THE CHEROKEE COURTHOUSE SHOOTOUT

4/15/1872 - Murder, murder, and more murder at an actual murder trial!  Not yet the state of Oklahoma, in a crowded log schoolhouse near the town of Whitmire that is deemed more secure than the Cherokee Nation's jurisdictional Going Snake District Courthouse (named for a respected warrior and Cherokee leader named Inadunai, which roughly translated means "a snake goes with him," which in turn became Going Snake ... sometimes two words, sometimes only one), the trial of Ezekiel "Zeke" Proctor for the February killing of Mary "Polly" Beck Hildebrand Kesterson begins, but then suddenly comes to a screeching halt when partisans for the Proctor family and the Beck family, along with United States Deputy Marshals, slap leather on each other in a gun battle that kills eleven individuals, wounds an additional eleven people, and will come to be known to historians of Indian Territory madness as The Goingsnake Massacre.

Zeke Proctor

A strange and tragic mess of personal relationships, politics, and contradictions, Zeke Proctor, the individual at the core of the gun battle is born in Georgia on the birthday of United States independence, July 4, 1831, to a white man named William Proctor, and a mixed blood Cherokee woman named Dicey Downing.  At the tender age of only seven he marches from Georgia to the Indian Territory with his parents and siblings on what will be called "The Trail of Tears" (the diaspora in which the United States government forces the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations out of their ancestral homelands in the south, during which, the Cherokee tribe will move over 1,000 miles and have over 4,000 of it's members perish).  Home for Proctor becomes the Going Snake District of the Indian Territory (now Adair County, Oklahoma) and there he grows into a husky man, 5'7" in height with straight black hair that hangs below his shoulders.  He favors wearing a broad-brimmed black hat and a buckskin vest of fancy beads and he is said to be able to stare a hole through people who have crossed, but also be capable of breaking out in a smile that is bright enough to warm his friends' hearts.  Superstitious, he splits a chunk of firewood when thunderstorms threaten to divide thunder from lightning and create a safe passage for himself through storms, and for good luck he leaves milk for the fairies outside his barn every night.  A ladies man, in his life he will father seven children, two outside of his marriage to Rebecca Mitchell, and marries two more times after Michell dies.     

Proctor

Proctor is also a member of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society of the Cherokee ... a group that believes in preserving the old ways of the Cherokee from the large numbers of white men beginning to encroach on Indian lands, stands for the separateness and sovereignty of the Cherokee people, believe that they should control their own affairs and lands, and vehemently object to Cherokees being tried in white courts.  And he can be an extremely violent man ... as a teenager and adult he wears two pistols at all times and carries either a Spencer six-shot rifle or a shotgun.  Family lore has him killing over 20 people, a dubious number, but he does confess to sending at least a couple to the great beyond, along with an unknown number of Confederates during the Civil War when he fights on the side of the Union during the conflict.

Proctor

Providing the pulchritude to the story is Mary "Polly" Beck Hildebrand Kesterson,  Born in Georgia in 1820 to a white father, Jeffrey Beck III, and a Cherokee mother, Susannah Buffington, Polly as she likes to be called also makes the long trek to the Indian Territory as a teenager and like Proctor, is also a member of a prominent Cherokee family.  Before the Civil War the Proctor and Beck families are actually close, but the war changes that as the Becks support the Confederacy, and also do not have the problems with whites that the Proctors do.  A comely lass of mixed blood, Polly marries Cherokee widower Stephen Hildebrand of Tennessee around 1852 (there are also tales of two previous weddings for which there are no records) and the pair run a flour and wood saw mill known as the Hildebrand Mill on Flint Creek in the Indian Territory, near the town of Siloam Springs, Arkansas (built in 1845, the mill will serve the Cherokee people for over 125 years and is on National Register of Historic Places).  Trouble comes when Hildebrand passes away and white mill worker Jim Kesterson becomes Polly's lover and then husband ... a lover and husband who abandons his two children (there are of course rumors that someone else is their actual father) and previous wife Susan Proctor, the sister of Zeke Proctor.    

Mary "Polly" Beck

Whether Proctor is seeking restitution for his sister's miseries, is upset with a Cherokee woman taking up with a white man, is interested in Polly himself, has a beef with Kesterson/Beck farm animals wandering on to other people's property, is investigating the fate of a missing cow, or has a grudge against Polly for costing him a recent election for a deputy sheriff position, liquored up, on Tuesday, February 13, 1872, Proctor shows up at the mill and is soon arguing with Kesterson with Polly standing by her husband.  Noise not enough, the men soon go to shooting at each other and the Beck family gets the worst of it ... Polly makes the mistake of stepping between the two men and takes a killing round in her chest, while Kesterson has two bullets punch through his coat and a third graze his head as he escapes into the woods near his mill.  Proctor is unscathed in the exchange of lead and realizing Polly is dead, turns himself in to the local Cherokee authority, Going Snake Sheriff Jack Wright, while admitting he has made a "mistake" with his shooting.

