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.