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HE NEW YORK TIMES called Cherokee Ezekial Proctor a “bad Indian” on November 7, 1897. This was twenty-five years after his involvement in what various newspapers described as “Proctor’s War,” “The Courthouse Riot,” or “The Goingsnake Massacre” and ten years before his death. Many of his fellow Cherokee would have disagreed with that description. They would
have praised him for his performance as a Cherokee sheriff. Others who had run afoul of Proctor, either as a private citizen or in his capacity as a lawman, would have called him worse. All of them, however, would have agreed with this statement. Ezekial “Zeke” Proctor was tough as nails and not a man to be approached carelessly. One Ft. Smith paper said of Proctor, “It is not known how many men fell before his rifle, but no two Cherokee were such terrors to their own race and were so thoroughly feared as Tom Starr and Zeke Proctor….” Born to a white father and Cherokee mother in 1831 Georgia, Zeke’s young life was marred by the tragedy of the Trail of Tears. Phillip W. Steele, the author of The Last Cherokee Warriors, referenced Zeke’s granddaughter Elizabeth Walden’s memories of her grandfather. She said that Zeke often spoke about the hardships of the journey to Oklahoma. Zeke’s family was packed onto flatboats and made the journey by water. Many of the party they traveled with died and were buried beside the riverbanks. Arriving in Indian Territory at age seven, he grewup in the Goingsnake District near what later became Westville, Oklahoma. Being on the border of Indian Territory and just a few miles from Arkansas, the area was known to attract law breakers and desperados. Ze-
A RARE PHOTO OF EZEKIAL PROCTOR A TOUGH-AS-NAILS CHEROKEE LAWMAN, WITHOUT HIS HAT,