The Mill

In the search for justice that ensues over the shootings an already muddled situation grows even worse.  The alleged crime committed by a Cherokee on Cherokee territory, the Nation believes it should have jurisdiction on the case.  Upset that a family member has been slaughtered and that tribal politics will effect the outcome of the case, along with so many in the tribe being relatives of Proctor (including the tribal chief at the time, Lewis Downing, a local prosecutor unrelated to Proctor can't be found, and the regular judge, Jim Walker, and his back-up, T. B. Wolfe are also members of the family), the Beck family petitions that the case should be tried in a United States court in Arkansas 9with the assumption that if a federal court won't execute Proctor for his "mistake," the Beck family will).  An assaulted white man the actual target of a half-breeds wrath, the United States government thinks it has jurisdiction over the case, judges it does, and sends a group of Deputy Marshals off to bring Proctor to Arkansas for trial at its district court in Fort Smith (where Isaac Charles Parker is the judge, the area's notorious "Hanging Judge"), a group of lawmen led by Jacob Owens and Joseph Peavy that includes angry members of Polly's family (with orders to arrest Zeke, his lawyer, the judge and the jury should the trial end in acquittal).  In the Going Snake District, Downing appoints Judge Blackhaw Sixkiller to try the case and trial is scheduled to begin on April 15, with the location of the case moved to a seemingly more secure site, the Whitmore schoolhouse, a large wooden structure built like a bunker with only one door to the inside and only a couple of window openings.

Chief Downing

Owens

The trial of huge interest in the Indian Territory, on Monday, 4/15/1872 the makeshift courthouse is jammed with people, including Lighthorse Cherokee police providing "security," and partisans for both the Proctor and Beck clans (the Becks can be spotted by wild plum blossoms they wear in their hats as identification badges so if shooting were to break out, they won't target themselves), and there is also a huge crowded outside ... and as crazy as it seems, most everyone is carrying a weapon of some sort, including the judge and the defendant himself.  As the trial gets underway, inside the schoolhouse, Judge Sixkiller is seated behind a small wooden table facing the structure's sole door.  Sitting to the judge's left is Joe Starr, the county clerk, and sitting to the judge's right is Procter's attorney, Mose Alberty, with Zeke Proctor next to him, closely flanked by one of Proctor's guards, Tom Walkingstick.  At about 11:00 in the morning, shortly after trial begins, as prosecutor Johnson Spake is arguing a procedural matter, trouble arrives in the form of the Federal posse from Fort Smith.  Though told to wait outside by Owens, the men dismount, and in a rough column of twos, joined by a group of Beck supporters, begin pushing their way through the crowd and into the building, led by Surry Eaton "White Sut" Beck, cradling a double-barrel shotgun.  A powder keg of animosity just awaiting a spark to set it off, juror George Blackwood sees the men coming through the door with and yells, "Look out!  Look out!  They're coming to get Zeke Proctor.  Spark supplied, White Sut aims his weapon at Zeke, but as he pulls the trigger the shotgun is yanked away from its target by Proctor's older brother, Johnson, who saves his brother's life but loses his own by taking a load of buckshot to his chest.  Still holding the weapon as Johnson slumps on to the floor in death, White Sut's second load blasts a hole in the floor, with some of the buckshot wounding Zeke in the foot, who fires his revolver as he crawls across the floor and takes up a relatively secure position in a corner against a chimney.

White Sut

Instant pandemonium, indiscriminate lead flies about the courthouse for roughly 15 minutes before the gunfire plays out and a tally of the carnage begins.  U.S. Deputy Sheriff Jacob Owens is mortally wounded and will die the following day.  Also dead from the posse Owens led are William Hicks, George Selvidge (a white brother-in-law of the Beck family), Jim Ward, Riley Woods, and Beck family members, William Beck (like Owens, he is mortally wounded as dies the next day), Black Sut Beck, and Sam Beck.  Also dead along with Johnson Proctor, are Zeke's lawyer, Moses Alberty, reading a document at the judge's table takes two shotgun blasts to the chest and is killed instantly, and Cherokee Civil War veteran and Pea Ridge battle survivor, Andrew Palone.  The wounded of the melee include (there may have been more, no one knows for sure) U.S. Deputy Marshal Peavy, posse member Paul Jones, posse member George McLaghlin, and the man many believe fired the first shot of the battle, White Sut Beck, Judge Sixkiller takes buckshot wounds to his wrist, the defendant, Zeke Proctor, another Proctor brother, John, and Proctor partisans, Isaac Vann almost has his elbow taken off, Ellis Foreman, Joe Chaney, and Julius Pinkey Killebrew.  Doing what she can, a widow named Whitmire living nearby orders her teenage sons to hitch up the family wagon and with mules providing the pulling power and a body transport system in place, makes her home available to the dead and wounded of the shootout.  Arranged on her front porch for identification and removal for burial by family members are the dead, while the wounded are placed inside for treatment.

Victim George Selvidge

Sixkiller

The next day, the trial is quickly moved to the home of jury foreman Captain Arch Scraper, where after only 10 minutes of deliberations, Zeke Proctor is found not guilty in the shooting death of Polly Beck ... and everyone involved in the trial and the shootout scatters across the territory.  And just in time!  Informed that the marshal service has undergone the most murderous day in its history, the Fort Smith court sends out an even larger posse to arrest the members of the Goingsnake court, the jury, and anyone that can be identified as have taken part in the 4/15 gunplay ... a group of over 20 heavily armed men that also includes two doctors.  This time, no resistance is given to the Federal lawmen, and while a handful of arrests will be made, with witnesses refusing to testify, a lack of evidence, and Chief Downing holding firm to President Grant that the Cherokee Nation will lawfully take care of crimes committed by Cherokees on Cherokee lands, all the indictments are eventually dismissed and no one will ever be prosecuted for the courthouse shootings.

