Ned Christie: Cherokee Outlaw

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The deputy marshals kept demanding the surrender of the outlaw and his two confederates, and promised them good treatment, but met with refusal and defiance every time, the Evening Gazette said. Christie, according to a much later account, laughed at them, for he was winning. He and the wounded Arch Wolf thought it comical that the government soldiers would go to all that trouble just to capture a couple of poor Indians. The Arkansas Gazette noted, Even the women who had come out of the house made sport of the officers for their audacity for trying to capture Christie.

Cap White sent Sheriff Knight to fetch Watt Christie to entreat his son to give up. Watt refused. He said he could see no evil in his son. Mary then told the lawmen there was a baby in the fortified house, but Knight doubted her words . He snatched at Mary’s apron and five boxes of .44-caliber cartridges tumbled out. Mary ran off into the brush.

The deputy marshals kept firing at long range until the cannon arrived. It was set on a post-oak stump across Bitting Creek in the field near Christie’s old homesite. The deputies fired 38 rounds at the cabin, but the cannonballs bounced off the stout walls. Finally, it was decided to use a heavier charge of powder. But the charge was too heavy, said an eyewitness, and the cannon was blown to bits.

The fight continued until dark. Several deputies were wounded. The lawmen were getting nowhere, so they decided to use dynamite. Shortly after the moon went down, Charlie Copeland ran up and placed a dozen sticks of dynamite with a long fuse beside the house. At daylight on November 4 the deputies lit the fuse.

The resulting explosion, according to the Arkansas Gazette, wrecked the house and knocked out one corner. The house began to burn. Christie and the others inside were once again asked to surrender but refused and kept up the fight. Finally, they retreated to the root cellar. Then the roof fell in. Arch Wolf’s hair caught fire, and burning timbers struck Charles Hare. Young Charley Grease was probably already dead.

Thick smoke from the burning house enveloped the clearing. While the blaze was at its fiercest, the deputies saw Christie emerge from under the floor, firing at the nearest deputies. In the smoke and confusion he almost got away. But then young Deputy Marshal Wess Bowman heard a yell and saw Christie running at him and two other deputies, firing his rifle as he came. The deputies returned the fire, riddling Christie’s body with bullets. In the sudden stillness, as the deputies gathered around the fallen Christie, Sam Maples ran up and, in a frenzy of revenge, emptied his revolver into Christie. The Indian women waiting on the knoll above the ford trilled in mourning. The sun rose, and a light wind scattered the drifting smoke. The officers found badly burned Charles Hare trying to escape and arrested him.

First reports were that the body of Wolf, who had been wounded early in the morning, was burned to a crisp in the building. Later it was determined the remains were of the boy, Charley Grease. Arch Wolf had in fact lost all his hair in the fire but had escaped and fled north. He would later be arrested in Chicago.

The deputies strapped Christie’s body to the door of his cabin and carried him to their camp. A photographer, who was in the crowd that had gathered, took pictures. The deputies hauled Christie’s corpse to Fort Smith to collect their reward. The body, according to the Fort Smith Call, was placed in the front entrance of the jail and the public were allowed to see the disfigured tenement of clay so recently occupied by a more contorted soul.

More pictures were taken, and Judge Parker personally congratulated each man who had accompanied Christie’s corpse to Fort Smith. The body remained on public display until it was placed on the 4 p.m. train to Fort Gibson. Ned’s father claimed the body at the fort and brought his son to Rabbit Trap for burial in the family cemetery. Gus York received the $1,000 reward at the end of December, but after paying expenses and dividing the rest among posse members, he and the others each received just $74.

Many in Indian Territory felt safer now that Ned Christie was dead. Others considered his death a tragedy, believing he was a peaceable man who had desired nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy his family. Those who knew him best felt there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Charles Hare and Arch Wolf were brought to trial and convicted of resisting arrest and intent to kill. They both did time. Little Arch became depressed behind bars and, on August 25, 1895, was admitted to a hospital for the insane. He didn’t get out until 1907. James Christie was shot and killed by an assassin near his home in July 1893, eight months after the death of his father. His head was reportedly severed from his body.

With Ned Christie dead, the Deputy Marshal Dan Maples murder case never came to trial. It was not until 1918 that the truth in the matter became public knowledge. In a story in the Daily Oklahoman it was revealed that Tahlequah blacksmith Richard A. (Dick) Humphrey, a former slave adopted into the Cherokee Nation, had witnessed the murder.

On his way home from work on the night of the tragedy, Humphrey had started across a footlog below the wagon camp at Big Spring. In the moonlight, he saw Bub Trainor stooped over Ned Christie, who was passed out in the bushes. Trainor took off Christie’s dark jacket and slipped it on over his white shirt. With revolver in hand, Trainor stood behind a tree. Humphrey knew then there was going to be some desperate deed attempted. Like others in the town, Humphrey was afraid of Trainor, so he stood hidden from Trainor’s view and watched. What he saw was the assassination of Maples.

Fear of Bub Trainor had sealed Dick Humphrey’s lips at the time. Trainor died in 1896. He was, according to one newspaper report, killed at Talala on Christmas night, by 4 negroes. It was a plot, and 4 shotguns did the work. Even then, Humphrey was still afraid to tell what he knew for fear of Trainor’s gang. But he never forgot and wanted to set the record straight. He was 87 years old when his opportunity came with a Daily Oklahoman reporter 26 years after Christie’s death.

Humphrey said that after Trainor shot Maples, Trainor ran to Christie, threw his coat over him, shook him vigorously, and told him to get up. Christie, still half asleep, got to his feet, walked over to a clump of small trees, lay down and fell asleep again. Trainor rushed up the slope, nearly running into Mack Peel, who was racing to the scene with gun in hand. Humphrey, terrified by what he had seen, fled in the opposite direction.

The day after the shooting, deputy marshals investigating the crime scene found the broken neck from a whiskey bottle near the tree where the assassin had hidden and fired upon Maples. In the broken neck was a strip of cloth from Nancy Shell’s apron. A short distance away, they found Christie’s jacket with the shattered remains of the bottle in the pocket. Based on this circumstantial evidence, the respected legislator Ned Christie had been blamed for Deputy Marshal Maples’ death and his life made a living hell.

This article was written by Bonnie Speer and originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Wild West.

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