Fort Smith Double Execution of April 19, 1889

James Mills and Malachi Allen were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on April 19, 1889, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas of murders committed in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

James Mills, described as “a mulatto Indian negro,” and Tom Robbins lived in the home of John Windham and his family in the Seminole Nation. In December 1887, Windham, his thirteen-year-old stepson Phillip Lincoln, Mills, and Robbins went hunting. Without warning, Robbins shot Windham in the back, after which Mills shot him in the mouth and body. Mills and Robbins returned home after warning Lincoln to keep quiet or they would kill him. The next day, though, the boy told a neighbor what had happened. During an attempt to arrest the men, Robbins was mortally wounded, and Mills fled, to be captured in January 1888. At trial, Mills “claimed that Robins [sic] did the killing, and that he had no more to do with it than the boy, but the evidence did not bear him out,” and he was convicted on November 10, 1888. The Arkansas Gazette reported that “no motive for the murder was discovered, the three men having been apparently on the best of terms.”

Malachi Allen, a twenty-five-year-old Black man with a reputation for violence, had attended church in the Chickasaw Nation on July 1, 1888, after which he heard Cy Love, Shadrach Peters, and two other men “engaged in a dispute about a saddle.” Hearing his name mentioned, Allen went to the men “and told them not to mix his name up with the affair.” As they argued, he went to his wagon and grabbed a rifle, killing Love and Peters and shooting at the other two before fleeing. He was captured two days later “by a deputy U.S. marshal and posse after a fierce fight, in which he was shot twice but not killed,” though his shattered arm would be amputated. His attorneys attempted an insanity defense, but a jury took only twenty minutes to find him guilty on January 5, 1889.

On February 2, 1889, Judge Isaac C. Parker sentenced both men to be hanged on April 19, 1889. Allen sought a pardon but learned on April 9 that President Benjamin Harrison “refused to interfere in the case.”

On April 19, a newspaper reported that “both men rested well last night, and ate hearty breakfasts this morning.” Mills had joined the Catholic Church while incarcerated, but it was not until the morning of his execution that Allen was baptized into the Methodist faith. The doomed men and their fellow inmates had short services just before noon, and “a beautiful hymn was sung, in which they all joined, rendering the scene most touching.”

The death warrant was read at 12:10 p.m., and the two walked to the gallows “through a drizzling rain.” Allen “was smoking a cigar, and mounted the scaffold with a smile on his face.” Standing on the trap door, Mills told a deputy to “take my hat and keep it….I is innocent.” Then “the black caps were then drawn over their heads, the noose adjusted with care and the trap sprung” at 12:34 p.m. “The necks of both men were broken by the fall,” a newspaper reported, and “neither of them made a motion after the fall,” while another noted that “Hangman [George] Maledon displayed his usual skill as an executioner.”

Both men were buried in Fort Smith’s Oak Cemetery.

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.

“Died Defiant.” Arkansas Gazette, April 20, 1889, p. 1.

“A Double Hanging at Fort Smith.” St. Louis [Missouri] Globe-Democrat, April 20, 1889, p. 3.

“Killed by a Desperado.” Austin [Texas] Weekly Statesman, July 5, 1888, p. 9.

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835–1966.” PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2012. Online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed June 29, 2026).

“Six Death Sentences.” Arkansas Gazette, February 3, 1889, p. 1.

“Swung off Together.” St. Louis [Missouri] Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1889, p. 2.

“That Pardon.” Arkansas Democrat, April 10, 1889, p. 6.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas