Fort Smith Double Execution of August 29, 1879

Dr. Henri Stewart and William Elliott “Colorado Bill” Wiley were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on August 29, 1879, for separate murders committed in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Henri Stewart was born on October 23, 1848, at Mayhew in the Choctaw Nation, the son of Charles F. Stewart, who was a white man, and Tryphena Wall Stewart, who was one-eighth Choctaw. His mother died in 1849, and his father remarried. When his father died in 1855, Stewart’s stepmother moved the family to Connecticut. Stewart earned a medical degree at Yale University and then served as a doctor on several ships that sailed around the globe. A newspaper wrote that Stewart “is fair complexioned, blue-eyed, with dark brown hair, inclined to curl, and rather a good-looking man.”

By 1874, he had moved back to the Choctaw Nation and became involved in “introducing whiskey into the Indian Territory.” He and his cousin Wiley Stewart were arrested for that crime in mid-1878, and he asked Dr. John B. Jones to provide bond for them. Jones refused.

On August 9, 1878, the cousins encountered Jones at the railroad depot at Caddo in the Indian Territory. After exchanging words, Henri Stewart pulled his pistol and shot Jones in the hand. Wiley Stewart then fired a round with a shotgun, fatally wounding Jones. Henri Stewart was later arrested at Carthage, Missouri, and taken to Fort Smith. His cousin apparently was never apprehended.

William Elliott Wiley was born at Carthage, Ohio, on January 28, 1847. He was a teenage student when he enlisted for Civil War service in Company F of the Fifth Illinois Cavalry Regiment at Olney, Illinois, on December 14, 1863, and was listed as being five feet eight inches tall with dark hair, hazel eyes, and a light complexion. He mustered out of service on October 27, 1865.

After the war, Wiley drifted west, going by William Elliott to avoid causing his family embarrassment as he engaged in misdeeds. By 1879, he was widely known as “Colorado Bill” and was living in Muskogee, Indian Territory, with Ruth Shepherd at her “bar and house of prostitution.” On February 3, 1879, David Brown and Ross Cunningham came to the bar and “drank freely.” Brown fell asleep in Shepherd’s bed, and when Cunningham tried to wake him, Brown grabbed his companion’s pistol from its holster. Wiley, who said, “No d—-d man could sleep with his woman,” opened fire, shooting Cunningham in the leg and hitting Brown three times in the head and chest, with the final shot fired at close range in the brain. Wiley was arrested the next day.

Both men were tried at Judge Isaac Parker’s U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in May 1879. Stewart was convicted on May 16, and Wiley’s “jury delivered a verdict of guilty after only a few moments of deliberation.” Parker sentenced them both to hang on August 29, 1879, and on August 21 they received word that President Rutherford B. Hayes “has declined to interfere” in their executions.

Both men were ministered by Presbyterian and Methodist ministers while they awaited their hanging, and Stewart’s half brother came to Fort Smith with a “fine casket.” The two men were escorted from the jail at 2:10 p.m. on August 29 and escorted to the gallows before a small group of witnesses. When asked if they had last words, Stewart said to thank “God for giving him such a speedy means of passing from this life to eternity.” Wiley stated that he killed Brown in self-defense and then said to be sure to “break our necks boys—don’t punish us.”

The trap door was opened at 2:20 p.m., and the two men were declared dead twenty minutes later. Hangman George Maledon later called Stewart “the nicest man I ever pulled a black cap over.…He displayed extraordinary nerve all the way through, asked no special favors, and complained at nothing.”

Both men are 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.

“An Awful Adieu.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1879, p. 2.

“Dr. Henri Stewart.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/109022546/henri-stewart (accessed December 4, 2025).

Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls. Office of the Illinois Secretary of State. https://apps.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilMusterSearch.do (accessed December 4, 2025).

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835-1966.” PhD diss., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 2012. Online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed December 4, 2025).

“Sure to Meet Sam.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 17, 1879, p. 4.

“Two Necks to Stretch.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 22, 1879, p. 5.

“Two Tragedies.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 29, 1879, p. 1.

“William Elliott ‘Colorado Bill’ Wiley.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/226068728/william-elliot-wiley (accessed December 4, 2025).