Nation considered Kesterson an adopted citizen and resented any interference in the matter by the US government.

On the day of Proctor's trial for the murder of Polly Beck, a party of deputy marshals, along with some of Polly's kinsmen, showed up with the avowed intention of arresting Proctor on the assault charge, should he be acquitted on the murder charge. As I say, exactly what happened next is a matter of dispute, but a gunfight broke out almost immediately, and when the shooting ceased, nine men lay dead, two mortally wounded, and several others suffering wounds of varying severity. Most of the fatalities (seven or eight) were deputy marshals. 

Even what to call this incident has been a matter of disagreement over the years. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, reports from the deputy marshals called it a massacre, and the white press adopted that terminology. So, for many years, the incident was known in popular culture as the Goingsnake Massacre. More recently, the term Goingsnake Tragedy has been suggested as a more objective term. 

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Goingsnake Tragedy. https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ

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.