Chief Downing During The Civil War

As A Union Colonel

As for Zeke Proctor, the killer of Polly Beck that started the dominos falling that will lead to the shootout, he becomes quite a success and a hero to many in the tribe after his acquittal.  Justifiably fearing he will be assassinated by a Beck partisan or turned over to the United States government, escorted by dozens of heavily armed Keetoowahs, Proctor hides out in the wilds of the Indian Territory, while a Cherokee delegation lobbies President Grant to give amnesty to  Proctor and his protective Keetoowahs, which Grant decides to do in 1873 to prevent more bloodshed from taking place in the Territory (Proctor will proudly display President Grant's pardon on a wall in his home for the rest of his life).  Hot blood somewhat cooled (to make sure the scales of justice appear balanced, in 1874 the Cherokee National Council passes a general amnesty for the Becks involved in the courthouse shootings), always watching his back for retaliation from the Becks (and wearing a hidden chunk of bullet stopping metal over his chest), Zeke goes on with his life and in 1877 becomes the Cherokee senator for the Going Snake District.  By 1890, he owns three thriving farms and takes care of more than one wife.  Incredibly, despite the chaos he has caused to the service, from 1891 to 1894 he uses his extensive knowledge of the Indian Territory as a U.S. Deputy Marshal for Judge Parker, and in 1894, the voters of the Going Snake District elect him to a term as their sheriff.  Successful where bullets never were, pneumonia finally lays him low in February of 1907 at the age of 76.  Buried outside of the town of Siloam Springs in the Proctor family plot, he rests below the tallest monument in the local Johnson cemetery.

Zeke Proctor Tombstone

PEACE TENT MURDERS

4/11/1873 - Proving they can be as duplicitous and murderous as the white men that have pushed them into war by encroaching on their lands in southern Oregon and northern California after yet another gold discovery (this time by a mule train packer named Abraham Thompson near what will become the California community of Yreka), forcing a treaty upon them that requires their sharing a reservation with their ancestral enemies, the Klamath Indians, and then attacking the Modoc tribe when a small band of men, women, and children return to their Lost River homes, a group of Modoc leaders led by Kintpuash (or Captain Jack) respond to a peace commission from the American government, led by Brigadier General Edward Canby, with violence.

Captain Jack

Once a small tribe of around 2,000 individuals populating one of the wildest regions of the Pacific northwest near Lost River, Tule Lake, and Lower Klamath Lake, by the time of the American Civil War, disease, war with the Klamath people, and unfriendly encounters with white settlers moving into the area over the Applegate Trail reduce the Modoc tribe to around 350 individuals.  Beleaguered, the tribe in 1864 becomes a party, along with the Klamaths and the Yahooskin band of Northern Paiutes, in signing the Great Treaty of Council Grove, which cedes more than 6 million acres in territory to the American government for the bargain price of a lump sum payment of $35,000, annual payments over 15 years totaling $80,000, and creation and staffing of a reservation in the Upper Klamath Valley.  There are immediate problems as mired in the Civil War, the United States Senate takes five years to ratify the treaty, during which time funds for food and shelter for the Modocs are withheld, and there are soon clashes with the Klamath over lumber and other resources belonging to the Modocs.  Reduced to eating horses for food, request for their own reservation seemingly denied, a small band of 200 individuals led by Captain Jack leave the reservation for their former homes along Lake River, and uncover another problem when they arrive there and discover in their absence, many sites now are occupied by white settlers.  A recipe for disaster, in November of 1872, when 40 troopers of the 1st U.S. Cavalry (commanded by Captain James Jackson) and militia from the town of Linkville (now Klamath Falls, Oregon) seek to evict the Modocs from a small village on the east bank of Lost River and escort them back to the Klamath reservation.  Trouble of course ensues and sparked by an argument between 2nd Lt. Frazier A. Boutelle and a Modoc named Scarface Charley (Chikchikam Lupatue-latko) in which both men fire on each other, but miss, the United States and the Modoc tribe find themselves at war ... a war which will not go well for either side.

Scarface Charley

Boutelle

In the initial clash which will become known as the Battle of Lost River, one soldier is killed and seven more wounded (and there is one casualty among the militia), while the Modoc have two warriors killed and three wounded before being forced to retreat across Tule Lake to a location within the jumbled magma fissures, ridges, and caves of what will one become Lava Beds National Monument, called "The Stronghold."  Meanwhile, enraged that soldiers have fired on women and children, Hooker Jim (Hooka Jim) led a small band of Modocs in a raid on the locals that kills 18 settlers.  Commanding military operation in the Pacific Northwest as the Department of the Columbia, Brigadier General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, a veteran of wars with the Seminoles, Mexicans, and a participant in numerous Civil War clashes responds by having Lt. Colonel Frank Wheaton (his Civil War resume includes the First Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Williamsburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, the clashes of Grant's Overland Campaign, the Siege of Petersburg, helping repel Jubal Early's raid on Washington D.C., the Third Battle of Winchester, the Battle of Sailors Creek, and capturing Robert E. Lee's son, Major General George Washington Custis Lee, actions which find him leaving the war as a Brevet Major General) assemble a mixed force of federal soldiers, Oregon and California militia, and Klamath tribe scouts, over 400 men, backed by two 12-pounder mountain howitzers, to put down the Modocs. 

