The Last Cherokee Warriors

Table of Contents

Preface 9

Part One: Ezekiel Proctor

I           The Proctor Family    15
II          The Man and His Lawless Environment    22
III        Zeke and His Family    30
IV        The Beck Mill Incident    34
V         The Trial    40
VI        Amnesty and Zeke’s Treaty with the United States    48
VII       Best-Known Proctor Fables    61 

Part Two: Ned Christie 

VIII      The Man and His Bitterness    69
IX        The Murder of Deputy Marshal Maples    79
X         Christie’s Four Long Years of War    87
XI        The Final Siege    94 

Bibliography    109

The Proctor Family

            Ezekiel Proctor was born July 4, 1831, in the Cherokee nation of the state of Georgia, seven years before his family was forced to leave their homeland.  He was one-half Cherokee, the son of a white man, William Proctor, and a Cherokee girl named Dicey Downing.  Zeke was one of eight known children – Sarah, Elizabeth, Adam, Archibald, Johnson, Rachael, and Nannie.  The Proctors, like most Cherokees, were successful farmers.  The Georgia Cherokee nation encompassed good farmland, and many whites of Georgia resented the Indians’ control of this land, their nice homes, and their farms.  With the discovery of gold on Cherokee lands, the resentment among the whites grew rapidly, and Georgia white citizens put strong pressure on state and federal authorities to move the Indians from their state. 

            The growing controversy over the removal of all Indians from Georgia, as well as from other states, was a strong political issue in Andrew Jackson’s campaign for the presidency.  Upon his election in November of 1828, advocates of Indian removal pushed for legislation.  After one of the bitterest debates in the history of Congress, the Indian Removal Bill was passed in May of 1830.  This bill gave the president power to exchange lands in the West with Indian tribes residing within the boundaries of a state.

Amnesty and Zeke’s Treaty with the United States

            Over the years hundreds of newspaper articles stated that, Zeke Proctor was granted amnesty by President Grant.  A typical news story of Proctor’s amnesty was published in the Muskogee (Oklahoma) News at the time of Zeke’s death.  The story appeared as follows in the March 10, 1907 issue: “For years the Proctors evaded every attempt U.S. Marshals made to capture them.  The people who lived in the Cherokee hills were in sympathy with the Proctor faction and the marshals didn’t dare bring the matter to an open contest.  The Proctors were never taken and they did not lay down their arms until they were each and every member granted amnesty by President Grant.”

            Records indicate that Zeke lived up to his agreement with the United States throughout the rest of his life.  As a result of his popularity for his past courageous stand against U.S. authority, he was elected to several high positions within the Cherokee government in the years to follow.  The Emmit Starr history of the Cherokees declares that Zeke was elected senator from the Going Snake District in 1877 and severed in this capacity and other government positions for several years.  Proctor had been elected sheriff of the district in 1867 for a short period, and in 1894 he was again elected sheriff. 

            As mentioned in earlier chapters, the relatively ineffective Fort Smith court’s law enforcement within the Indian nation had created a lawless region that was being used to advantage by outlaws and desperadoes, and the situation had become worse during the Proctor controversy.  On May 2, 1875, President Grant appointed Isaac C. Parker to the bench at Fort Smith’s federal court with instructions to restore law and order in this lawless land.

The Man and His Bitterness

Ned Christie was born at his father’s family home on December 14, 1852.  His boyhood was much like Zeke Proctor’s and any other Indian boy of the time.  Like Proctor, he was forced to grow up surrounded by renegades who were taking refuge from the law.  Over the years young Ned grew to share his father’s great bitterness over the loss of their Carolina home and their tribe’s mistreatment on the Trail of Tears.  He too found it necessary to learn to handle a gun at a very early age.  Watt was one of the region’s best black-smiths for handling and repairing firearms, and Ned soon learned his father’s skills.  Before he was ten years of age Ned was ranked as one of the best marksmen in the Cherokee nation, and his elders marveled at the lad’s ability.

            Ned had a natural agility with and appreciation for all kinds of weapons at an early age, and his gunsmithing skill came into great demand throughout the Cherokee nation.  When Watt Christie returned home after his service in the Civil War, he gave Ned his two .44 X .40 cap-and-ball pistols.  Ned went to work immediately in his dad’s shop and converted the pistols from cap-and-ball to shell-percussion five-shot pistols.  Although Ned had many, many weapons throughout his life, the original .44’s he got from his father were to remain his favorite weapons, and he had them both in his hands when he died many years later.