HERO JOHN MOUNT

In 1881 Fayetteville, Arkansas was a small village, and one with a reputation of being as wild as any town “out west.”
Much of Fayetteville was burned by soldiers on both sides during the Civil War. But the beginnings of this tale go back before the war. Three brothers John, George and James Reed, sons of Richard Reed, all natives of the county, were known to be industrious and respected. John went off to war and returned a quiet man when sober but a bully when drunk. After defying authorities on more than one occasion, he became known as a bad man.
That reputation would be strained to the breaking point when Sheriff John R. Sorrell arrested a close friend of the Reeds in February of 1879. Rutherford failed to pay his bond and so the law was on the verge of jailing him when good friend John Reed arrived. In his bully phase, he demanded his friend’s release, yet refused to come up with his bail.
The jailer opened the cell door to throw the prisoner in and Reed hit him on the head with a bottle of brandy. Deputy Sheriff Sorrell shot Reed and was arrested and charged with homicide. At his trial he was set free. John’s brother George swore he’d avenge John’s subsequent death, but since George wasn’t of the same pursuasion as his wilder brother John, no one thought much of it.
It was well known that he feared Marshal Stirman, going so far as to beg him not to shoot him if he ever got in trouble. Of course, Stirman wouldn’t make such a promise, so Reed later drew down on the Marshal while mounted and was promptly dragged off his horse and beaten by Stirman. Nothing more came of this, so everyone forgot about Reed’s promise to avenge the death of his brother. But this wouldn’t be the end of this fracas. Some people just don’t forget when they think they’ve been wronged.
Marshal Stirman retired in 1881 and was replaced by William Patton, whereupon George told friends he was going to try out the new marshal. Obviously he didn’t fear Patton like he had Stirman. So one day he rode into town and deliberately picked a fight with Patton, drew on him and was shot and killed by the marshal who was promptly acquitted of any charges. Now we have two Reed boys killed and friends and family up in arms demanding someone be punished. They became so vocal about it that Patton feared for his life.
Patton believed he would be shot down on the street and did everything he could think of to prevent it. But on a dark Saturday night, about 9 o’clock, July 2, 1881, while Patton and his deputy John Mount were talking on the public square, shots came out of the dark and both were instantly killed. Though no one could ever prove who the assassins were, everyone was sure they were friends of Reed.
Thomas J. Churchill, Governor of Arkansas offered an award of $500 for the arrest and conviction of the assassins. No one was ever arrested.
Meanwhile, Mount’s family received an anonymous bundle of money and a note that he wasn’t meant to be killed. The killers were never identified.
In looking into Mount’s service record, he was the true hero of this piece. He served as a private in Co. G, 16th Arkansas Infantry from the fall of 1861 until the end of that brutal war in April, 1865. He enlisted at the age of 17, was captured at Port Hudson, Louisiana on July 9, 1863. After the war he married Catherine E. when he was 25 and she was 22. When he was killed he left behind his wife and four children, the youngest about one year old.
In those days a woman left in this situation had few choices, the best of which was to find another man to marry. Often it was a man who had been widowed himself and left with small children. Some women would find menial jobs they could do, such as taking in washing and ironing, cleaning houses, and the like. With smaller children and nothing resembling day care, they could not go out and find work, scarce as it was for women.In 1903, after moving closer to her brother for support, Catherine applied for a widow’s pension on the basis of her husband’s service in the army of the Confederate States. Her application was approved.
In those days pensions ranged from $10 a month to $40, scarcely any more. It was not only men who were heroes in the old west, but the women who supported them, bore their children and kept a good home. And like Catherine, who carried on when widowed.

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.