War Area

Hooker Jim

Hubris brought on by his sterling record in the Civil War, the firepower he brings to bear, and a 6-1 advantage in men (there are about 50 Modoc warriors), on January 17, 1873, Lt. Colonel Wheaton is so confident in victory that he launches a dawn pincher attack on Captain Jack's Stronghold without reconnoitering the fog-shrouded ground the Modoc's are hiding within (the tribe will give credit for raising the fog to the magic of a medicine man and son-in-law of Hooker Jim named Curley Headed Doctor).  A huge error (Wheaton will subsequently be relieved of command by Canby), at the First Battle of the Stronghold, the men of Wheaton's command charge into a major debacle in which they do not spot a signal Modoc (let alone wound one, the Modocs suffer ZERO casualties), but suffer 12 deaths themselves (left on the battlefield for the Modoc to later recover their weapons) and have an additional 30 men wounded before retreating back to their camps (the only positive for the federal troops takes place when Major John Green inspires his reluctantly attacking command by standing to their front and pacing back in forth in front of them until he is wounded).  Wheaton sacked, Canby moves south and takes command of the military force himself which is expanded to 1,000 men and now also can fire ordinance at the Modocs from the howitzers and four additional Coehorn mortars.  Meanwhile, U.S. Interior Secretary Columbus Delano convinces President Ulysses S. Grant and General of the Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, to declare a truce in the war and see if a group of peace commissioner can resolve the conflict without any further bloodshed.  It is yet another error what is now being called the Modoc War by American newspapers. 

The Doctor

Stronghold Terrain

Green

Canby

Based on the composition of the commission, the Modocs are immediately wary that the bargaining will be fair or that they will receive any kind of justice.  Named by Delano to chair the group is Alfred B. Meacham, the same man that as U.S. superintendent of Indian affairs for Oregon was in charge when the tribe was reduced to eating horses at the Klamath Indian Reservation.  Commissioner Jesse Applegate is also frowned upon as a selection as he is the very individual that blazed the Applegate Trail through Modoc territory and wants to establish a ranching empire in the region.  Brigadier General Canby is chosen to be the group's counselor, who uses the truce to move his troops into positions encircling the Stronghold, and has a cavalry patrol capture the Modocs remaining horses and then refuses to return them to the tribe.  Other members of the commission are rancher Samuel Chase, and serving as interpreters are white settler Frank Riddle (a Kentuckian who comes to California during the Gold Rush of 1849), and his Modoc wife, Toby (Nannookdoowah) "Winema" Riddle.  Back-and-forth taking place at a peace tent established about a mile away from the military base established at Gillem's Camp at the edge of the Lava Beds, the groups clash over a complete pardon being given to the Modocs or Captain Jack turning over named individual for trial in the murder of area settlers, the withdrawal of all troops from the area, going to a reservation selected by the commission, making the Lava Beds a reservation, and the Modocs selecting the reservation they wish to live at.  Both sides frustrated, local Judge A. M. Rosborough is added to the commission, while Applegate and Chase resign and are replaced by Methodist minister Reverend Eleazer Thomas and L.S. Dyar, and on the other side, Hooker Jim, Schonchin John, and Curley Headed Doctor apply pressure on Captain Jack to be done with negotiations with the inflexible whites, and foolishly believing successful battle will resurrect the old days of the tribe, call for ending the truce by wiping out members of the commission, an act of stupidity that the chief eventually agrees to (shaming the chief, during a council meeting the warriors present Captain Jack with women's clothing).  Too many Modocs in the know, the plan is related to the commission Yreka Judge Elijah Steele, a friend of Captain Jack, and uncovered by the Riddles, but when related to Delano, are disbelieved and the commission is told to keep talking.

Delano

Applegate

 

Meacham

Toby "Winema" Riddle

On the morning of Good Friday, April 11, 1873, Brigadier General Canby, Meacham, Reverend Thomas, Dyar, and the Riddles arrive at the peace tent to find the Modoc delegation of Captain Jack, Boston Charley, Bogus Charley, Schonchin John, Black Jim, and Hooker Jim waiting.  Cigars passed out to the Modocs by Canby, the general speaks of trusting him to find the men a good reservation in a warm climate, his troops remaining in the area until the Modoc are moved, and that everything spoken of must also be approved by Washington, when Schonchin John begins clamoring for the Hot Creek area becoming the Modoc's new reservation, words that cause Captain Jack to stand up and shout an order to his men (hiding nearby, Modocs Brancho and Sioiux to begin firing their rifles at the commission members), pull a concealed pistol out of his clothing, and fire on Canby.  Dumbfounded that the Modoc leader is firing on him, the general remains seated as Captain Jack's first shot misfires, but is blown to the ground when the chief re-cocks his weapon and puts a second fatal round through Canby's head, and then just to make sure the military man causes no more problems for his tribe, drags a knife across the dead man's throat.

Canby's Cross - Site Of The Killings

An instant after Canby goes down, Boston Charley leaps forward and puts two rounds into the chest and head of Reverend Thomas, killing the minister, as Schochin John puts four bullets into Meacham.  Grievously wounded, the chairman is saved from being finished off and scalped by Toby Riddle, who interrupts the warriors closing on Meacham by screaming, "The soldiers are coming!" (though permanently scarred and partially disabled by his wounds, Meacham will go on to work for Indian justice, writing several works about his experiences with the Modocs, and working to bring Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce to Washington D.C. to talk to officials about the plight of his people, and working on finding the Colorado Utes of Chief Ouray a new reservation in Utah).  Flight or fight response immediately engaged, with bullets flying all about, Dyar and Frank Riddle escape injury by instantly leaping from their seats and zig-zag running for the safety of Gillem's Camp.  Any chance of peace gone in a flash of foolishness that enrages the American public, Brigadier General Canby becomes the highest ranking member of the U.S. Army, and only general, to be killed fighting American Indians in the military's campaign to "civilize" the West.

Peace Tent Murder

Canby Lays In State

Gasoline poured on an already burning fire, the war begins again days later with the Second Battle of the Stronghold (4/15/1873) in which troops cut off the Modocs from their Tule Lake water supply, but the tribe escapes destruction by escaping through an unguarded crevice in the Stronghold. The fight continues with another officer being replaced (Colonel Cullem Gillem, a Civil War veteran and namesake of the war's Gillem Camp is replaced by Bvt. Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis) when a surprise attack on a reconnaissance force of over 80 soldiers and scouts having lunch at the base of what is now Hardin Butte (the men are under the command of Captain Evan Thomas) causes a whipping called the Battle of Sand Butte (4/26/1873), a defeat at the hands of 22 Modoc warriors led by Scarfaced Charley that results in 18 officers and men being killed, and an additional 17 being wounded.  Over, but not quite out, the clash of arms and cultures concludes on May 10, 1873, when another attempted ambush is thwarted and a charge up a bluff by U.S. troops routs the Modocs at the Battle of Dry Lake ... a defeat that splits the tribe into two small groups, one of which, containing Hooker Jim, is captured.  Seeking to save his own neck, the Modoc leader agrees to help track down Captain Jack for pardons for the members of his group (among them, Bogus Charley, Shacknasty Jim, and Steamboat Frank) that were involved in the murders of the Tule Lake settlers, and the assassinations of Canby and Thomas.  Captain Jack, carrying a single Springfield rifle, his wife, and a single little girl are finally captured by Captain William F. Drannan and Army Scout George Jones on June 1, 1873.

U.S. Troops In The Lava Beds

Firing Pit

Orders received from Washington authorities in the War Department to not summarily execute the captives, Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, Boston Charley, Brancho, and Sioiux are taken to Fort Klamath as prisoners of war and in early July are put on trial before a military court as war criminals for their actions in the peace tent killings, the only American Indians to ever be so charged.  A show trial with the verdict basically already decided, after four days of testimony and speeches all the men are convicted and sentenced to be hung.  Verdicts reviewed by President Grant, the death sentences are approved for Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, and Boston Charley, while Brancho and Sioiux are given life imprisonments in the prison in San Francisco Bay at Fort Alcatraz.  A public spectacle that takes place before over 2,000 witnesses that include Modoc captives from the war and Klamath Reservation Indians, the four men are hung on October 3, 1873, then suffer the further indignity of having their heads cut off and shipped to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., while their bodies are buried in unmarked graves on the Klamath Reservation.  Leaders not the only ones to be punished, after the executions, the Modoc survivors of the war, 39 men, 64 women, and 60 children are shipped off to the Quapaw Indian Agency in the northeastern portion of what is now Oklahoma.  By the end of the 1880s, there are only 88 Oklahoma Modocs, but happily the tribe undergoes a slight resurgence from total extinction and as of the year 2000, there are 200 in Oklahoma and another 600 living in Oregon.

Captain Jack & Schonchin Jim

Awaiting Execution

Captain Jack

        Heroes hard to find in a bad war for both sides, after the fighting stops the Riddles return to the Klamath Reservation, where they have a son who is given two names ... his Modoc moniker is Charka, "the handsome one," while his English name honors the winning military man of the recently over conflict, Jefferson C. Davis Riddle.  Impressed that she had tried to warn the commission of the Modoc's murder plans, and that once they took place, she saved lives with her false shouts that "soldiers are coming," Alfred B. Meacham, the man she specifically saves, features Toby, Frank Riddle, and their son in the lecture play he tours through America, "The Tragedy of the Lava Beds," in which the former commissioner writes, "Winema has taken her place besides Sara Winnemucca and Sacajawea in the annals of the early west.  The personal daring of these Indian women and the roles they played as negotiators between their people and the palefaces have lifted them above considerations of race into the ranks of the great women of all time.  Petitioned by Meacham, in 1891 Congress awards Toby a military pension of $25 a month, which she gladly receives until her death in 1920 at the age of 72.  And with us still for people seeking outdoor wonders and peaceful scenery, she becomes the namesake of 1,045,548 acres of protected forestland founded in 1961 on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in south-central Oregon, on the borders of Crater Lake National Park ... Winema National Forest (the forest will merge with Fremont National Forest and become the Fremont-Winema National Forest in 2002) .

The Riddles - Back Center & Right

Toby

Winema National Forest

                        

 

  

       

          

   

DEATH ON THE KC RANCH - 4/9/1892

4/9/1892 - In Wyoming, what historians will one day call the Johnson County War (it is also referred to as War on the Powder River and the Wyoming Range War), a conflict between large cattle companies and homesteaders and alleged rustlers over land, water rights, and livestock, violently explodes at the small "KC" Ranch of cowboy Nathan David "Nate" Champion. 

Champion

Nate is born into the large and respected family of John and Naomi Champion on September 29, 1857 near the town of Leander, Texas, in the state's Williamson County, about 22 miles miles northwest of the city of Austin.  His father the sheriff of the county, his Aunt Hattie a hard woman capable of driving her cattle to market in Abilene, Kansas in 1871, Nate grows up among seventeen brothers and sisters near the Wild West town of Round Rock, a locale known for Comanche raids, the nearby Chisholm Trail, and the 1878 gun battle between Texas Rangers and the outlaw band of Sam Bass in which Deputy Sheriff A. W. Grimes, bandit Seaborne Barnes, and gang leader Bass are all killed.  Learning the outdoor skills required to survive the region, by 1881, 24-year-old Nate is a top cowboy, and as such, accompanied by his twin brother, Dudley, he takes a herd of Longhorn cattle north along the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Enchanted by the area, the brothers decide to stay and soon become top hands on several Wyoming ranches, and begin dreaming of one day having a small ranch of their own.

