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
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.
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