Volume 11 , Issue 48

Seminole Burning: A Story of Racial Vengeance

The information to follow was found in "Seminole Burning: A Story of Racial Vengeance" by Daniel F. Littlefield.

On page 104 is mentioned about claim jumpers on notice at Cross, Kemlin and Round Pond. The townsite officer and the mayor of Round Pond were ordered out of town. Also, A vigilance committee was organized at Enid to fight cattle and horse thieves.

The story goes on to state, "When there was an attempt to suppress vigilante activities near Round Pond, the reaction was predictable because, said the Watonga Republican, 'There are many protective associations in the strip.' Elsewhere in Oklahoma, reports of vigilance committee activities came from Choctaw City in 1894, Edmond in 1895, and Perry in 1896.

The Territorial Governor Cassius M Barnes reported that the SEminole burning was the first lynching in Oklahoma. Barnes was either ignorant of the territory's history, was glassing it, or had an unusual definition of lynching. Oklahoma Territory had experienced its first lynching on the day after the land rush opened the territory in 1889. From then until 1898 there were at least nine other reported lynching involving eighteen victims. The most striking statistics regard the race of the victims: two whites, two Mexicans, five blacks, and ten Indians.

Through the years, only the Langston City Herald, published at the all-black town of Langston, had consistently printed editorials against lynching and supported Anti-Lynch League organization.

The citizens of Pottawatomie County differed little from other territorial residents in their attitudes toward vigilantism and lynch law. Their propensity for vigilantism had revealed itself in recent times in the organization of local Law & Order Leagues in 1895 and late 1897 and white capper activities in 1896.

Pottawatomie County residents also tended to view lynching and mob law as a social corrective. In early January 1896, someone murdered and robbed two elderly bachelor brothers named Mountz. Evidence indicated that four men were involved, and circumstantial evidence led to the arrest of Israel C. McClothlin. While he was in jail at Tecumseh, six masked men overpowered the jailer, broke open the cell door, and took McGlothlin to the city park, where they strung him up three times, nearly killing him in an effort to make him reveal his accomplices.

The local newspaper lauded their efforts, "While nearly every body condemns mob law yet in this case the perpetrators were merely trying to bring the evidence out so the law could get hold of the murderers."

Despite the frequent activities of small terrorist mobs and the editorial support for lynching, Pottawatomie County and the territory had not experienced lynching by a mass mob like that at Maud appeared to be.

The climate of opinion back then would have the county residents expecting little else than an editorial defense of the burning of Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson.

J. E. Doom of the Tecumseh Leader justified the lynching and burning by making the timeworn "what-it-it-had-been-your-wife/daughter/niece" question. Doom asked his readers to think of the mother with the nursing babe, her alleged violation by the two fiends, and the hogs devouring her corpse.

The action of the mob, he argued had its origins in the nobler feelings of outrage. BUT ? Doom failed to mention that it took more than a week for those nobler feelings, as he called them, to find their way tot he surface and transform themselves into mob action. But Doom did not know that the lynching was not spontaneous. Leard, Martin, Pryor, Roper and others had had to recruit numbers by sending out news of a planned burning. That most who responded to the call went out of curiosity, not out of a desire to see "Justice" done.

To build his case for the nobility of burring, Doom published what purported to be a signed confession by McGeisey and Sampson, which he copied format he Shawnee Quill. It read:

"I came here on Thursday to Okffsto: I saw his wife; I came then to George Wolf's, I saw him and one man and one woman go to Eurka Sile. I saw one woman, she came out and talked to me then to Cayitolar. From there to McGeesy, fromthere to Salt Creek. I met with Lincoln McGeesy. I asked him for money, he asked me what I wanted with it. I told him I wanted to get some whiskey, he said he had some whiskey. He said to me: "Lets of to Jules Laird." I asked him what for, he said, "to borrow his saddle," We came up in about 300 yards of the house. I asked the woman where the man was and she said he had gone to the store. I said to her I wanted to borrow saddle she said there was saddle there but it was not Mr. Laird's."

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