L-R ... Martin Tisdale, Dudley Champion,

And Nate Champion

But Wyoming of the 1880s and 1890s can be just as easily a nightmare for it's inhabitants as the territory undergoes the growing pains of transforming from a region of public domain open to both ranchers and homesteaders, into a place of boundaries and settlements, where water rights are paramount and the once common practice of branding orphan or stray cattle as one's own morphs into an act of criminal rustling.  Increasingly, as the Champion brothers put down roots in the Powder River Country of northern Wyoming, they find themselves siding with the homesteaders and "rustlers" against the big ranches of wealthy owners that organize themselves into the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) which meets at the Cheyenne Club in the bustling town of Cheyenne and organizes the cattle industry into scheduled roundups, cattle shipments, decides who can participate, has the power to push through the legislature the Maverick Act in which unbranded cattle on the open range automatically belong to the association, and employees a private army of "range detectives" to police their holdings against rustling.  When the winter of 1886-1897, known as the the "Big Die-Up" hits the region and horribly mauls the cattle business (the region will be hit by a series of blizzards that drop temperatures to -50 degrees and pile snow into drifts in places above ten feet in height) the gloves come off for both sides in a series of incidents that escalate into murders and retaliation killings.

The Cheyenne Club

The Big Die-Up

Typical of the greed and murderous nature of the Johnson County War are two of it's first deaths.  On July 20, 1889, range detective George Henderson, local rancher, Albert John Bothwell, and a handful of their cohorts take captive at gunpoint, 29-year-old Ellen "Ella" Liddy Watson and her husband, 38-year-old local businessman Jim Averell, accuse the pair of rustling (she has a bill of sales for the cattle in question and it is no coincidence that Bothwell wants the water rights to the 320 acre property the pair is occupying, has been turned down numerous times in his attempts to buy the land, and is incensed at the temerity of being bested by a woman), and without any kind of a trial, set the couple air dancing from a nearby tree along a canyon of the Sweetwater River (where they are left dangling for two days, the only hanging of a female in Wyoming history).  Then, as if that isn't bad enough, Ellen, a cook, housekeeper, waitress, seamstress, and shrewd business woman, is transformed into an outlaw prostitute known as Cattle Kate by the Cheyenne Daily Sun and other newspapers controlled by the WSGA, while Averell, a widower, general store and saloon owner, postmaster (appointed by President Grover Cleveland), notary public (appointed by Wyoming governor Thomas Moonlight) and Justice of the Peace (at the behest of the Carbon County Board of Commissioners), becomes an avaricious pimp for his paramour.  Not surprisingly, when the men responsible for the lynching are rounded up by Sheriff Frank Hadsell and Deputy Sheriff Phil Watson (no relation to Ellen), arrested, and put before a grand jury (half of which are cattlemen belonging to the WSGA), witnesses start vanishing or turning up dead, none of the participants are found guilty of any crime, and as expected, Bothwell acquires the land of the couple he helped hang.

Watson

Averell

Hanging Tree

Bothwell

Unhappy at what happened to Watson and Averell, the enemies of the Cheyenne Club strike back, killing range detective Henderson near Sweetwater Creek in October of 1890.  That killing in turn causes the WSGA to lynch even more "rustlers" ... a horse trader named Tom Waggoner is hung, a friend of Waggoner called Jimmy the Butcher is murdered, and range detective Tom Smith kills a suspected rustler and is indicted for murder, but then freed by the political power of the Association   Those acts in turn cause the small ranchers and homesteaders to form their own "protective," creating the Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers' Association (NWFSGA).  Seeking a leader worthy of the new association, the group elects a man who isn't even yet a member and that refuses the post when he hears about his office, Nathan Champion.  Not caring, when the WSGA hears of Champion's election, he becomes the number one name on a list of "rustlers" (also on the list of 70 names is the Johnson County Sheriff, all his deputies, three county commissioners, a newspaper editor, a prominent Buffalo, Wyoming merchant, and an assortment of local cowboys, small ranchers, and homesteaders) they have marked for assassination (he will be christened the "King of Rustlers"), and the first target of their head gunman, a former Texas outlaw and cattle rustler named Joe Horner, who as a "lawman," becomes Sheriff of Johnson County, Wyoming, Frank Canton.

Horner/Canton

The first assassination attempt on Champion's life takes place on November 1, 1891.  Cowboying for W. H. Hall, Champion and Ross Gilbertson are sleeping peacefully in a line shack on Middle Fork of the Powder River, when they are visited by four gunmen of the WSGA ... Frank Canton, Joe Elliot, Tom Smith, and Fred Coates.  Creeping up the small log structure containing a single bunk adjacent to the cabin's only door, the assassins, attempting to take captive the two men for a later "message" lynching, burst inside just before dawn with their guns drawn as one calls out, "Give up.  We have got you this time!"  Awake immediately, Champion calmly asks the intruders, "What's the matter, boys?" as he grabs his revolver from beneath a pillow and opens fire simultaneously with being fired upon.  In the exchange of lead, Champion receives a powder burn to the face by a near miss and another slug plows into the bedding between the cowboy and Gilbertson while mortally wounding one man in the side, nicking another gunman in the arm, and sending the would-be killers fleeing into the darkness where in their haste to find safety from Champion's gunfire, they leave behind four overcoats, their horses, a Winchester rifle, and a trail of blood.  Chasing after the men, Champion will be driven back into the cabin by Joe Elliot fired bullets (later, Elliot will be arrested and charged with attempted murder but will have the charges dropped when the only witness to the affair, Gilbertson, will decide to cowboy under more peaceful circumstances and disappears).

