A TRUE HERO IN FT. SMITH HISTORY

Those of us who live in and around Ft. Smith, Arkansas, often find it difficult to believe how raw the fort once was. Situated at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, the location that would become a most important frontier fort, was first established as an outpost in 1817 when Major William Bradford and his command of 64 men put ashore on the rock landing below the bluff at Belle Point. One of Bradford's duties was to prevent the Indian Tribes from continuing hostilities with each other.

Due to the remote location, the men were pretty much on their own. They were to erect a post on the Arkansas near the point where the Osage boundary struck the river.  The first few rude shelters built there by Major Stephen Long of the Topographical Engineers, before Bradford's arrival, were designated as Camp Smith in honor of General Thomas Smith, commander of the 9th Military Dept. with headquarters at Belle Fontaine. On hearing that Bradford was on his way, Long left his plans for the first fort along with a small detail of men and went on his exploratory way.

What makes Bradford my "hero" here goes back a ways, to 1808 when hostilities first began between the native Osage tribe and the foreign Cherokees. A delegation of Cherokee chiefs from east Tennessee had visited then President Thomas Jefferson and asked that he allow members of their tribe to live as hunters and emigrate to the lands west of the Mississippi River. At this time the Osage claimed all the land west of the Mississippi between the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers. So this move could cause a war between those tribes. Yet, on January 9, 1809 President Jefferson authorized the requested move. Within a few years a few thousand Cherokees had settled on the Arkansas and White Rivers in Arkansas, a good thirty years prior to the Trail of Tears that would herd thousands of Cherokee out of their homelands and into Indian Territory to the west of Arkansas.  

An imaginary boundary, drawn by United States Commissioners, did little to keep the warring Indians apart. Constant friction caused killings, the stealing of horses and plenty of aggressive behavior. The Treaty of Hiwassee of July 8, 1817 added more friction. It would give the Cherokees as much land in Arkansas as they had relinquished in the Appalachian region. By then around 2,000 Cherokees lived in settlements on the Arkansas. By 1819, 3,500 to 6,000 lived there.

So then arrived Major Bradford and his company of Rifles to establish Fort Smith at Belle Point. Bradford had been ordered to do everything possible to keep peace between the hostile tribes. Immediately he called a meeting of the leaders of the Shawnee, Delaware, Chickasaw and the Choctaw bands that had sided with the Cherokees. Bradford also counseled the Quapaws and the Cherokees to live in peace. But these weren't all the hostiles Bradford was forced to deal with. Trouble-making non-Indians came into the territory and added their violent behavior to the mix. In addition frontier families squatted on Indian lands.

Faced with non-existent communication with Washington---it took up to three months or more for a message to reach Washington---decisions were all up to Bradford. As Indian wars flamed, he could only rely on his small company of blue and gray-clad Rifles and two six-pound cannons to handle the situations. Besides this, he had to keep a work detail to plant corn and tend to a garrison vegetable garden. Because Congress had decided to be more frugal in army spanding, most all of his supplies had to come from the soil. Hunting details also brought in wild game killed near the fort. To add to his problems were diseases known as the ague and bilious fever. During the summer of 1819, 100 Cherokees succumbed.

While Bradford was away a few Osage leaders, led by Bad Tempered Buffalo and some 400 braves threatened the fort. Left in charge Lt. Scott threatened them with the two cannons and managed to hold down the uprising. By the time Bradford returned it was rumored that over 1500 Osage warriors had amassed on the White River to take over the Cherokees' land. Bradford sent word this would not be tolerated. Then in a bold move, he warned the chiefs that if they shed one single drop of a white man's blood, he would exterminate their nations.  He said he would not write Washington for advice, but would report that there was not a Cherokee or Osage alive on his side of the Mississippi.

Bradford continued to work tirelessly to maintain and uneasy peace between the two hostile tribes. He was finally relieved of duty on February 26, 1822. At the end of his tour of duty not one of his men had been killed by an Indian, and as far as was recorded not one of his men had so much as fired a shot at an Indian.

A new era began at Fort Smith with the arrival of Colonel Matthew Arbuckle who was convinced that the time was ripe to bring the Cherokees and the Osages together and restore peace on the Arkansas frontier. This could and did take a long while.

Information gathered from The Fort Smith Story by Edwin P. Hicks available at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.

