Fort Smith Quadruple Execution of September 8, 1876

Four Native American men were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on September 8, 1876, after being convicted of murdering white people in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Sinker Wilson, a Cherokee described as “a medium-sized man, weighing about 130 pounds, 24 years old and five feet five inches tall,” was convicted on December 2, 1867, in the U.S. District Court in Van Buren (Crawford County) for the murder of Datus Cowan, “a white boy,” when Wilson was a teenager. Sentenced to hang on February 7, 1868, he escaped from jail on January 15, 1868, and returned to the Cherokee Nation. He was unnoticed until April 1876, when a neighbor suspected him of setting fire to his house and turned him in. Wilson was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, again convicted on June 2, 1876, and sentenced to hang on September 8. On the gallows, “in his dying statement he declared that he was innocent of the murder, and charged its commission to his brother.”

Samuel Peters, a Choctaw man, was twenty-eight years old, stood five feet eight inches tall, and weighed about 150 pounds. On October 15, 1875, he went to the home of James Hanson, who was away on business and had previously accused Peters of stealing from him. Hanson’s wife, Charity, was home, and when Peters attacked her with a knife, she “made a desperate struggle to save her life” but was found “lying in the middle of the room on the floor in a pool of blood…with her baby four months old in her arms.” Peters was arrested and convicted of the murder and sentenced to hang on September 8, 1876. While a St. Louis newspaper reported that he confessed to the killing a few days before his execution, Peters had a letter written in both Choctaw and English published in the Atoka Vindicator several weeks after his death in which he proclaimed his innocence.

John Valley, a member of the Peoria tribe, was twenty-six years old, weighed 160 pounds, and stood five feet ten inches tall. In the winter of 1873, a white man named Eli Hackett and Valley’s brother both claimed an annuity for Hackett’s daughter by his Native American wife. She had been staying with Valley’s brother, but Hackett ultimately was awarded the money. John Valley went to a home where Hacket was visiting and shot him, inflicting a mortal wound, after which Valley said he “would learn him how to cheat his brother anymore.” Valley was not indicted until May 9, 1876, but was convicted in Judge Isaac Parker’s court on May 20 and sentenced to hang on September 8.

Osee Sanders, a Cherokee man, was convicted in the August 1875 murder of Thomas Carlisle, a white man married to a Cherokee woman. Originally sentenced to hang on April 21, 1876, Sanders received two reprieves before facing the gallows on September 8.

A St. Louis newspaper reporting on the hangings wrote that “the number present at the execution was very large. Wagon loads of people commenced pouring into town on the evening of the previous day, and the streets were literally jammed.”

The four men were taken from the jail “under a strong guard of deputy marshals” at 11 a.m. on September 8, 1876. “They were seemingly unconscious of their situation” as they climbed the gallows, where the death warrants were read and religious exercises were held. “The prisoners bad farewell to all; the ropes were adjusted; the black caps drawn over their faces, and at 11:55 o’clock the drop fell and their souls were launched from earth into eternity.” The Arkansas Gazette reported that “no accidents occurred and everything passed off quietly.” All four men were declared dead within thirteen minutes.

A newspaper in the Indian Territory wrote a few days later that “fifteen executions in a year by the sentence of the same court, and on the same gallows[,] is making good Indians, whites and negroes fast enough to satisfy the most ardent advocate of the gallows.”

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 Executions at Ft. Smith.” Eufaula [Oklahoma] Indian Journal, September 14, 1876, p. 2.

“The Halter.” St. Louis Republican, September 9, 1876, pp. 1, 2.

“Samuel Peters.” [Atoka, Oklahoma] Vindicator, September 27, 1876, p. 5.

“The Scaffold.” Daily Arkansas Gazette, September 9, 1876, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas