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ATLANTA, GA., WEEK ENDING APRIL 6, 1901
VOLUME XXXIX
NUMBER 5
Choctaw Witch Killers on Trial
• w*} • rwK Firft Case of the IQind Since Witch
in Fans, 1 6xas ICiUers Were Tried in New England
sistance. They Rot in Hotema's buggy
armed with a winchester and shotgun and
started on their death dealing mission.
They- first called at the house of Vina
Coleman, the sister in law of Hotema,
nnd shot her down without compunction
while she was holding a littre child in her
arms. The babe was wounded, but not
killed. An older child attempted to run
away when the shooting began and was
shot in the back. They next went to the
home of Hall Greenwood, who came out
to meet them. They inquired where hi3
wife was, informing him that she was a
witch and that they had come to kill her.
Greenwood began to plead for her life.
Hotema bade him be still or they would
kill him. but that if he would keep quiet
they would no-t kill him until the next
day. After he got his wife buried they
said they would kill him, and for him to
be sure to be on hand. They then killed
his wife before his eyes. The last vic-
the federal court of
1 Paris, Tex., there was
begun this week a trial
which has few parallels
in the history of the
courts of this country
HIHHHH and the causes leading
up to the crime for
JfV which the prisoners will
be tried for their lives
have been unheard of
w FI Mi since the old Qaker
TMjjay The case is the first
of the kind since witch
TT killers were tried in
U New England.
HIHiHV The crime of murder
for which the prisoners, Soloman Hotema,
Sam Frye and Sam Tarnatubby, were
arraigned, is attributable to a belief in
Log cabin in which Vina Coleman was killed with baby In her arms
The other house if Cold Springs church
som, a beautiful half-breed girl living in
the community, was employed as nurse
and interpreter to see that the medicine
was administered according to directions.
The patient did not improve under the
white doctor's treatment. His neighbors
end friends becoming dissatisfied, insisted
that a Choctaw doctor be sent for. There
was one in the community known as
"Blind Isom,” famous as a witch doctor.
He was sent for. As soon as he examined
the patient he declared that the white
doctor didn't know what was the matter
with him and was treating him wrong;
that he had been shot with a witch ball,
and that the girl who was nursing him
was the witch who had placed him under
the evil spell. Blind Isom declared that
the only way Belvin could recover was
with his own hand to kill the witch. He
must take a knife and hack her to pieces.
After an earnest consultation with his
friends Belvin consented to carry out the
suggestion. He was provided with a
keen-bladed knife, wtiich he concealed
under the bed ewer. While the girl was
Adniliostei ;ng his ■medicine aShl was lgan-
ling over the bed, Blind Tsokn seized and
pressed her down until the patient who
had supposedly been bewitched could stab
her to death. She was literally hacked to
pieces. No legal punishment was ever
was one of the most prominent men in ■
the Choctaw nation. He is forty-eight ;^
years old, is well educated, is an enter-
talning conversationalist and a good
writer. He attended school in a Presby-
terian college at Roanoke. Va.. three, Ik,
years. Soon after his return he was ,p - 1 - Sr,
elected county judge of Kiamltia conn- F-jSlTlEaffiaf J
ty and held the office a number of con- fSilftIBPIBp
secutlve terms. He also held the office
of district attorney and was a membei
of the nations: council eight years. In
addition to this he was a regularly of-
dalned minister of the Presbyterian ■HgH&RSg
church, and had Just returned from the
meeting of the general assembly in New ^
Orleans when he killed the witches. In '
early childhood, however, he became lm- . '
bued with the belief in witches by hear- Sam grpm
lug his father. Captain John Hotema, • ■
speak of' them. The latter was forty- there were such things, replied that
five years a ruling elder In the Ptesbyte- witches qan't shoot balls into th4m bef
rlan church, and was a captain of light cause they eat so much salt,'and! the'bull
horsemen, but was a firm believer in lets won’t penetrate and'oonH have any
witchcraft. His son, Soloman. be-ng effect. • history shows, he says, that
ss.vca yh.-.-it was white persons had half- When the while people, first ; ciaiae. ao
breeds were not troubled wiifi witches, if I America they discovered- witches attiong
the Indians, and that they have heen
among them ever since.'
-purlng his confinement Hotema has
wHtten a biography and' sketches. In
which her makes' copious' citations from
the Bible to prove the' existence" of
witches.
