Dallas Co., TX - Capt. Sixkiller ***************************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by: Sadie Kennedy USGenWeb Archives. Copyright. All rights reserved http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ***************************************************** CHAPTER OF HOMICIDES IN THE LAND OF THE RED MAN The History of the Sixkiller and Starr Killings---A time-Honored Custom at Muskogee Mr. Sixkiller, The Indian chief of Police who was killed a few days ago at Muskogee, in the Indian Territory, was a captain, and so was a once famous navigator of the Gulf of Mexico. Electric flashes merely passed the words that Sixkiller had been killed with a Six-shooter, and that fact would hardly have been worth relating but for the suggestiveness of the surname of the deceased warrior. But there is generally something behind an Indian killing in the nature of a blood curdling history, and that thing is not lacking in the present case. This is not to be wondered at. With the white man who sails over the ocean of life rigged with the civilization of 2000 years, murder is very often stowed away IN THE FORECASTLE, not far from the anchor; but with the Indian who has been corralled in the nineteenth century it is always on deck and rarely if ever caged. Dr. C. A. Curtis, who is stopping at the Grand Windsor Hotel, was sitting in a barber's chair in Muskogee when Sixkiller was laid out, and from him last night a News reporter learned the following interesting history of the case: The remote cause of the killing was a family feud which sprang up years ago between the families of the Sixkillers and the Vans, and which proved the origin of carving out of the old Cherokee material two new tribes with a penchant for carving one another according to the modern methods of civilized Indian warfare. Between these new formations there was blood upon shirts as the result of frequent feuds out of which the deceased Sixkiller emerged with twelve corpses in his own right, which record ought to make him a chief and the present of a brand new scalping knife. The immediate cause of the killing is thus related: Among the tribe of Vans there was an old man names Milo White, a comparatively harmless Indian addicted to drink and given to boasting about the history and traditions of the Whites when the latter were noble red men, "seeing their God in the clouds and hearing him in the wind." Milo not long ago visited Muskogee and got hold of some fire water which put him in a boastful mood, learning of which Sixkiller proceeded to arrest him. In the scuffle that ensued Sixkiller struck White on the head with a sixshooter. KNOCKING HIS BRAINS OUT, and sending him to the happy hunting grounds. One of the Vans who happened to be on the spot gave Sixkiller a piece of his mind, and the consequence was that Van fell shot through the leg, from the effects of which he died. Then the Vans held a council of war, at which it was concluded to get up a horse race which sometimes is the initial step toward the making of a row with a troublesome fellow in the Indian Territory; and it was further decided to hold the races on the day next preceding Christmas, out of deference to the custom, which, like a bull fight in Spain, has become sanctified by age, of settling matters in Muskogee on Christmas Eve. It was not the Sixkillers blowout, and they did not as a body attend, but the Vans and their families turned out in a body on horseback, Capt. Sixkiller being present by a special invitation to drop around and let bygones be bygones. During the interlude of the races the Vans were warmed up by a row with Deputy United States Marshal, who happened to be nosing around. He surrendered, giving up his arms. They then filed across the street toward Dr. Williams' drug store, where Sixkiller was having some medicine compounded for chills, but as they advanced Sixkiller emerged from the store with the medicine in his hand and unarmed. Addressing him in a kingly tone, some one thereabouts said: "Sam, come here; I want to see you a moment," Someone opened fire on him, one with a 45-caliber revolver, and another person with a shotgun. A ball from the revolver carried death with it to Sixkiller. It entered below the left eye and came out in the neck below the right ear. He fell, and the man with the revolver sent two more balls through his body while he was down. The dying man called for help from the Sixkillers, but they heard him not; he felt for his sixshooter, which had won him a magnificent record among the Sixkillers, but he found it not. He then rose and staggered to a doorstep on which he sat and soon breathed his last, surrounded by a pool of his life blood. Dr. Curtis is also familiar with the death Frank Starr, the husband of Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen and widow of Cole Younger, by whom she bore a son, who is now with her in the shadow of Bushy Mountain, where she reigns a monarch and her fiat is law. Belle is a daisy---a sort of strong minded white woman and bold as Julius Caesar and BEAUTIFUL AS CLEOPATRA. It is related that her beauty captured the heart of a high Indian dignitary, whose wife found out all about it and is raising Cain in the tribe. But how has this beauty been restored again to widowhood? She and Starr had returned from Fort Smith, where they were to answer a severe charge, and had quietly resumed their status quo on the cooling slopes of the mountain. There was a man names Frank West who had incurred Starr's displeasure and with whom he proposed to get even. Meeting West one day, Starr, whose horse had been killed some time before by an official in a legitimate conflict, transferred the death of the horse to West, and hence A QUARREL. "Frank," said he, "why did you kill my horse," and as he asked the question, he commenced pulling his pistol out, seeing which West followed suit, which is the game that they play in Indian Territory. Starr shot West through the neck and then started to run, followed by a bullet from West's six shooter, which passed through his body. Starr continued to run until he came to a small tree, around which he threw his arms, and in that attitude died. West repeated his fire, killing a small Chocktaw boy, after which he, too, died