Tom Starr: The Outlaw and the Man by Regina McLemore

TOM STARR: THE OUTLAW AND THE MAN

It was a common saying in Indian Territory in the 1840s, “I would rather meet the Devil himself than Ol’ Tom Starr.”

STANDING AROUND SIX-AND-a-half feet and weighing in at over 200 pounds, Tom Starr was a big, intimidating, mixed-blood Cherokee. There is also the story, that may or may not be true, about Tom sporting a necklace of human ears. The ears were supposedly from the men he killed.

Tom’s father, James Starr, was a marked man because of trouble in the Old Cherokee Nation. When Andrew Jackson insisted the Cherokees’ only chance of survival lay in moving west of the Mississippi River, James Starr agreed. He soon joined the group that decided to work with Jackson, the Treaty Party. Under the leadership of John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, Starr, along with nineteen other Cherokees, signed an illegal treaty with the United States Government signing away all Cherokee land in exchange for new land in Indian Territory. They would also receive $5,000,000 for the tribe, $150 individually, subsistence for a year, and various other provisions. Despite vehement protests and continuous lobbying by Chief John Ross and Cherokee delegates, Congress, at the insistence of Jackson, ratified the fraudulent treaty by a slim majority in 1836.

As part of the favored Treaty Party, the Starr family left in 1837 before the forced removals, with a protective military escort, to their new homeland. Once there, they established a nice homestead for their large family, east of present-day Stilwell, Oklahoma, in the Oak Grove community of Goingsnake District. The peaceful atmosphere changed, however, when the starved, angry emigrants began arriving in 1838.

The Old Settlers, who had come to Indian Territory years earlier, joined with the Treaty Party to oppose John Ross and his plans to replace their government with his party’s version. After a meeting called by Ross ended, some supporters and his son, Allen, stayed behind to have their own meeting. They activated the Cherokee Blood Law, which required the deaths of traitors at the hands of their clan members. After drawing lots, three parties of assassins were selected, and they set out to brutally murder John Ridge, his father, Major Ridge, and his cousin, Elias Boudinot. Allen was assigned the task of keeping his father occupied while the assassins did their bloody work.

ON JUNE 22, 1839, A GROUP OF UNKNOWN CHEROKEEASSASSINATED NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER ELIAS BOUDINOTOUTSIDE HIS HOME.

When questioned later, John Ross claimed to have had no knowledge of the plans to murder the men and said he would have “saved them if he had known.” The assassinations threw the Cherokee Nation into an uproar, and some of the treaty signers, including James Starr, fled to Fort Gibson, where they asked for protection.

According to Helen Starr and O.E. Hill, in their book, Footprints in the Indian Nation, young Tom Starr killed his first man the next year. Attending a foot race near the Arkansas line, he encountered a Ross supporter and one of his father’s enemies, David Buffington. Heated words were exchanged, and Buffington grabbed for his gun. Starr, known to be lightning-fast, let loose with his hunting knife, piercing Buffington’s heart. Buffington lay dead before his gun had cleared its holster. Starr immediately went on the scout for more targets.

James Starr and his sons vowed to remove John Ross by any means possible. Tom soon formed a band, mostly consisting of brothers and cousins. Claiming that if they were going to be branded as “outlaws” they would act the part, the Starr band engaged in various acts of terrorism over the next few years. The Starrs were soon joined by other families, such as the Wests, the Riders, and the McDaniels. They were supported and aided by some Old Settlers, as well as some whites in Arkansas, who believed John Ross was responsible for the Ridge and Boudinot murders. When the gang fled to Arkansas to escape capture, they were supplied with shelter, food, and horses.

Tom Starr stirred up a hornet’s nest when he and his brothers killed the respected white trader Benjamin Vore, his Cherokee wife, and a visitor to their home named Kelly in September of 1843. After robbing the house, they burned it. It is not known if they killed Vore for his support of John Ross, were after his money and possessions, wanted to intimidate white visitors to Indian Territory, or make bad press for Ross and his party. The motivation could have been any or all of these. Even though they were pursued by General Zachary Taylor and U. S. troops from Fort Gibson, the criminals escaped to Arkansas. Arkansas law officers apprehended them, but somehow, they escaped. The Ross party always said the officers allowed them to escape because they supported attacks on John Ross and his supporters.

Author William McLoughlin in After the Trail of Tears, related the story of Daniel Coodey, a nephew of John Ross. Coodey decided to take the law into his own hands when the Starrs stole some of his horses and mules, as well as some of his neighbors’ horses and mules from the Tahlequah area. After forming a posse, they caught up with the Starrs in the Choctaw Nation and captured Bean Starr, who admitted that his brothers had stolen the horses. Coodey wrote to his uncle, “Eight of the recovered horses and mules were taken there by the three Starrs and their friends George Fields, Robin Vann, and Ta-ka ha-ka.”

Bean revealed that “but for his (Tom’s) threats and the commands of his father, he would have some time since surrendered himself for trial… He declared that his father, James Starr and brother, Tom, were wholly to blame for his acts… Much anxiety was manifested … that we should not leave him because… the other two would be certain to kill him since his father had directed them to do so if he should ever leave them….”

On Saturday night, November 2, 1845, a party of men, reported to be Thomas Starr, Ellis Starr, Washington Starr, Suel or Ellis Rider, and Ellis West, attempted to kill R.J. Meigs, the son-in-law of John Ross, at his home in Park Hill. Meigs escaped through the back door, and the next morning the bodies of two dead Ross supporters were found less than a mile from the house.

One week later, on November 9, 1845, James Starr was sitting on his front porch when a group of Cherokee approached his house. Thinking they were the Cherokee Lighthorse Police come to question him again, he wasn’t concerned. They opened fire and shot him down on his porch. As he was dying, he called out “Run!” to his son, Buck, who was nearby.

BOUDINOUT’S BROTHER, STAND WATIE, WAS ANOTHER SIGNEROF THE TREATY OF NEW ECHOTA AND WAS ALSO TARGETTEDFOR ASSASSINATION.

Being crippled, he couldn’t run fast, and he was shot and badly wounded. Fourteen-year-old Buck died six weeks later. The three, frightened, young sons present were protected by the women of the family who shielded them in their laps. Mary Starr, the sixteen-year-old daughter, attempted to escape on horseback to warn others, but the men kept her from riding away.

If Mary had escaped, she could have probably warned Suel Rider who lived one and a quarter-miles away. Instead, one of the men soon led him into the yard where he was shot seven times. Still trying to escape, Suel was chased down and stabbed to death, reportedly by a Cherokee named Big Stand. According to family history, Suel’s mother, Mary Rider, had to bury him herself because all of her male relatives had fled to Arkansas in an attempt to save their lives.

On that same day, Bluford Rider and Washington Starr, a son of James Starr, were wounded by the same group of men but escaped. Tom and the older sons didn’t attend their father’s funeral out of fear of being shot or arrested. But it was said Tom swore a vow on his father’s grave to kill every man who was connected to the murders of his father and brother.

He was already wanted for killing David Buffington and the Vores, so he was accustomed to striking at his victims and going on the scout. For the next two years, Tom and his gang killed one man after another, escaping across the Arkansas border whenever the Cherokee Lighthorse got too close. The Cherokee lawmen had no jurisdiction in Arkansas, and the Treaty Party had friends there.

IT WAS SAID THAT ALL OF TOM’S CHILDREN WERE RE- SPECTABLE, EXCEPT FOR ONE. SAM STARR GOT TANGLED UP WITH A WIDOW WOMAN FROM MISSOURI NAMED MYRA MAYBELLE SHIRLEY REED. SHE WOULD LATER BECOME KNOWN AS BELLE STARR.

One of the first ones they killed was Big Stand in revenge for Suel’s killing. One of Tom’s men lured Stand from a party with the promise of whiskey. Once outside, he was shot and stabbed by the gang, the same way Suel was killed.

Starr was not only big and scary. He was smart. The Cherokee Lighthorse and white lawmen were hot on his trail several times, but he always managed to get away. His enemies found some fresh horse tracks and tracked him to a place where he had been hiding, expecting a gun fight. When they got there, neither Tom nor his horse were there, but they could see no tracks leading away from the place. His pursuers went away empty-handed. Tom revealed his secret several years later. He had put shoes on his horse with the front of the shoe to the rear so that it would appear that the horse was traveling in the opposite direction.

Another time he escaped a posse by jumping in the Canadian River and staying under long enough for the men to think he had drowned. After they rode off, he emerged from the water and went on his way.

In 1846, there had been so many killings of members of both the Ross Party and the Treaty Party that President Polk got involved. He threatened the Cherokees with dividing the territory—with the Old Settlers, the Treaty Party, and the Ross Party all getting a section. The Old Settlers and Treaty Party were agreeable to his proposition, but John Ross asked for a new treaty. Not only did the delegates from each group negotiate a new treaty with each other and the United States, they consolidated party divisions and agreed upon general amnesty. Five thousand dollars was to be paid to the descendants of the assassinated Treaty Party leaders, Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, and $100,000 was to be given to the members of the Treaty Party and the Old Settlers to compensate them for their damages and losses.

John Ross and the National Party were forced to accept the treaty of New Echota signed by the Treaty Party ten years earlier. The Old Settlers and the Treaty Party had to agree to accept Ross’s leadership. John Ross and Stand Watie, the new Treaty Party leader, shook hands.

The treaty had declared amnesty for the Treaty Party and a full pardon for Tom Starr and his band. Starr boldly demanded his share of the $100,000 designated for the Treaty Party and the Old Settlers, and this was grudgingly granted. He and his followers returned to the Cherokee Nation but didn’t stay there long. The old hatred and feuds still remained, and the killings had resumed.

Tom Starr continued his vendetta, traveling sometimes as much as a hundred miles to kill one of the men he had sworn to kill. In his later years, he stated, “There was thirty-two men that killed my pa. I got all of them except for a few that died in their beds before I could get around to them.”

Starr supported the Confederacy during the Civil War and joined the First Mounted Volunteers. During the war, he served as a scout for General Stand Watie and met William Clark Quantrill and his guerillas, becoming friends with the Youngers.

He eventually moved to the Canadian District, west of the Arkansas River, where he settled down and raised a big family. His place became a favorite hide-out of the Younger gang, so much so that part of it became known as “Younger Bend.”

Tom had many friends, and his home was described as a place of hospitality. Cherokee Ellis West told an interviewer for the Indian Pioneer Papers, “When he was accorded treatment as man to man, he always proved to be a man among men.”

An elder of the Starr family once said when asked about Tom, “We have no outlaws in our family, only fugitives.” It was said that all of Tom’s children were respectable, except for one. Sam Starr got tangled-up with a widow woman from Missouri named Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed. She would later become known as Belle Starr.

The October 16, 1890, edition of the Guthrie Democrat featured the article, “Tom Starr, a Notorious Cherokee Outlaw Dies.”

“He was once a terror to the Cherokee Nation but has been at peace with the world for over 20 years. He was perhaps the only man known in the world’s history to make a solemn treaty of peace and amity with the Cherokee Nation….”

—Regina McLemore is a retired educator of Cherokee heritage. Her great, great grandmother, Susie Christie Clay, survived the Trail of Tears in 1839.