Fort Smith Double Execution of October 10, 1873

Two Cherokee men, Tu-na-yee and Young Wolf, were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on October 10, 1873, for allegedly murdering a pair of trappers in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Tu-na-yee and Young Wolf, both veterans of Union regiments in the Civil War, lived near Horse Creek in the Cherokee Nation. In late 1873, Young Wolf went to Tu-na-yee’s cabin and told him about a pair of trappers working on the Grand River and suggested that they kill and rob them. They set off with each carrying “government muskets.”

When they came upon the sleeping trappers, Young Wolf shot and wounded one. After twice telling Tu-na-yee to fire, Young Wolf shot and killed the second trapper and then finished the other man off with the butt of his musket. They dumped the bodies of the men, who were never identified, in the river. The murders gained them fifty cents, thirteen steel traps, two pairs of boots, a broken pistol, a shotgun, two axes, some pots and pans, and two canoes, one of which was “of no account.”

Tu-na-yee and Young Wolf, who did not speak English, were apparently arrested in June 1873, and both confessed, expressing remorse for their acts, confessions translated “by an intelligent old Negro interpreter, Edmond Ross,” and printed in the Fort Smith New Era on September 3, 1873. They were tried for first-degree murder in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas on June 23 and convicted, “the jury not being out over five minutes.” They were sentenced to hang on October 10, 1873.

The condemned killers were baptized by a Cherokee Methodist preacher on August 28, 1873.

On the morning of their execution, they “were led from the old guardhouse, halting at the old jail to bid farewell to their chums.” Accompanied by preachers Young Pig and Walking Stick, along with George Maledon and two other marshals, they walked to the gallows and “manifested neither fear, care, nor concern; and ascended the steps with as much nonchalance as if going to a ball-play.”

The two made a lengthy speech from the platform, which was later translated into English and published in the Cherokee Advocate. Both men warned against living a life of crime and said that “all our desire now is to seek forgiveness for our crime we have committed against Heaven, and to prepare ourselves to go where temptations are unknown, and our awful crimes will not be remembered against us.”

At about 2:30 p.m., black caps were placed over their heads, ropes were put around their necks, and “two more souls were launched into eternity.”

For additional information:
Akins, Jerry. Hangin’ Times in Fort Smith: A History of Executions in Judge Parker’s Court. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2012.

“The State at Large.” Arkansas Gazette, June 29, 1873, p. 3.

“The State at Large.” Arkansas Gazette, August 9, 1873, p. 3.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas