Johnson Foreman

The Walker Murder: The Spark That Lit the Fire http://trailofthetrail.blogspot.com/2010/10/walker-murder-spark-tha...

By W. Jeff Bishop

In Cleveland, Tennessee, on the east side of U.S. 11, a sign marks a grave site and the place where the home of Jack Walker once stood – a two-story log house where the Northside Presbyterian Church is now located.

Walker was “prominent in the affairs of the Cherokee Nation, belonging to the party advocating a voluntary treaty of removal of the Cherokees to the West,” the sign declares. Although the court record makes it clear that his alleged murderers had a long-standing feud with Walker, it was likely his outspoken pro-removal stance that actually led to his being shot on Saturday, Aug. 23, 1834 and his death two weeks later – a galvanizing event for two Cherokee factions that would become the first in a long string of brutal political assassinations.

Treaty Party leader John Ridge would not formally break with Principal Chief John Ross on the issue of removal from the Cherokee home lands in the Southeast until the fall of 1834. Ridge had initially hoped to work with Ross to appeal to the hearts and minds of New Englanders and others to sway U.S. government policy, allowing the Cherokees to remain in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. But when President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized Cherokee sovereignty, Ridge did an about-face, concluding that removal to the West was quickly becoming the tribe’s only remaining alternative. Ridge initially hoped that he could influence the Ross-led government from within while he worked both sides.

He affirmed his public anti-Removal stance to the National Intelligencer while simultaneously Georgia Congressman Daniel Newnan told the press that Ridge’s Washington “Cherokee Delegation have at last consented to recommend to their people to make a treaty with the government...” (Wilkins, 1970, p. 231).

Chief Ross considered Ridge’s new stance a betrayal and he nailed Newnan’s letter, which had been printed in a number of newspapers, to a tree for all to see (Wilkins, 1970, p. 236). U.S. Commissioner Elisha W. Chester said “this was used to induce the population to believe (the delegation) had been bribed, and that they had entered into some arrangement with the Government, without any authority.” Thus Ridge was instantly discredited in the eyes of many Cherokees.

When a Cherokee Council was called at Red Clay, Tennessee in August, 1834, many were furious at the treaty Andrew Ross – John Ross’ brother -- had tried to negotiate in Washington. Major Ridge was widely known by this time to be pro-Treaty, and he had accompanied Andrew Ross to Washington. He was attacked by Tom Foreman, a Cherokee sheriff. Foreman’s angry words were recorded by John Ridge (Wilkins, 1970, p. 252):

Major Ridge had gone around the nation with the Chiefs & made speeches telling the people to love their land & in his earnestness (had) stamped the ground. The ground was yet sunk where he stamped & now he was talking another way.

Foreman called the treaty advocates enemies of the Nation, stating, “These men might as well carry a poisoned cup to your mouths and say, ‘drink this and I will give you so much money’! or, let me give you money to allow me to kill you.” (King and Evans, Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1976, p. 8)

Major Ridge answered him, saying that his life was nearly at an end, but that it “may be that Foreman has better expectations and he should, in slandering men, establish his fame among you. But I have no expectations that he will enjoy it long, for we have no government. It is entirely suppressed. Where are your laws! The seats of your judges are overturned. When I look upon you all, I hear you laugh at me. When harsh words are uttered by men who know better…”

One Cherokee rose and shouted, “Let’s kill them!”

John Walker, Jr., another outspoken pro-Treaty advocate, was indeed assassinated while riding home with Dick Jackson from the council meeting north on the old Spring Place Road, taking a bullet in his left breast and dying on Sept. 11. The Ridges, hearing of this incident, took a roundabout way home, fearing that they might be next (Wilkins, 1970, p. 253). Ridge had said during the council, “What would become of our Nation if we were all like Tom Foreman? Could any good grow out of our Councils? We should now fall together and twist each others noses. Our eyes would remain in their sockets, but in general we (would) gouge them out.” (King and Evans, Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1976, p. 9)

After Walker was murdered, the Ridges and Ross began to imagine assassins were lurking everywhere (Moulton, 1985, p. 302). The day after Walker’s death, Ross sent this letter to Ridge:

To John Ridge

Sept 12th 1834

I have this day received your letter of the 10th inst. by your father, who came over to converse with me on the subject of some reports which have been circulated, concerning a pre concerted plan, said to have originated from himself and friends to have me assassinated, especially the one you mentioned as having been spoken of, that is the hiring of Seewakee to commit the act. As to the rumors of threats you say have been made against your life thro' the influence of [Thomas] Woodward, I have never before heard of them; you say further that reports have also been taken to you of evil designs against yourself & friends by me. With the utmost sincerity and truth, I do assure you, that whatever may be the character of those reports, they are false.

Jno Ross

In this midst of all of this, Elijah Hicks presented a petition signed by 144 Cherokees requesting that the Ridges be impeached “for maintaining opinions and a policy to terminate the existence of the Cherokee community on the lands of (their) fathers.” The Cherokee National Council found them guilty and voted to oust them from office (Wilkins, 1970, p. 253).

Seeing all his efforts blocked and his credibility with the Cherokee government in tatters, Ridge decided the time had come to take matters into his own hands; he, Elias Boudinot, and others in favor of a Removal Treaty held their own council at Ridge’s home at Running Waters in November, 1834 (in modern-day Shannon, GA, on the Calhoun Road). It was this action that directly led to the signing of the Treaty of New Echota one year later, and the Trail of Tears three years after that.

As for James Foreman, Walker’s alleged murderer, he was arrested by Tennessee authorities and a trial was scheduled to be held in McMinn County. Testimony from the witnesses was taken by Henry Price and Peter Hambright, acting justices of the peace, from Sept. 6-9. A Cherokee named Muskrat was one of the state’s witnesses, since Walker had been shot about a mile west of Muskrat’s watering place.

Muskrat, asked if he “knew of any old or new quarrels” between Foreman and Walker, testified that he heard threats circulating at the Red Clay Council meeting that those in favor of selling Cherokee land should be killed. “...At the Council in session at the time … it was a general talk while I was there,” testified Muskrat.

In fact, just two nights prior to the shooting, an impromptu council of about 200 to 300 Cherokees met “across the branch” from the Council Ground to consider which Cherokees should be killed, Muskrat said.

But Muskrat added that he “did not hear either Foreman or Springston speak on the subject” at the meeting.

James Foreman was a sheriff in the Cherokee Nation, and commander of the Light Horse Company. Anderson Springston was his right hand.

“Foreman & Springston are half brothers and stick together on all things,” said Joseph Foreman. Samuel McJunkin testified that “James Foreman, Anderson Springston, & Johnson Foreman was always combined together and always acted together in every case whatever.”

Walker had served as a civil officer for the Cherokee Nation some years before, and in December, 1825 he had seized a liquor shipment that Foreman and some white men had attempted to smuggle down the Conasauga River. When challenged and asked what authority he had to seize the shipment, Walker was said to have produced a pistol and exclaimed, “By God, Sir, this is my authority!” (King and Evans, Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1976, pp. 4 and 5)

Several testified that they had heard Foreman and Springston say much about their longstanding feud with Walker in the months leading up to the killing.

Jack Walker’s mother, Betsey, testified that she “heard James Foreman threaten to kill Jack when at my house after a council.”

“What was the words I used, when I threatened Walker?” Foreman asked Betsey Walker directly in the courtroom.

“You said no man should use any authority over you, or you would take his life,” she said. Then Foreman shot his pistol, to punctuate the threat, declaring, “Walker was the man.”

Others also testified to the dispute.

“I did know of a quarrel between Walker & James Foreman about two years ago,” Joseph Foreman said.

James Foreman had said “if he was employed he could soon put (Walker) out of the way.”

“He did not say in what way he would do it,” said Joseph.