House at Pold Springs in which the plot was formed to kill the
L witches
witchcraft whi<v has possession of the
more superstitious fuilblood Choctaws os
completely today as it had a hundred
years ago. The tragedy was enacted in
the vicinity of Cold Springs church, six
miles northwest of . Grant. There had
been a number of sudden- deaths in the
community from spinal meningitis. A lit
tle son of Soloman Hotema was among
the number. Hotema was the pastor of
the church and was the head man and
leader among bis people, as well as their
spiritual adviser. The Choctaws were
greatly disturbed by the sudden deaths,
for which they were unable to account.
The manner in which the disease worked
upon the victim caused them to attribute
the malady to the evil charms of witches.
tim was Alfred Morris, who was delib
erately shot down without any kind of
warning. From the house of Alfred Mor
ris they drove to the house of Eastman
Mississippi, who was away. A little boy
living with him raw them coming and
fled. As he ran away several shots were
fired at him.
The defendants were arrested and
lodged in Jail at Antlers, and from there
were carried to Atoka, the holdover jail
for the Antlers court. While incarcerated
there Tobias Williams died. Hotema,
Frye and Tarnatubby were granted a
change of venue to the Paris federal court
and were transferred to jail here pending
trial. They made application through
habeas corpus proceedings to Judge D. E.
NEW ZEALAND as a Field for
American ENTERPRISE
For Vhe Sunny South
By Frank C. Carpenter
ITS ENORMOUS TRADE IS A RIPE APPLE
READY TO DROP WTO UNCLE SAM’S MOUTH
body has been bewitched. Despite the
law. however, the belief is still popularly
entertained among the fullblocds, and
witch executions are still frequent, al-
. though not as open as they were. As a
rule it is only very old women that are
witches, and it is by no means uncommon
to still come across them dead in the
woods or at home hacked to pieces. Let
the report once become circulated, in the
neighborhood that some old woman is a
witch and before a great while she turns
up dead. „ • ( • .. -
Aocopding to the fuilblood believers in
witchcraft the..-witches, shoot their balls
in'on invisible manner. The victim does
not realize -{hat .he has been allot until
the spell begins .to work on him. Some
times the witeft bullet is a grain of sand,
x at another time a blade of grass, or it
may be something else, but it Is always
very minute, almost indiscernible to the
naked eye. . When in the diagnosis of a
ease the doctor discovers that the: patient
bes been 'bewitched he sets to work to
locate the witch. He procures some red
oak bark, with which he makes a fire,
suck's blood from the person who is
witched and spurts it into the flames.
This will: cause-whoever shot the witch
ball to become seized with colic and vio
lent pain. When a person is witched suspi
cion generally rests on some particular
individual as the witch. After going
through the incantation with the red oak
'bark the suspected person is c'-osely
watched. If he shows no sign of pain
and the suspicion proves to be incorreet
the doctor and the victim's friends mount
horses and ride over the neighborhood
until they come across some poor wretch
suffering from indigestion, bilious colic
or some other internal ailment. When
discovered the doctor puts a spell on him
to relieve the original sufferer, or, in an
extreme case, l^e is taken out and killed.
Besides putting a spell on the witch or
killing him to relieve the victim, there
are two other ways of dispelling the evil
charm. Where the victim is not too
badly witched, the doctor can suck
Soloman Hotema’s farm-house
Bryant for bail. Hotema and Frye -were
denied bail, while the offense of Tarna
tubby, the witch doctor, wa3 held to be
bailable, he having advised the killing,
but not being present when the tragedies
were enacted. He was admitted to bail
in |2.(W0 as an accessory before the fact.
The wholesale killing of the supposed
witches by Hotema and his confederates
is but one of many such killings which
have occurred among the Choctaws in
years past. One of the most striking of
these witch executions took place several
years ago In Blue county, on the Boggy.
Stephen Belvin, who has since that time
been sheriff of the county, a member of
the national council, who has held other
responsible positions, and who is still liv
ing. had pneumonia and was being treat
ed by a white physician. Being a lull-
blood, unable to speak English. Mary Fol-
American
Meetings were held at the church to dis
cuss the matter and to- devise means
>f staying the plague. Sam Tarnatubby.
who lived fifteen miles east of Grant, had
the fame among the fullbloods of being a
great witch doctor. He was sent for.