SOME HANGINGS COMMUTED

Mason Holcomb was scheduled to hang on the gallows at Fort Smith on April 17, 1885. A native of Kentucky, he had migrated to Missouri after being mustered out of the Union Army. He married a woman known only as Miss Bridgeman, and took her to Arkansas where they lived for a while near Jasper in Newton County. From there he moved to Franklin County near Ozark, then migrated into Indian Territory. For seven months prior to the killing that would hand him a hanging sentence, he lived on the Canadian River near McAlester.

Later, folks claimed it was the devil in whiskey that brought about the killing, and it would seem so. For Mason and his friend Siegel Fisher were working in the hay fields and on July 23, the two became intoxicated. Late one evening they started home and on the way Mason killed Fisher. Who knows why? He claimed it was a fight Fisher started that escalated into the killing.There was no witness to the deed, and leaving the body out in the open, Mason fled to his native state of Kentucky. In 1884 he was arrested by a brother of the man he had murdered and taken to Fort Smith for trial. We have no idea what happened to his wife, or if they had children together.

He pled not guilty, saying that Fisher had a pistol and he pulled it, so the killing was in self defense. The trial lasted over a week. Because Fisher was shot in the back and there was no evidence of a struggle in the grassy area where the body was found, the jury returned with a guilty verdict.

Several outlaws received "guilty" verdicts, over a period of those few days prior to April 17, 1885, and they were commuted to life. Among them was a white man who lived under the name of Blue Duck.

I can see Larry McMurtry, paging through those old records and running across that fascinating name, filing it away somewhere in his writer's mind and pulling it out when he began to create his characters for Lonesome Dove. Until running across this information myself, I never imagined that McMurtry might have used an actual name, yet it's something all we writers do. 

                                                   Gallows at Fort Smith, busy as usual

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FIRST MAN TO HANG ON THE FT. SMITH GALLOWS

Spotlighting some of the more famous cases tried in the court at Ft. Smith, one that stands out is the first hanging on the gallows.

His crime was vicious and cold blooded and recalled for many years by people who lived in Van Buren and Ft. Smith.

John Childers, a half-blood Cherokee was charged with killing a peddler named Rayburn Wedding. Childers was the son of John Childers, a white man and KatyVann, his Cherokee wife. He was born May 3, 1848 on Cowskin Creek. This was located in the Cherokee Nation, later to become Oklahoma.

On October 14, 1870, the young man would commit a crime that eventually led him to the newly constructed gallows outside Judge Parker’s Court in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His crime wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who knew him. Childers had a wicked past. He belonged to an organization composed of Indians and whites, whose main object on this earth was to murder and plunder. They were a close knit bunch, and so whatever one of them did, the others stood behind him.

Deputy Marshal Vennoy, a native of Kansas, had run-ins with Childers on several occasionas. He had admitted to killing a man over in Kansas to get even for some imagined wrong doing. So on this particular day, he spied a very fine black horse that he knew he had to have the moment he saw it. No matter that it belonged to someone else. Namely, a fellow by the name of Rayburn Wedding, a peddler who made his living traveling through the Indian Territory trading flour and bacon for hides and farm products.

Accustomed to getting what he wanted, one way or another, Childers told Rayburn he’d make him a trade for his fine black horse, but Rayburn wasn’t interested. Not willing to take no for an answer, Childers dropped back a ways and and then rode up on the unsuspecting trader. He dismounted, tied his horse to the peddlers wagon and climbed up in the seat beside him. After chatting until they reached Caney Creek, he drew a knife and cut the peddler’s throat from ear to ear. He dumped the body in the water, saddled the black and left his own horse there, riding proudly away on his new acquisition.

Childers was captured and scheduled to be taken to Kansas, but he dreaded that, so he escaped his irons. He was again arrested and then conveyed to Van Buren. He was held to await the action of the Grand Jury. No court was in session. Judge Caldwell then the Federal Judge, adjourned court in December, 1870. Court was reconvened at Fort Smith the following month with William Story as Judge. Judge Isaac Parker had not yet been sent to Ft. Smith.

Determined to escape justice, Childers and six other prisoners broke out and took to the woods. He might never have been recaptured had it not have been for a woman of whom he was enamored. The woman saw her chance to make some money, lured Childers into her arms, then eagerly took the $10 reward she’d been promised to aid in his capture. Deputy Marshals Vennoy and Joe Peevy easily dragged him from her arms and led him back to jail.

