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Cherokee Bill
Cherokee Bill
"This is as good a day
to die as any."
Cherokee
Bill, March 17, 1896, as he stepped into the
courtyard at Fort Smith and saw the gallows.
Crawford Goldsby (a.k.a. Cherokee Bill) was born at Fort
Concho, Texas, on Feb. 8, 1876. One of my source has Bill being of mixed
blood, being part white , Hispanic, and black. Another
source has reported to me that Bill was of African, European and Indian
ancestry. His father was a mulatto from Alabama. Bill was homeless at the
age of seven when his parents separated. An old black woman, named Amanda
Foster, took him in and raised him at Fort Gibson, I. T.
At age twelve, Goldsby shot and killed his first man.
It was his brother-inlaw, who told him to feeds some hogs. Because of his
age he was not prosecuted. As a teenager Goldsby took to petty thievery.
He got into fights regular, and when he could not settle them with his
fists he would go for his guns. By the age of fifteen he had became an
expert shot.
In 1894 he shot and wounded Jake Lewis while attending
a dance at Fort Gibson. The two men had got into a fight over a woman,
and as Goldsby was getting the worst of the fight, he drew his six-gun
and shot Luis. Goldsby didn't hang to answer to the law, he took to the
brush. He was charge with assault with intent to kill.
At the age of eighteen, a wanted man on the run, Goldsby
fell in with some of the worst outlaws in the Indian Nations, William and
James Cook. Goldsby was given the nickname "Cherokee Bill" by Bill Cook.
He was with the Cook brothers when a posse cornered the three desperadoes
near Tahlequah, I. T., in June of 1894. Lawmen had a warrant for the arrest
of Jim Cook on a charge of larceny, but when they moved forward to arrest
Cook, all three youths went for their guns. The outlaws were able to drive
the lawmen back and they quickly mounted their horses and made a run for
it, but the posse was hot on their heels. As they were being chased Cherokee
Bill turned in his saddle and fired a shot that killed Deputy Sequoyah
Houston.
After the fight with marshals at Tallequah, Cherokee Bill
used his sister's home, Maud Brown, to hide out from the law. Her husband,
George Brown, a vicious drunkard, took a whip to Maud one day for not responding
fast enough to his orders. While he was beating the woman, Cherokee Bill
walked up behind him and shot him to death. He then rejoined the Cook brothers.
In the summer of 1894, Cherokee Bill robbed the railroad
depot at Nowata, I. T. At the depot he shot and killed station agent Richard
Richards as he went for his gun. Then he waited on the platform for the
next train to arrive. When it did, he ordered the express car to open up.
When conductor Sam Collins opened the door, he order Bill to leave, at
which point Bill shot him in the face and killed him. Then the brake man
came running down the platform, and Bill shot and wounded him. He then
mounted his horse and rode away.
In July of 1894, Cherokee Bill and
the Cook gang performed their only bank robbery by robbing the Lincoln
County Bank in Chandler, OT. During the robbery Bill shot and killed the
town's barber who was trying to raise the alarm that the bank was being
robbed.
That same year, Cherokee Bill and
some of his confederates robbed every store in town of Talala, I. T. It
is said they simply started at one end of town and robbed their way to
the other end of town. They are reported to have repeated this same crime
on another occasion.
Later that year of 1894, Cherokee
Bill and the Cook Gang robbed the Shufeldt & Son store at Lenapal,
I. T. During the robbery Cherokee Bill shot and killed Ernest Melton,
an innocent by-stander. It was for this murder that Judge Isaac Parker
placed a $1,300 reward on Cherokee Bill, payable dead or alive.
Deputy Marshal W. C. Smith learned that Bill was infatuated
with Maggie Glass, a cousin of Isaac "Ike" Rogers, who had been a deputy
for Smith on several occasions when posses were needed. Smith arranged
for Roger's to lure Bill to Roger's home to meet the girl. Bill showed
up at the Roger's the evening of Jan. 29, 1895, and after dinner as the
night wore on he fell asleep. Rogers and a neighbor, Clifton Scales, jumped
Bill as he laid asleep and tied him up and took him to Fort Smith.
On Feb. 26, 1895, Cherokee Bill was tried for the murder
of Melton by jury before Judge Isaac Parker. He was found guilty. Judge
Parker sentenced him to hang on June 25, 1895. Cherokee Bill seemed unconcerned
about the sentence, and joked that no one would ever put a noose around
his neck. His lawyer, J. Warren Reed, managed to file several appeals that
delayed the execution date.
In the meantime, Bill was working on his "appeal". Sherman
Vann, a trusty at the jail, had smuggled a six-gun into Bill, which he
hid in a hole in the wall of his cell. On July 27, 1895, Bill attempted
a jail break using the weapon. When the night guards came to lock the prisoners
in their individual cells for the night, he jumped them. Guard Lawrence
Keating reached for his gun and Bill shot him in the stomach. Keating wheeled
and staggered down the corridor. Bill shot him again in the back. Other
guards arrived and were able to keep Bill from escaping. In a spectacular
gun battle that lasted several minutes, neither the guards were able to
enter the jail nor was Bill able to leave his cell. Then another prisoner,
Henry Starr, was able to convince the guard that
he could enter the cell and bring out Bill if they promised not to shoot
him. They reluctantly agreed, and Starr walked down the corridor and entered
Bill's cell, then moments later reappeared with the disarmed killer. (for
more details on the jail break)
Cherokee Bill was quickly tried for the murder of Keating.
He was once again found guilty and sentenced to hang on Dec. 2, 1895. His
lawyer once again filed several appeals, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the verdict in the Keating murder, and a execution date was set for March
17, 1896. On March 17, 1896, Cherokee Bill was led from his cell to the
gallows. As he stood on the gallows with a noose around his neck, he was
asked if he had any final words, he said, "No! I came here to die, not
make a speech." A moment later he was dead. His mother took his body to
Fort Gibson to bury it.
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