Nate On Horse Nearest Chuckwagon And Dudley

Farthest Away

Champion wanted dead, and many others in the county too, in the spring of 1892, the Cheyenne Club comes up with a plan to invade Johnson County with a gang of hired gunmen and remove all their "people" problems in one fell swoop, funded by 100 members contributing $1,000 each to a solution.  Recruiting 23 gunmen from Paris, Texas for pay of $5 a day, a $3,000 "accident" insurance policy, and a bonus of $50 for every "rustler" killed, a small force is soon put together under the command of former Civil War major, Frank Wolcott, and gunman Frank Canton, that includes the Texas "regulators," a group of WSGA range detectives, State Senator Bob Tisdale, State Water Commissioner W. J. Clarke, Wyoming statehood organizers, William C. Irvine and Hubert Teshemacher, surgeon Charles Bingham Penrose, and a newspaper reporter from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, and another from the prestigious Chicago Herald, over fifty men in all.  In Denver, Colorado the Texas contingent of killers are gifted with new Colt revolvers and high caliber .45-90 and .38-55 Winchester rifles and board a special train bound for Casper, Wyoming.  Arriving in Casper in the 4:00 in the morning darkness, and during a snow storm, the Texans and Wyoming men mount up on horses and in three freight wagons, and ride off north towards Johnson County, cutting telegraph lines as they go so their invasion will remain a secret until it is too late for anyone to deal with.  The killer's first destination is 150 miles away, the small "KC" Ranch of some two hundred head of cattle belonging to their #1 enemy, Nate Champion.

Wolcott

Most Of The Invaders

Arriving in the early morning darkness of Saturday as snow continues to fall, on April 9, 1892, the Regulators surround the small cabin that serves as the KC Ranch headquarters, a low roofed, four room wooden box with a front and back door, just south of the Middle Fork of the Powder River, and new rifles and revolves at the ready, wait for dawn.  There are four men inside, two trappers passing through the area that have been invited to spend the night inside and out of the elements, Bill Walker and Ben Jones, and two men on the WSGA's death list, Nate Champion, and his ranching partner, Reuben "Nick" Ray.  They have spent the night playing cards, drinking and singing to the accompaniment of Walker's fiddle playing, and all are unaware the death is lurking outside.  Thinking he will help prepare breakfast, shortly after dawn, Jones, a former chuck wagon cook, steps out of the cabin carrying a bucket and heads for a nearby creek to get water.  Not on the hit list, out of site of the cabin he is made captive and gagged.  When about a half hour goes by without Jones returning, Walker goes outside to find out what is keeping his partner, and he too is made a prisoner.  When Ray steps outside a few moments later he receives a different greeting and is immediately fired on by 17-year-old Starl "Texas Kid" Tucker and is hit in the leg.  Going down from his wound, others begin firing on the fallen man as he crawls towards the cabin as Champion appears in the doorway and empties his rifle at gunfire coming from the barn, jumps back inside, reloads, and then starts firing on assassins firing from the creek bed at the same time as he pulls Ray inside the cabin (Starl will shout to his confederates, "By God, he may be a rustler, but he is also a he-man with plenty of guts!").  Unable to stop the bleeding from the leg wound, Ray dies around 9:00 in the morning and Champion is alone against the Regulators, using his rifle and pistol, along with Ray's weapons and those left behind by the two trappers.  .      

KC Ranch Headquarters

Ambush to siege, moving about the cabin, which is struck by hundreds of Regulator bullets, firing from the doorway and windows, Champion keeps the killers outside at bay for hours, killing four men and wounding several others (accounts of his shooting vary), while also amazingly keeping a pencil written, first-hand account of his fight in a small red tally book that will find its way into the hands of Chicago Herald reporter Sam T. Clover after the battle.  Among the words Champion leaves behind are: Me and Nick Ray was getting breakfast when the attack took place ... They are still shooting and are all around the house ... Boys, there are bullets coming in like hail ... It is now about two hours since the first shot ... Nick is shot but not dead yet.  I must go and wait on him ... Nick is dead.  He died about 9 o'clock ... I don't think they intend to let me get away this time ... Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now.  I wish there was someone with me so we could watch all sides at once ... I hear them splitting wood.  I guess they are going to fire the house tonight.  I think I will make a break when night comes, if alive ... There was a man in a buckboard and one on horseback that just passed.  They fired on them as they went by.  I don't know if they killed them or not ... They are shooting at the house now.  If I had a pair of glasses, I believe I would know some of those men ... Shooting again.  I think they will fire the house this time ... The house is all fired.  Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again ... Nathan D. Champion