About a year later, the elder Nancy Bushyhead heard Foreman make threats of a similar nature against both Walker and Isaac Bushyhead. Foreman had lived with the Bushyhead family when he was younger.

“I understood of James Foreman that when he caught (Isaac Bushyhead) … that he intended to put him to death because he was led on by Jack Walker, that he was a tool for Jack Walker.

“He said he was appointed sheriff and Jack Walker was taking his liberty from him by selling the land or Country,” said Mrs. Bushyhead. “He would not allow of it.”

Sometime afterward, Anderson Springston told Samuel McJunkin that a company of “Red Sticks” had been to his house.

That derogatory term referred to the “nullifiers,” or “Arkansas emigration party,” which everyone knew to be “Jack Walker and his company,” McJunkin said.

Springston “indicated that he would have satisfaction” against Walker, McJunkin said.

Prosecutors asked Johnson Foreman, who served as constable under James Foreman in the Light Horse Company, whether he had “heard of a treaty being made at the city, and was John Walker concerned in said treaty?”

“I have heard a good deal said against him on the subject,” Foreman answered.

“Have you heard that Lewis Ross said that (his brother) Andrew Ross ought to be killed?” asked the prosecutor.

“I have heard that rumor through the Nation,” said Foreman. “There is a law of the Nation … which says any person attempting to sell or treat away the Nation shall be punished with death…”

Prosecutors asked: were Johnson and James Foreman sworn officers of the Nation?

“We was sworn to execute the laws,” answered Foreman, “to the best of our ability.”

John L. McCoy testified that he saw both James Foreman and Anderson Springston at the Red Clay council just before Walker’s murder.

“Anderson Springston came to me at McCoy's Tavern on Friday morning and asked me which way Walker was going,” said McCoy. “I told him he was going to Vann's,” which was about 20 miles south of the Red Clay council grounds. Walker, apparently sensing that he may be in trouble, was taking a circuitous route back home.

Springston then asked if Walker would be heading back up north. Would he pass by the council grounds again? “I told him not -- he was going by McNair's,” on another parallel north-south road that passed east of Red Clay, on the road to Knoxville.

“Did Anderson Springston ask you when John Walker would be at home?” the state asked.

“He did, and I told him tomorrow morning,” McCoy responded.

Richard Jackson said that on Aug. 23 he and John Walker were “on our way from Joseph Vann's,” at Spring Place, GA, heading north, toward a place called “Muskrat’s” (now Cedar Springs, TN).

“Before we got to Muskrat's we saw some two or three persons walk in the house,” Jackson said. After passing the house, “some person called to Walker and asked for a chew of tobacco.”

Walker shouted that he had none, but that Jackson might have some. Jackson rode back and handed the men a cigar.

“Walker said he thought it likely that when they called him back, they intended to kill him,” Jackson testified. About a half-mile from Muskrat’s, “there was a gun fired at or near the road.” Jackson testified that he and Walker “immediately wheeled and made towards whence the gun fired” and they “saw an Indian,” whom he identified as Anderson Springston.

“And when we had advanced within about forty yards,” at about 2 p.m., “there was a second gun fired and Walker was shot. We immediately wheeled and rode to Mr. Walker's.”

There were witnesses who heard the two shots. “I did hear two fires on that day,” testified Muskrat, when he was “out in the woods to catch a hog.”

Samuel McJunkin testified that he was “acquainted with the size of Foreman's and Springston's guns”; Springston's gun carried “a ball of the size of fifty balls to the pound and Foreman's from seventy or seventy five balls to the pound.”

“What sized ball was it that Walker was shot with, from the size of the bullet hole in his coat?” asked the prosecutor.

“From the best of my judgement,” said McJunkin, “it was a ball from the size of seventy or seventy five balls to the pound.”

A.R. Turk testified that back at the Council meeting, when news came that Walker had been shot, “I heard Calcalosca say when drunk … that he knew it and that more would be killed, and that it could not be found out.” Archy Fields lamented that other treaty supporters likely would be treated in much the same way, including Starr, Pack, West, and even John Ross’ brother, Andrew. They “perhaps would all be killed,” Fields said, “and appeared on his part to be very sorry at the state of things.”

Grasshopper testified that he and Benjamin Harris tried to track the hoof prints that were left behind. “I was in the company of several men on the next day after Walker was shot,” said Grasshopper. “Benj. Harris and myself took the trail and followed it on some distance. Lost the trail several times, but found it again … went to a house to inquire if they had seen any persons pass the day or evening before, and started to return back home, and struck the trail again. Then we turned back, followed the trail till it took the Georgia road. We then lost the trail, and came home.”

Deer In The Water testified that he, too, followed the tracks from the scene of the murder, having better luck than Grasshopper and Harris.

“I went for that purpose to the place, and tracked them from where (the perpetrators) lay behind the log,” said Deer in the Water.

“There appeared to have been two persons.”

One of the horses was shod, but the second horse was “barefoot,” Deer in the Water testified.

Johnson Foreman said during the trial that James Foreman had a horse that “was crippled,” and Springston borrowed a horse from Smoke that “was barefooted.”

Deer In the Water said he “found by tracking the back & fore track, that there was two horses” leading away from the scene of the murder.

Both the horse tracks were “all the way through the woods, sometimes side by side, sometimes one before the other,” he testified.

David Harlan testified that he examined the tracks, as well. But he was more interested in the shoe prints that had been left behind.

“I was at the place and saw the track of some person, and took the measure of said track, and judged there was a plate made by a common blacksmith on the heel of the shew,” said Harlan. The shoe, he said, was square-toed, like Foreman’s, “and it was the precise measure of James Foreman's shew.”

Deer in the Water, meanwhile, tracked the hoof prints “to James Foreman's field about one fourth or a half mile from Foreman's house,” he said.

“We then quit the track and went to the house and asked Mrs. Foreman whether any person had been about that day.”

She said she “had paid no attention particularly,” but had “probably seen some white man passing about.” William Reed testified that on Aug. 14 he had an interesting conversation with John Foreman’s wife, as well.

“She told me that Jefferson Pack was shot, and that she expected John Walker would be shot also, and that all the delegation party would fare alike,” he said.

She also told him “that some persons had been to Boudinot to kill him, and that he plead himself to be innocent, and that Lewis Ross had given up his brother Andrew Ross to be killed with the rest.”

But on the day of Walker’s murder, Mrs. Foreman made no such sweeping pronouncements. She told Deer in the Water only that “Springston had been there and had gone; that Foreman went sometime after to the ball play.”

Deer in the Water said he followed up on this conversation the following Monday, by asking James Foreman directly whether or not he had seen any white people around his house on Saturday, the day of the shooting. Foreman said no, conflicting with his wife’s account.

Foreman also told Deer in the Water “that he had started to the ball play about the middle of the day & went by Springston's,” again apparently conflicting with his wife’s version of events.

William Martin testified that Foreman and Springston did not actually arrive at the ball play until “sundown or near sundown.” They arrived at the ball ground together, he said.

“We were playing when they came,” Martin said, and they had “looked for them” to play.

Benjamin Harris testified that it was six miles from Foreman’s house to where Walker was shot, and four to the ball ground.

“I tracked them from the place where Walker was shot, six miles in all: two horses,” Harris said. “They went towards Pettit's, galloping about four miles and then turned towards the ballplay ground.”

Harris said he “found in the track a letter book,” a religious tract printed at New Echota, written in the Cherokee language, about a mile-and-a-half from Dulkoe’s. Several testified that Springston claimed the tract the following day.

Harris presented it to Springston and Foreman without telling them where he had found it. “Springston said ‘this is our tract,’ speaking to James Foreman,” Harris testified. Charles Vann swore before the Grand Jury that he had given “exactly such a pamphlet to Foreman on the day before Walker was shot.”

Both Foreman and Springston denied at the trial that they had ever seen it until Harris showed it to them, but Harris said that Isaac Springston, Johnson Foreman, Deer In The Water, Samuel Candy, and Thy Walker were also present when Springston claimed the book. Candy confirmed in his sworn testimony that this was the case.

Samuel McJunkin was questioned thusly:

Q. 3: Do you believe these men to be influenced by their head men?

A. I believe they are led on by their head men and that they would go into any measure prescribed by them, no matter how cruel.

Q. 4: Who are recognized as being their principal Chief among them?

A. John Ross.

President Andrew Jackson certainly held Ross accountable. When he heard of Walker’s death, he wrote a letter to Major Ben Curry (King and Evans, Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1976, p. 13):

I have just been advised that Walker has been shot and Ridge and other Chiefs in favor of emigration and you as agent of the United States government threatened with death. The Government of the United States has promised them protection. It will perform its obligations to a letter. On the receipt of this, notify John Ross and his council that we will hold them answerable for every murder committed on the emigrating party.

Such tough language would do nothing to save the lives of Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and other Treaty Party members, nearly all of whom would be assassinated. Foreman, meanwhile, found his way out of jail.

From the Dec. 16, 1834 edition of the Arkansas Gazette:

Interesting legal decisions—we learn from the Tennessee (Athens) Journal, that at the last term for the Circuit Court, of that county, Judge Kieth presiding, James Foreman, and Anderson Springston (Cherokee Indians) were tried for the murder of John Walker, Jr. The defendants plead in bar of incitements, that they as well as the deceased Walker, “were native born citizens of the Cherokee Nation--- that the offence if committed at all, was committed within the limits of the Cherokee Territory, and beyond the rightful jurisdiction of the state of Tennessee.” To this plea the Attorney General filed a demurrer, and the question was argued, with great ability, by Messrs. Attorney General Frazier, Gillespy, and Breazeale on behalf of the state, and by Messrs. Jarnagin, Churchwell, and Rolls, for the defendants.

The court after the full argument heard, overruled the demurrer, decided that the “Cherokees though not a sovereign independent nation, were nevertheless a nation, so recognized by the treaties made with them – that the individuals composing this nation were not citizens or members of the states, but members of a separate community--- that the Cherokees, if they ever were sovereign, had lost their sovereignty by acknowledging the protection of the US.,--- that they had passed under the dominion of the United States, but not of the states in their separate capacity--- that they were not subject to the legislation of the States, but to the Legislation of Congress.

His honor, furthermore, decided the act of the legislature extending the jurisdiction of the States over the Indian Territory, to be unconstitutional and void, because of it being partial in its terms, and not a general and uniform Law of the Land.”

From this decision, the Attorney General took an appeal, in the way of a writ of error, to the Supreme Court.

While Foreman and Springston had been in jail, Ross’ government had raised a large sum of money for their defense. Foreman was reported to have said upon his release, “By God, sir, I was let out with a silver key.” But his reprieve would be only a temporary one. In May, 1842, Foreman would meet his end at the hands of Stand Watie, brother of Elias Boudinot, at a grocery store in Burton County, Arkansas. He and Springston were shot in the same location, less than a week apart. Ridge’s words had turned out to be prophetic: “We should now fall together and twist each others noses. Our eyes … remain in their sockets, but in general we gouge them out.”

SOURCES:

Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 16, 1834 edition.

Entry 1041, Cherokee Agency in Tennessee, 1798 – 1836 EVIDENCE IN THE CASE: THE STATE AGAINST JAMES FOREMAN & ANDERSON SPRINGSTON FOR THE MURDER OF JOHN WALKER, JR. (Transcribed by Jerry L. Clark) Retrieved from http://www.gatrailoftears.com/members_only/Clark_Archives/court_rec...

King, Duane H and Evans, E. Raymond, Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1976.

Wilkins, Thurmond, Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and of the Decimation of a People (1970 ed.). New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.