Ned Christie

Who is this guy? I asked Gram pa. He said, oh I don’t know, just an outlaw these vigilantes chased down and shot I guess. We were looking at an old post card from the 1890s on heavy paper stock turning brown with chipped and worn edges from grandmas little cedar chest full of old photos of days gone by. But this one I knew I’d never forget, it was of a dead man on a door sized piece of wood standing upright next to a railing of a brick building with cut stone window sills. He had a Winchester type rifle between his stiff hands and his waist. There were seven men with their rifles sitting around this guy, one or two wore a badge. I was about 8 or 9 and didn’t remember ever seeing a dead person yet, even in a photograph. Many years went by and my wife and I paid a visit to an aunt and uncle in the same little town of Bois’ Darc MO where my Gran pa and gran ma Bolin had lived so many years ago; they had both passed away and my aunt and I were going through that same little cedar box of old pictures when I picked up the old post card and said wow! I told her the story and she said take it home with you, I guess she could tell it meant a lot to me…….fast forward another ten years; I had ordered some Time Life books on the old west and the first one of the series was about the outlaws……in the back of this book was a full page picture of this same outlaw in the same place and though he had not moved, there was no one around him. His name was Ned Christie a Cherokee Outlaw. Some time later at the Har-Ber village museum in Grove OK I saw an old wanted poster For Ned Christie, and again later in the movie True Grit John Wayne tells Robert Duval’s character Ned Pepper that “I aim to kill you Ned or take you back to Fort Smith to hang at Judge Parker’s convenience, which will it be” Ned say’s “that’s mighty bold talk for a one eyed fat man”…..Rooster says fill your hand you son of a bitch”. while in Guthery OK last week I looked for something on this old outlaw but found nothing so when I got home I looked him up on the Computer and there was the whole story. It is all detailed out but very interesting to me, maybe you,ll find it that way too…….http://www.historynet.com/ned-christie-cherokee-outlaw.htm http://www.historynet.com/ned-christie-cherokee-outlaw.htm