The beginning of the second week of the first term of Federal court ever held in Fort Smith, the Grand Jury returned eleven true bills of indictment, naming sixteen persons charged with various crims. John Childers was at the foot of the list. He was arraigned on Thursday, May 18 of 1871. The trial lasted from Novemeber 6 until the 18th before he was judged to be guilty of murder. He was kept confined in the garrison dungeon until May 19, 1873 when he was sentenced to be hanged. On August 15, the gallows, still smelling of fresh cut lumber, served it’s first duty and saw Childers hung from the neck until dead.

For 23 years the gallows took the lives of 88 more criminals, all sentenced to be hanged by a man who would become known as The Hanging Judge, Isaac Parker.

Facts for this story taken from the book, Hell on the Border

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HELL ON THE BORDER II

Upper photo is Van Buren in the early 1900s. Lower photo is Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith in 1870

In 1859, killing an Indian in the wild territory of Western Arkansas was generally believed to be justified. It was unusual for someone who committed this deed to be charged. People thought it best to acquit or worse, not even bring such a killer to trial. Think of the old saying, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Considering the facts of John Raper’s case, even his arrest would surprise a lot of people. Nevertheless,  he had a jury trial and was found guilty of killing John Rogers, a Cherokee.

Raper lived and worked on his farm in Arkansas not far from the Indian Territory line. One afternoon, his young son went to visit a friendly Cherokee family in the Indian Nation. That night he was attacked by several Indians and brutally murdered.. It would be the next morning before Raper heard of the killing. He was also told that John Rogers was the one who murdered his son.

Raper hurried to the spot and found the terribly mutilated remains of the boy. While kneeling beside the body, deep in grief, the Cherokee John Rogers rode by whooping, howling and hollering. He then reined in his horse, dismounted and headed for a nearby house. Upon spotting this man who he believed had slain his beloved son, Raper raised his rifle and shot him dead.

A quick jury trial held at the Van Buren courthouse December 1, 1859, resulted in a conviction of Raper. Eight days later, the judge sentenced him to hang and set a date of April 27, 1860 for his execution. People were incensed. A large number of leading citizens in Van Buren, including the judge who had held the trial, signed a petition. It was forwarded to President James Buchanan along with information telling exactly what had happened that led up to Raper killing John Rogers.

The president commutted Raper’s sentence to life imprisonment at Little Rock. The following year Raper, and all other prisoners held in Little Rock, was released by the Confederate soldiers. It is thought that he entered the southern army and was killed in battle.

Plenty of men were hanged on the scaffold at Van Buren. Judge Isaac Parker, the man who would gain a reputation as the “hanging” judge wouldn’t arrive in Fort Smith until 1875.

The term Hell on the Border was originally coined by outlaws of the Southwest. The jail quarters at Fort Smith were horrendous. As many as 200 prisoners at a time were kept in two inadequate basement rooms beneath the old stone barracks which was used for the court. Young, old, sick and well, hardened criminals and first offenders, all were crammed into these rooms together. In 1886 money was appropriated to build a three-story brick structure. The building was completed in 1889 and it adjoined the court building on the south.

The permanent gallows at Fort Smith was the site of many a hanging.  One of the most infamous was Cherokee Bill. More about him in a future blog.

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GENTLEMEN KIMES BOYS

The Kimes boys including George, Matthew and Roy were known far and wide for their "outside the law" ways. Country Western Singer and composer Royal Kimes once told me something about his ancestors who rode the outlaw trail in Arkansas.

While some people are reluctant to open up the family closet and reveal a few skeletons, Royal is eager to talk about his distant kin. "George and Matthew Kimes once shot it out with the Sallisaw sheriff, killed him and got away. They were famous outlaws and very smart. They were men that wouldn't bend to the government and laws of the day."  He goes on to call them flamboyant, and adds, "If I was born back then I might've done the same. I don't believe in compromise. I don't believe in giving up half of something to get something else."

He paused, then went on. "They had a mean streak in 'em, but Uncle Roy was an awesome guy who'd do anything for you if he liked you. If he didn't, well…" A shrug finished the thought. "They were men and women living in tough times taking on tough ways. The Great Depression made them that way. But they respected lawmen and to a certain degree the law respected them."

