Ned Christie: The Cherokee Legislator Wanted Dead or Alive

Among the famous outlaws of Indian Territory, one name keeps coming up: Ned Christie. Whether he committed the crime he was accused of is still disputed — but if he wasn't the most violent of fugitives, he was certainly one of the hardest to catch. This page draws on a site bulletin from Fort Smith National Historic Site.

Ned Christie. Image from the National Park Service's page.

A rising leader

Christie was born on December 14, 1852, in the Cherokee Nation, into a family of Keetoowah Indians. Six feet, four inches tall, with black hair to his shoulders, he became a blacksmith and gunsmith, and in 1885 he was elected to the Cherokee National Council from the Going Snake District.

Accused of murder

On May 4, 1887, Deputy U.S. Marshal Daniel Maples, who worked for Judge Parker out of Bentonville, had gone to Tahlequah with five men to arrest a wanted criminal. On the way from Tahlequah to their camp, Maples and one of his men were ambushed. Shot several times, he died the next morning.

Suspicion fell on Christie when a companion of his, John Parris, was arrested for the killing and told authorities that Christie had fired the fatal shot. Christie wanted to go to the lawmen at once to clear himself, but a friend persuaded him to hide until he could prove his innocence. He sent word to Judge Parker that he was innocent and asked for bail, to give everyone time to find the real killer. Parker couldn't grant it. Christie gathered armed men around him, fortified his home and posted sentries for miles around.

He was now wanted dead or alive, with a reward on his head, for a crime he swore he didn't commit — and he would not surrender without a fight.

Christie's fortress

Deputy marshals tried again and again to take him, without success. In an 1889 attempt to burn him out, Christie lost the sight in his right eye. Afterward he built a wooden shelter inside a natural rock wall on a hilltop, stocked with enough ammunition, food and water to last for weeks.

The final siege

Shortly after dark on November 1, 1892, twenty-five experienced lawmen arrived at the stronghold with rifles, ammunition, black powder, boxes of dynamite and a field cannon. The firing began at daybreak.

• The cannon did little more than knock holes in the roof. When the deputies doubled the powder charge to blast out a wall, the barrel split.
• After twelve hours, 38 cannon rounds and some 2,000 rifle rounds, they were no closer to taking him.
• They built a rolling oak-plank shield so one deputy could get close. Shortly after midnight he ran forward with six sticks of dynamite; the blast blew out a whole wall and started a fire that by dawn had engulfed the cabin.

Christie burst out through the burning cabin, firing his two .44s at the posse, and was shot down. He died shortly afterward.

His body, strapped to a plank from his own door, was carried by train to Fayetteville and Fort Smith, where crowds turned out to see it. At Fort Smith it was propped up and posed for photographs on the courthouse steps.

An outlaw?

Christie was wanted for killing just one man, in an era when some outlaws killed dozens. In 1922, a witness to Maples's murder came forward and cleared Christie of the crime. Even so, his reputation as a notorious outlaw has persisted as a myth.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Smith National Historic Site: "Ned Christie (Site Bulletins)." The bulletin calls the manhunt a "four-year war," but its own dates run from May 1887 to November 1892, so no length is given here.