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.
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