Arkansas bred some other locally famous Great Depression outlaws, men of this breed who saw no other recourse except breaking the law to feed their families. After January 16, 1920, when the Volstead Act was enacted making the entire country "dry," the accepted money making crop soon became moon-shining. This occupation often turned these successful businessmen into outlaws in the eyes of the sheriff and his deputies. But it was a moneymaking proposition on both sides. The law would arrest them, lay on a big fine and break up their stills. Within a week or two, the boys were back in business with a new still in a new location. After a while, the law would raid them once more, smash the stills, drag them to court and the endless circle would continue.

The Kimes Boys, Matt and George, actually began their crime sprees west of Arkansas in Oklahoma during this time. And bank robbing was in fashion during the Roaring Twenties. But they weren't alone, for it was the age of bootleggers, corrupt politicians and gangsters. Even cops and professional men like doctors and lawyers were corrupt. Morals were at an all time low all over America. In the Ozarks where poverty ran rampant, many young men turned into outlaws.

Automobiles and machine guns made it possible to hit a bank, speed away, gunning down anyone who got in the way. It is written that the Kimes boys' outlaw days began when they were young and they stole candy from a little country store in Arkansas. It is told that Matthew was seven and George a bit older. Worse, the matter was settled by harried parents who offer the kindly storekeeper a case of eggs, to which he gave each of the boys a package of gum.

According to Michael Koch, author of The Kimes Gang, available on Kindle, the boys were brought up to become outlaws. Their father ran a still, their mother grew corn. George shoveled mash and peddled white lightning for his dad. The boys went to school at the old "88" school and to church at Kenner Chapel near Rudy, Arkansas. They were both baptized by Rev. Ben Pixley.

Obviously, taking to the waters didn't help. The family moved across the border into Oklahoma, where their wild ways continued. In his book Koch doesn't mention Roy Kimes, who obviously came from another branch of this extensive family and remained in Arkansas where this derring-do continued. My Dad, who came to Arkansas from Texas when he was 16, used to tell stories of these outlandish Kimes boys. According to local writer, Dusty Richards, Roy was killed in a pickup truck accident. By 1926 Matthew and George were notorious outlaws in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and they were eventually sent off to prison for their dirty deeds.

Matt died Dec 14, 1945 at the age of 40. George continued his life of crime until he went to prison. He was paroled from McAlester in May of 1957, claiming to be a changed man. He said his wife helped him find religion and that changed his life. After one more scrape with the law for which he was found innocent, he died Jan. 3, 1970 in Carmichael, California. The Kimes family cemetery is located in Van Buren, Arkansas.

It was nothing for local residents to protect these outlaws, from Jesse and Frank James and Belle Starr and her gang in the 1800s to the Kimes boys, Bonnie and Clyde and and Pretty Boy Floyd during the Depression. All would eagerly be hidden out in someone's barn or a cave, or at the least not spoken of out loud when the deputies were around. In return some of the loot, earned by bank and train robberies, or selling moonshine, was shared with locals who kept quiet. That was just the way it was in those days, in the Ozarks of Arkansas.

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HELL ON THE BORDER

In an earlier post I mentioned the book, Hell on the Border, a History of the Great Court at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The original author is unknown, the present copies were published by Frank L. Van Eaton of Stockton, California in 1953 and later republished by Hell on the Border Publishing Co., Fort Smith, Arkansas, no date.

The existence of this court, and Judge Parker and the U.S. Marshal's Service stationed on the very edge of the Indian Nation, in itself puts the state of Arkansas in the wild west. While folks on the delta raised cotton and lived in plantations and owned slaves, this part of the state existed under the reign of outlaws and the men who hunted them down, equally vicious in their own way. Their actions made for conditions much like those in the far west. Places like Dodge City, Deadwood and Cheyenne had nothing on Fort Smith and the rugged Boston Mountain settlements like Fayetteville.

A newspaperman once wrote, after visiting Fayetteville, that it was an untamed, wild town.

My copy of Hell on the Border, given to me by a treasured friend, does have a photo of Colonel Jacob Yoes,and the cut under the picture says "...the one who cleaned up the last of the Tough Gangs." I've never learned why the later copies of this fabulous historical book do not contain his photo. I only heard that he himself insisted it be removed. The book is very rare.

