Two Men Burned at the Stake -- January 8, 2023

San Francisco Call, 09-January-1898

125 years ago today, on 08-January-1898, a mob of whites kidnapped two Seminole men and burned them by the stake. In 1893 Henry (Harry) Smith, an African-American was tortured and burned to death in Paris, Texas. The Rufus Buck Gang was a group of Creek Native Americans and African Americans who went on a robbery and murder spree in 1895-1896.

TWO MEN

BURNED AT

THE STAKE

A Mob's Awful Vengeance

Upon the Slayers of

a Woman.

Indians Taken From Their Home

to Expiate in a Most Horrible

Manner a Most Horrible Crime.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Jan. 8. -- A special to the Gazette from Fort Smith, says: Justice in a more horrible form than that meted out to Harry Smith at Paris, Tex., was administered by a mob on the Oklahoma border on Friday night to J. Marcus McGeisy and Palmer Simpson, two Seminole Indians. They were charged with murder, their victim being Mrs. James Simmons, a respectable farmers wife living in Oklahoma.

The crime was a most revolting one and the criminals were punished in a most revolting manner. Mrs. Simmons was assaulted and murdered. The body was horribly mutilated. The crime resembled in atrocity those perpetrated in the Creek Nation by the infamous Buck gang, the members of which were hanged at Fort Smith two years ago. The murder and mutilation of Mrs. Simmons so enraged the neighborhood that nearly the entire populace turned out to hunt down and punish the guilty parties. The trail led to the home of McGeisy, near Maud, a small town in the Seminole Nation, where McGeisy and Simpson were arrested.

After securing their prisoners the mob set fire to McGeisy' s house and barn and did not leave until they saw all of his earthly possessions reduced to ashes.

The prisoners were then carried back across the line into Oklahoma Territory, and near the scene of their crime where they were excuted by Judge Lynch's order in the most horrible manner that human minds and human hands could devise. They were burned at the stake.

The Indians met their doom with the usual stoicism of their race. After life was extinct the mob allowed the fires to die down, and they then quietly dispersed to their several homes. No secret was made of the fact that ' the Indians had been burned to death, and this morning their charred bodies, burned beyond recognition, were found lying in the ashes of their funeral pyre. Everybody in the vicinity seems to know that the Indians were executed for the murder of Mrs. Simmons, but everybody appears to be entirely ignorant of the individuals who composed the mob.

Information was received here of the terrible affair from persons who saw the charred bodies of the Indians. Great uneasiness exists along the Oklahoma border, and the impression prevails that much more bloodshed will follow the work of the mob.

This is the third instance of mob violence reported in the Indian Territory in the last twenty-five years, and by a singular coincidence the mob in each case tame from points outside the Territory.