His diagnosis of the patients confirmed
the suspicion that they had been dcwltch-
ed By the occult methods of the witch
doctor he located tlie witches nnd de
clared that the only way that the plague
could be stopped and the patients re
lieved was to fill them. Some of the sup
posed witches were relatives of the de
fendants and had sat up with sick mem
bers of their faaiilies.
Tarnatubby having declared that the
Witches must be killed to stop the plague,
Hotema, as the chief man in the com
munity. summoned Tobias Williams and
Sam Frye, j oung fullbloods, to bis as-
colcny of English Episcopalians about
sixty years ago. Dunedin was founded
by Scotch Presbyterians at the same
time, and in its early days, I am told, it
was by no means safe to question fore-
crdlnation. election, justification, sancti
fication or Infant damnation within its
borders.
Today ihe people of Dunedin are nine-
tenths Scotch. There are scotch names
ever the stores, Scotch names for the
streets, and when I asked a rosy-faced
little boy Ihe name of’ ihe churches be
replied with a prrr.ounced Scotch brogue:
"That, sor, is the Flerst Kirk.”
The Dunedin, men say' that their
churches are far belter off than those of
the rival city. They are air out of debt
and have money in the bank, when the
city was founded one-tenth of all the
land was set aside .for' the church. This
is leased out on ground rents' for twenty-
one years at' a- time,' on the condition
that at the’cldse .of each such lease all
the improvements shall .belong to 'the
church.
All toe New Zealand cities are well
built. They have their theaters, libra
ries and stores, their'banks ' and their
factories. Every one has its cricket club
and its ■ recreation grounds and many
have botanical' gardens. There are sa
loons or- hotels as well as churches, and
the’people devote a large-part of their
time to enjoyment. * The eight-hour day
gives plenty of leisure night and morn
ing. The man stops work in time to dress
up for the evening if he so wishes, and
Continued on last pa£e
the year through, and you get some idea
of tbs value of this trade, which annually
amounts in exports and Imports to almost
1100,000,000.
In traveling through Now Zealand I see
everywhere evidences of this extrava
gance. The people are well dressed- Their
houses are comfortable and their towns
have all the accompaniments of modern
civilization.. There are not . many large
cities, but there are scores of towns of
about 1,000 and 2,000 each, and a dozen
perhaps ranging between 2,000 and 10,000.
As to the cities, Auckland, at the north,
under the sledow of Mount Eden, on a
beautiful bay. is the largest. It has about
03,000 population. It has wide, well-paved
streets, great business blocks, a public
library, a botanical garden,. clubs and
societies, schools of all kinds and
churches galore. It has a climate like
Naples and has more rich mc*r. to its
population than any other town of New
Zealand. Wellington, the capital, is far-
iher down <n the same island oh Cook
strait. ' It has 42.COO and is growing faster
than any other city of New Zealand. It
has steamship lines to- alt parts of the
world and does a great trade..
Crossing over to the Middle island, the
largest city is Christchurch, ‘with 64,009
population, situated on the ifamous Can
terbury plains, and still farther'south-on
the tame island is Dunedin, wit'n a pop
ulation of. 50.000. Christchurch and Dune
din are rival towns, the spirit of the peo
ple being much like that which animates
Minneapolis and St. Paul. Christchurch
is an English town. It was founded by a
4» Copyright 1901 #
ggHKHE trad? of New Zealand
is a ripe, red apple.
Into the pot different roots and herbs
are thrown. Sticks are placed across
the top of the. pit and the patient placed
in a blanket stretched over the sticks.
The water is kept just warm enough to
steam him ^s limp as a rag. While the
sweating process goes on, the doctor
and members of the family or friends
gather around the pit and chant. If the
pain is strictly local and acute, the doc
tor puts his lips over the place and sucks
with great energy until he draws one
mouthful of blood after another, unless
the witch ball Is sooner extracted. When
ever it is found, the doctor pronounces
the case cured and collects his fee ac
cording to the patient's standing finan
cially. Under the rule of practice, how
ever, he must accept any kind of proper
ty his patient chooses to give him, wheth
er it be a chicken or a horse.
Soloman Hotema's witch-killing feat
was a great shock to his white friends.
It is a striking instance of the force of
heredity and an early instilled belief. He
Cold Springs church and schoolhouse
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