(Information gathered from The Encyclopedia of Arkansas, The Federal Death Penalty Project, U.S Federal Archives and other online sources for this article.)
The number of death penalties assessed and the actual number of public executions under the auspices of Judge Isaac C. Parker's court in Fort Smith is well known.
Lesser known is the fact that before Parker and his predecessors ruled over the Western District of Arkansas from Fort Smith the courthouse was actually located across the river to the north in Van Buren. A scant number of US Marshals worked from the headquarters in Van Buren and even at that time they had jurisdiction over Indian Territory to the west.
A perfect example of their activities was the case of a Choctaw Nation citizen who was convicted of the murder of two men in what is now known as Sequoyah County in 1869.
While the case was seemingly open and shut, based upon the testimony of a traveling companion of the murderer, the results were the same as many that followed in the years to come.
The condemned was sentenced to die by hanging in the sentence was carried out on June 24, 1870, a scant eight months before the court was moved to it's now all familiar location. His hanging was the first public execution in Crawford County after the end of the Civil War.
Amos McCurtain was implicated in the murder of two men – James McClain and James Blakely – on September 7, 1869. McCurtain and his traveling companion, another Choctaw indian by the name of William Fry of was traveling between Scullyville and Boggy Depot in the Indian Territory hen they encountered a wagon driven by James McClain who was Choctaw, and James Blakely, a Black man. (Some renditions of the story only list the death of McLain, who is described as Black in alternative versions.)
McCurtain and Fry stopped to camp for the night, and the other two men stopped and camped near them. As McClain and Blakely slept, McCurtain proposed killing the pair and stealing the goods from their wagon. Fry opposed the plan and went to sleep but woke up that night to find “McCurtain standing over him with a revolver in one hand and in the other an axe clotted with blood and hair.”
McCurtain told Fry he had killed the two men with the axe and then ordered him to help move the bodies or suffer a similar fate.
They tied McClain’s body to a pony and dragged it about 200 yards into the brush, then put Blakely’s body into their wagon, along with the cargo from the dead men’s wagon. McCurtain then returned to McClain’s corpse, and “taking from it the pantaloons, put them on, remarking they were too good to be lost.”
After going about a mile, they stopped and dumped Blakely’s body in the brush. They parted ways shortly after. Fry was arrested on the road the next day; he then told the marshals about the murders. Authorities arrested McCurtain at his home in the Choctaw Nation two days later and brought both men to Van Buren, where Fry was released after agreeing to testify against McCurtain.
McCurtain was tried in the U.S. District Court in November, and “the evidence was irresistible and the jury remained in consultation but a few minutes and returned a verdict ‘guilty of murder in the first degree.’” McCurtain was too sick to be sentenced before that term of the court ended, and it would be May 1870 before he learned his fate.
Hearing he was to be hanged, “so great was his emotion, so strong his fear, that the guards were well nigh necessitated to carry McCurtain down the stairs and over to the jail.”
The day before his execution, McCurtain told a reporter that Fry had actually killed Blakely.
He then met with a preacher and “heartily repented of his misdeeds and hoped for forgiveness.” A cousin of McClain’s also came to the jail and visited the condemned man as the gallows were being constructed outside.
A crowd assembled in Van Buren on June 24 to watch the hanging, but the sheriff instead opted to execute McCurtain in the jail yard. The sheriff and a guard accompanied him as he climbed the stairs to the gallows, and McCurtain declined to make a final statement.
When the hood was placed over his head, a newspaper reported “little doubt that McCurtain had fainted,” and two deputies held him up as the noose was placed around his neck.
He likely was unconscious when the trap door was opened, and “his neck was not broken by the fall, and life did not totally cease until eighteen minutes after his swinging off.”
In an article published by the Van Buren Press detailing the hanging of McCurtain, the following literary flourishes accompanied the "hard news" facts:
"Above the Heavens are brilliant and the uncloudy clearness, the sun pours forth its brightness up on the river - that in the distance winds its way like a silver circle - the Hills are green and beautiful.
All is silent save the birds in theSquare beyond who make the air resonate with their gladsome notes. Below is a dense throng of people whose face is young and old are upturned and mingled expressions of pity and awe.
"All is ready, Mr Marshall". The sky is still clear, the sun shines bright the birds carol their songs. Nature is beautiful in all it's varied phases. "Ready!" And the soul of Amos McCurtain is sent into the presence of its God."
The name McCurtain is synonymous with the history of the founding and occupation of what is Leflore County by the earlier settlers who were forced to move from Georgia and Mississippi through President Andre Jackson's resettlement plan. There has, however, been no direct connection between Amos McCurtain and the individuals who served in the early Choctaw leadership.
Amos McCurtain is rumored to have been buried in the Choctaw National Cemetery in Scullyville north of Spiro in Leflore County. While three graves in the cemetery are occupied by men named "McCurtain" all died after 1870 leading to speculation Amos lies in an unmarked grave.
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