HOUSTON KILLED

Leonard Williams, sheriff of the Tahlequah District, discovered the location of the Cook brothers. A posse was sent to Fourteen Mile Creek to capture the Cook gang and on June 17, 1894 a gunfight broke out. Lawman Sequoyah Houston was killed in the fight, and the outlaws wounded Dick and Zeke Crittenden.

The Cook brothers and Crawford Goldsby, alias Cherokee Bill, escaped. Jim Cook had been badly wounded and the gang took him to Fort Gibson. They were forced to leave him there and he was captured by lawmen. Some reports concerning the battle at the Half-way House claim that two other members of the Cook gang, Jess Cochran (not Jesse ) and Jim French, were present at the gunfight.

Others included in the posse were reported to be Ellis Rattling Gourd and Bill McKee. A different version of the story lists the members of the posse as "Sequoyah Houston, the Crittenden brothers, Bill Nickel, Isaac Greece, Hicks, and Brackett." And Jim Cook had described the lawmen as "the Cherokee guards" giving the impression that the posse were members of the force of guards under the direction of Captain Jesse Cochran escorting the treasurer with the "strip money." However, this was not the case, as the treasurer had left Tahlequah under heavy guard on June 16th (the day before the gun battle) enroute to Vinita. Sequoyah Houston was buried in the Blue Springs cemetery.

Cherokee Bill was eventually captured and taken to the Fort Smith court, where he was found guilty of the 1894 murder of Ernest Melton. While in jail awaiting execution, Cherokee Bill somehow obtained a loaded pistol and used it to kill guard Lawrence Keating on July 10th, 1895 during an escape attempt. Upon hearing the gunshots, Fort Smith lawmen rushed to the jail. Deputy U.S. marshal Heck Bruner returned fire with a shotgun. Over 100 shots were fired in the battle. Finally, jail inmate Henry Starr was able to convince Cherokee Bill to surrender the gun and order was restored to the jail. Cherokee Bill was executed on the gallows in Fort Smith on March 17, 1896.

Both Jess Cochran and Jim French were killed trying to rob a store in Catoosa. Jess Cochran has been described in one report as the sister of Jennie Cochran, who married Ed Reed, and the nephew of deputy U.S. marshal George W. Cochran Jr.

ED REED KILLED

Deputy U.S. marshal Ed Reed, living in Wagoner, was called on to deal with with two drunks who were shooting up the town on October 24th (or 25th), 1895. The two law-breakers were Dick and his brother Zeke Crittenden, former lawmen and survivors of the shootout at Fourteen Mile Creek in 1894. The two brothers had wounded a Wagoner resident named Burns in their drunken shooting spree.

One version of the story describes Reed encountering Zeke Crittenden on the street and telling him to surrender his gun. Zeke fired at Reed and was killed with return gunshots from Reed. Dick, at the other end of town, learned of his brothers death and rode to the scene of the shooting. Upon seeing Ed Reed, Dick opened fire. Reed returned fire, mortally wounding Dick Crittenden, who died the next morning. The brothers were buried under one headstone in a small cemetery near Hulbert, only a short distance from the site of the Half-way House on Fourteen Mile Creek.

Ed Reed died on about December 14th, 1896 while attempting to "arrest" Joe Gibbs and J. N. Clark in Claremore, Oklahoma. Newspapers reported that Reed was attempting to arrest them for selling whiskey. Other sources tell a story about Reed's father-in-law, Alec Cochran, dying as a result of bad liquor from Gibbs. Reed intended to shut down the Gibbs "saloon", but when he entered the Gibbs store he was cut down by two shotgun blasts from close range.

Ed was buried in his wife's "Cochran" family cemetery near Tiawah, south of Claremore. His wife, Jennie, had lost her father and her lawman husband in 1896, and her outlaw brother, Jess Cochran, in 1895. It is not known if Ed and Jennie Cochran had any children.

Jesse and Susan Cochran had seven children, including John Ross Cochran, who was born in 1883. John Ross Cochran later married Pearl McMahan, the sister of Emitt McMahan. Emitt McMahan is the grandfather of OklahombreS editor Dee Cordry.

In addition to serving as a Cherokee sheriff and a deputy U.S. marshal, Jesse Cochran held the office of prosecuting attorney (solicitor) of the Cooweescoowee district from 1885 to 1889. In November, 1894 Jesse was appointed by the National Council to the office of associate justice of the supreme court of the Cherokee Nation. Cochran was described as a "self taught lawyer and a self made man, in a primeval country where law and order didn't come easy." Cochran knew Blackstone by heart and used it as a guide in jury trials which he held at Kephart Springs near Claremore. Cochran passed away on November 11, 1905 at his home on Spencer Creek.

Jesse's father, who came to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears, had been a lawman. Both his father and his step-brother George had been the victims of violence. Jennie Cochran may have been his niece. Her brother died an outlaw and her husband, the son of Belle Starr, died in the line of duty. Jesse's wife was a member of the Ross family, and her father's uncle, John Ross, had been a participant in the Cherokee "civil war". Perhaps family names of Cherokees who were outlaws are heard of more often, but it is the citizens of the Cherokee Nation such as Jesse Cochran who brought law and order to a territory where violence was commonly used to settle disputes.

THE END


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SOURCES

Personal collection of Juanita Cochran Russell, Chelsea, Oklahoma

Virgil Talbot, curator, The Talbot Museum and Library, Colcord, Oklahoma (Note: Jesse Cochran Sr. (d. 1866) had a sister named Judah Cochran. She married Ambrose McGhee, and they were the great, great grandparents of Virgil Talbot.)

National Archives, Southwest Region, Fort Worth, Texas

The Indian Pioneer Papers, Oklahoma Historical Society

Cherokee Advocate newspaper

The Goingsnake Messenger

The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. LXI, number 3, Oklahoma Historical Society

True West, Mar-April 1977

Cherokee By Blood, Volume 1 & Volume 6

Belle Starr And Her Times, by Glenn Shirley, University of Oklahoma Press, 1982

Law West of Fort Smith, by Glenn Shirley, University of Nebraska Press, 1968

Hell On The Border, by S. W. Harman, University of Nebraska Press, 1992

Special thanks to OklahombreS members Art Burton and Phillip Steele for their contributions to this story.

END OF PART 3

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