Perhaps because of the information contained therein, Yoes wanted to be separated from it. The stories are graphic and indicative of the way times were in the old west. Perhaps Jacob wanted his beloved Arkansas to be looked upon with less rancor. But, like the kids say today, "it is what it is." I, for one, do not agree with revisionists who want to leave out what they don't like about history. But of course, we will never know the exact and precise truth of some of the incidents, for even those involved often tell different versions.

The introduction states, "Hell on the Border is an important book...because in its own crude way, it presents details of some of the bloodiest, cruelest crimes ever committed in a new country where even the cruel elements could hardly be so viciously cruel..."  An eastern journalist visited Fort Smith and Indian Territory in the hectic days and went home to write, "There is no God West of Fort Smith."

After explaining the famous court, Judge Parker and hangman George Maledon, the author goes on to tell stories of men like E.C. Boudinot, Thomas Boles and an ex-jailer by the name of Berry. Then he's off and running, with in-depth stories of early cases with titles like "His Body Split with an Axe," "Hired to Kill for Ten Dollars," "A Trio of Bad Men," "Spared the Rod and Spoiled the Child." And so the tales continue. About Cherokee Bill, the infamous Buck gang and an intriguing title which I'll need to read, "Romance and Strategy Combined."

The book contains a photo of the second Fort and the wall before it was torn down. It's dated 1842, very early for decent photography, and unusual that this one survived the years.


I sense, in the brittle and yellowing pages, stories that would make great novels. And that sounds like a fine idea.

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THE WILD WEST MEETS THE GENTLE SOUTH

                                               Charles Wellington Talley, Civil War Soldier

This blog has been static for a while, yet still attracts readers and comments, so I'm going to begin to post here again when I have a story to share about Arkansas and its heritage that combines the wild West and the gentle South.

Near the Western border of our state the Arkansas/Missouri Railroad cuts south through the Boston Mountains, just about the wildest most rugged part of any journey made even today. This is the original route of the Frisco Railroad that first cut through these mountains in 1882. As a visitor, you can ride in an old restored passenger car from Springdale to historic Van Buren,. There the original depot remains and it's been turned into a museum. Inside is the teletype key which my grandfather used to send messages. When riding the train, remnants of the telegraph wires are visible here and there against the background of the soaring bridges of Interstate 540.

In Van Buren there was once a ferry across the Arkansas River to Fort Smith. When the Butterfield stage ran its route south from St. Louis, then west into California, the stage crossed the river on that ferry. Twenty-four days the trip took. Imagine that. A post about the Butterfield can be found on this blog. The background photo seen here is an actual shot I took a few years ago of a portion of the Butterfield route through the Bostons.

Not far to the West of that railroad lay Indian Territory where all the baddest of the outlaws fled after doing their dirty work in Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas. And down in Fort Smith Judge Isaac Parker held power over the oldest law enforcement agency in the United States. The U.S. Marshals Service was commissioned by President George Washington. These tough lawmen were sent into the "Indian Nation," oft times alone, to bring back these outlaws, and 252 marshals and deputies died in the line of duty. Many of the captured bad men were tried and 79 were actually hung. The original gallows was demolished after the final execution July 30, 1896. The gallows there now was built on the original site in 1981-82. The fully restored courtroom and jail  remain there today in the Ft. Smith  National Historic Site.

An anonymous book called "Hell on the Border" told the story of that jail which, because of its rugged conditions was actually known as Hell on the Border. Arkansas author Charles Portis took his famous book, "True Grit" from the information in that book. Marshal Jacob Yoes was originally pictured in "Hell on the Border," but later editions removed the photo at his request.

Created in 1817 with the goal of settling battles between the Osage and Cherokee Indian tribes, Fort Smith became the home of the federal court in 1872 and the Army lit out. The city became the last fortress of justice west of St. Louis. The coverage area these brave deputies patrolled was approximately 75,000 square miles in a land known as a haven for outlaws seeking to escape that justice.

Arkansas was equally split when secession began, but finally did split from the Union, making the state a bloody battleground between Federal and Confederate forces. The Southern influence in the state is evident in its architecture, food and culture. Thus we are both Southern and Western, which maybe isn't such a bad thing. The manners of the South mix with the cowboy and outlaw demeanor to make for an interesting place to live.

Readers might also like to visit my other blogs. For Writers; For Readers;