Cowboying - Champion Standing At Left, Jack

Flagg Is Seated At Right

The beginning of the end of the battle takes place when, headed north, for the homesteader friendly town of Buffalo (sixty miles and several hours away), Champion neighbor O. H. "Jack" Flagg (another name on the Regulators death list) and his 17-year-old stepson, Alonzo Taylor, stumble onto the scene in mid-afternoon.  Not immediately fired on because the Texas gunman nearby don't recognize Flagg, the two men are shot at when they refuse to stop and unsuccessfully pursued by seven gunmen, but escape when they abandon the wagon they are driving to town at a nearby bridge and use one of the draft horses (the other is wounded) to ride off to town.  Wagon grabbed by the gunmen, it is filled with alternating layers of hay and pitch pine posts, then set aflame, becoming a huge rolling torch that five men killers push across 75 yards of open ground while other gunmen keep Champion under cover shooting into the windows and front door of the cabin.  Wagon torch placed against the cabin, the structure is soon ablaze, with thick smoke pouring out of every opening.  Signing his name to his tally book and slipping the account of his battle into his vest pocket, Champion crawls to the only part of the building not yet on fire, a storage dugout off the kitchen, and readies himself for a last attempt at escaping ... a dash through smoke and snow blowing south towards a ravine 100 yards away.  Revolver fully loaded and a round waiting for firing in his rifle (actually the rifle of Frank Canton, confiscated when the man fled his attempt at assassinating Champion back in November), as the cabin collapses, to shouts of "There he goes," the 35-year-old cowboy and rancher bursts out of the back door of burning structure.  Running on stocking feet, with bullets striking all around him, he miraculously makes it to the ravine untouched, but it is as far as he will go.  Waiting in the land cut for just such an occurrence are six of the Texas gunmen 

Champion

Enemies at close range, Champion gets off one rifle shot before being hit by a round that shatters his left elbow and knocks his rifle out of his hand, then by another bullet, this time to the chest that puts him on his back as a helpless target ... a helpless target that the WSGA killers turn into a holed hunk of human Swiss cheese.  Down and finally out, Champion will be found to have been hit by 28 bullets.  Stepping forward, Canton recovers his rifle will stating, "He came out fighting and died game."  Game but not above insulting a final time, a lettered placard is placed on his chest that reads, "CATTLE THIEVES, BEWARE!" (while Clover takes the tally book, blood soaked and holed by a rifle round, out of Champion's pocket).  Eyes open to the sky he will never see again, left where he has fallen, Champion's corpse is fed on by wild animals for two days, but his last stand and death will not have been in vain (his remains will be buried in the town that springs up nearby and honors the name of his ranch, Kaycee, Wyoming ... in the Willow Grove Cemetery).

Drawing Of Where Champion Fell

Tombstone

  Delayed an entire day taking Champion out, the cattle baron's invaders completely lose the element of surprise they had worked so hard to achieve.  Word of the WSGA killers spreads like a prairie fire (thanks to Flagg and his stepson reaching Trabling's Postoffice, about 16 miles south of Buffalo, and KC Ranch neighbor, Terrence Smith, who alerts the citizens of Buffalo of the dangerous threat that is headed their way.  Multiple posses converging on the invaders, eventually over 300 men, led by Buffalo Sheriff William G. "Red" Angus (also on the WSGA list of those to be killed) surround the invaders at the T.A. Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek and the second siege of the war begins, with an ending that might have been the same if gunman Mike Shonsey hadn't escaped and gotten word to WSGA friendly Governor Barber, who in turn notifies President Benjamin Harrison and asks for help in quelling an "insurrection," which is soon provided in the form of Troops C, D, and H of the 6th United States Cavalry Regiment out of nearby Fort McKinney, under the command of Colonel J.J. Van Horn.  Killers turned captives, though charges are filed, the corruption and cash of the cattle barons allows everyone to eventually go free (released on bond by money from the Cheyenne Club, the Texans return home and never come back to Wyoming, and bills kill the poor county's ability to prosecute several individuals like Frank Canton, who leaves the state and is allowed to continue his career as a "lawman" in the wilds of the Indian Territory by "The Hanging Judge," Isaac Charles Parker) though for many of the homesteaders attacked, the animosity never really ends.

Sheriff Angus

The TA Ranch

Rounded Up Assassins

The war finally pitters out with a handful of killings that include U.S. Marshal George Wellman, a rider for the WSGA being ambushed and killed by unknown locals outside the town of Buffalo on May 10, 1892, a "Buffalo" soldier of the 9th Cavalry (which has replaced the 6th Cavalry in trying to bring peace to the area) is killed and two other soldiers wounded in a gunfight with a group of settlers in the town of Suggs, Wyoming, and in the fall of 1892, range detectives gun down two alleged rustlers east of the Big Horn River.  Sadly, Dudley Champion, out of the state on business when his brother is murdered, becomes the conflict's last victim on May 24, 1893.  Riding through the county seeking cowboy work, fifteen miles outside the town of Manville, Wyoming, Dudley comes upon Mike Shonsey, the same man that rode with the Regulators and got word to the governor that the WSGA force was trapped at the T.A. Ranch, and the same man that Nate Champion believed was involved in the night attack he survived in November of 1891.  Recognizing Dudley as Nate's brother, believing he is about to be attacked, without discussion, Shonsey brings his rifle up and shoots the cowboy out of his saddle.  Turning himself in after the killing, Shonsey claims self-defense and is released by local authorities of Douglas, Wyoming, decides the state is too dangerous, and relocates to Nebraska where he becomes a successful stock grower.

Wellman

Shonsey

War long over, whatever the reality of his long ago time in Johnson County, Nate Champion is still remembered in the area as a western hero of epic proportions.  The subject of books and magazine articles, and is played on film by Academy Award winning actor, Christopher Walken in loosely based box-office bomb about the Johnson County War, director Michaek Cimino's "Heaven's Gate."  But his finest tribute might just be the statue created in Nate's likeness by local Buffalo artist, D. Michael Thomas.  Standing in front of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, Wyoming, the town Champion's last stand helped saved back in 1892, erected in 2008, Nate is depicted on the last run of his life, captured forever in bronze trying to make the safety of an unsafe ravine near his cabin ... a hero.

Sold Out Small Version

Historical Marker - Nate Champion's Last Run

On Fort Street Near Adams Avenue

Run, Nate, Run!