Fort Smith Sextuple Execution of September 3, 1875

Six men were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on September 3, 1875, for murders committed in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). They were the first executions conducted during Judge Isaac C. Parker’s tenure at the U.S. District Court for the Western District.

William J. Whittington, age thirty, of Pickens County in the Chickasaw Nation was convicted of first-degree murder for the February 7, 1875, slaying of his neighbor J. J. Turner. The two had spent the day drinking at a “dram shop” and were returning home when Whittington pushed Turner off his horse and cut his throat, stealing $100 from him and fleeing. He was captured in Texas and convicted on June 16, 1875.

Tennessee native Daniel H. Evans, age twenty, was riding from Texas with William R. Seabolt and killed him near Eufala in the Choctaw Nation, stealing his horse and boots, which were used as evidence to convict him. When Parker sentenced him to hang on September 3, 1875, “Evans bowed and said flippantly, ‘Thankye,’ turned, and began laughing and joking.”

Twenty-year-old Black man Edmund “Heck” Campbell of Scullyville, Choctaw Nation, and his half brother Frank Bulter were convicted of killing farmer Lawson Ross and his mistress Maria McKenna (both African American) in the Cherokee Nation on February 18, 1875, either “after an argument at a prayer meeting” or to avenge something Ross had done to their parents. Both were sentenced to be executed on September 3, 1875, but Butler would be killed during an escape attempt before then.

James H. Moore, age twenty-seven, of Johnson County, Missouri, was described as having “a remarkable history, so far as adventure is concerned—chiefly as a murderer and highwayman, and his horse stealing proclivities.” Moore and another man had stolen some horses in Washington County, Arkansas, and were pursued into the Indian Territory. The posse caught up with them at a creek near the Red River, and in a shootout they killed one man and badly wounded another. The two men were captured and jailed in Fort Smith in October 1874. Moore was sentenced to hang; his accomplice escaped from jail but was later killed in Indian Territory.

Smoker Mankiller, an eighteen-year-old Cherokee man, was convicted of killing William Short on September 1, 1874, about forty miles north of Fort Smith. Mankiller and his brother had encountered Short and asked to see his gun. Mankiller shot him with his own gun and then stabbed him repeatedly. He was convicted of first-degree murder on June 2, 1875.

Samuel Fooy, age twenty-eight, born in Fort Smith, who was one-quarter Cherokee, was convicted of killing “barefoot school teacher” John Emmett Naff after Naff was paid for teaching in a school near Tahlequah in the Cherokee Nation. Naff disappeared around July 17, 1872. His skeletal remains were found about a year later. Fooy had told several people that he had killed the teacher, and his confessions and circumstantial evidence led to a guilty verdict for first-degree murder.

On September 3, 1875, “after a hearty breakfast all around,” the six men were taken from the jail to walk two-by-two the 150 yards to the gallows under the supervision of marshal James F. Fagan, who had “a guard of about sixty men, armed with heavy repeaters, formed around the scaffold,” while shotgun-wielding horsemen patrolled outside of the parade ground where the hangings would take place. The spectators “numbered not less than five thousand but all were quiet and orderly.” Reporters from Little Rock (Pulaski County), St. Louis, and Kansas City, as well as newspapermen from northern and eastern cities, covered the hanging.

Ascending the scaffold at 10:00 a.m., “not one of them made a confession,” the Arkansas Gazette reported. “Moore said he was a game man, and would die game. Fooy said he was as anxious to go as the spectators were to see him go. Whittington and Evans refused to say anything. Campbell and Mankiller declared they were innocent.”

Following religious services by both Catholic and Protestant clergymen and the singing of “Jesus Lover of My Soul,” “Come Let Us Join our Friends Above,” and “Nearer My God to Thee,” the six men’s arms were pinioned, black caps were placed over their heads, and the trap door opened at 11:00 a.m. They were declared dead ten minutes later.

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 Fatal Trap.” Arkansas Gazette, September 4, 1875, p. 1.

“Hanged.” Arkansas Gazette, September 7, 1875, p. 1.

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

Southern Standard, September 11, 1875, p. 2, col. 2.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas