GENE CURTIS - Tulsa World Archive
The middle of Oklahoma is a long way from Salem, Mass., and it had been more than 200 years since the witch trials.
Antoinette C. Snow Constant poses with her students at the Wewoka Presbyterian mission school, about 1880. The story of an Oklahoma witchcraft case was told in her memoirs.
Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society
But an elderly Seminole Indian woman was condemned to death as a sorceress in Wewoka in 1880 and came within two hours of facing a firing squad. She had been accused of causing a long-sick woman to choke to death -- by blowing on a piece of bread given to the ill victim, who tried to eat it.
The story of the Oklahoma witchcraft case was told in the 1923 memoirs of former mission teacher Antoinette C. Snow Constant, who saved the condemned woman from death. The story of the "witch" trial was published in the Tulsa World shortly after Constant wrote her memoirs and was recently recounted in the book "Alice and J.F.B." by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Vance Trimble of Wewoka.
The young white teacher watched every morning as the old Indian "witch" was led stumbling on foot to the Council House by a light horseman (an officer riding a pony) for her trial. Her long gray hair falling over her shoulders gave her a weird appearance, Constant recalled in her hand-written memoirs.
The trial lasted several days before the old woman was found guilty and sentenced to death. Members of her "Clan of the Wind" were not allowed to speak in the woman's defense or to attend the trial.
Constant wrote that she appealed to everyone she could think of, including the Rev. William Ramsey, a Presbyterian missionary who founded the mission where she taught 50 students, and John Franklin Brown, a half-white man who was the most formally educated man in the tribe's leadership.
"We can do nothing," the missionary told her. "And besides you will lose your position if you interfere with the Indians' affairs."
Brown condemned the trial and sentence but said he could do nothing. "I fear her fate is settled beyond the reach of any aid I might be able to render."
Chief John Chupco, whom Constant had considered a friend, had visited in her home many times. Though he had asked her to "never leave my people," he refused to talk with her and didn't respond to a written plea for the woman's life. He had already signed the death warrant and had set the execution for 2 p.m. June 8, 1880.
"There is no such thing as a witch," the teacher had written to the chief, urging him to "stay the hand of the executioner." Chupco ignored the letter.
On the Sunday before the execution was scheduled, Ramsey announced from his pulpit, "For all who wish to watch the execution of the witch, I can tell you that it will take place on the Council House grounds on Tuesday at two in the afternoon."
People began to assemble early Tuesday awaiting the event, Trimble wrote in his book. The "witch" arrived at noon, calm and resigned to dying. She was in her family's wagon sitting on a rough pine coffin lined with muslin -- while awaiting her date with the firing squad.
Two young light horse privates had been selected for the firing squad and their rifles had been "purified" by a medicine man.
Meanwhile, the teacher had sent an appeal to Maj. A.W. Tate, the U.S. Indian agent headquartered in Muskogee, whose response arrived barely two hours before the execution was scheduled: a letter to the teacher and an order to Chief Chupco to stay the execution.
The "witch" was sent home and, as was predicted by the missionary, Constant was fired from her job as a teacher. In spite of Chief Chupco's earlier plea that the teacher "never leave my people," he now ordered the missionary to "get another teacher."
The old woman whose life was spared was grateful. When the girls in the mission school took her to meet Constant the next day, she threw her arms around the teacher and wept with joy. "I could only point heavenward and say to her (in Seminole) 'God has saved your life.' "
A few months later Constant returned to Kansas with her husband and children. She later moved to Edmond, where she lived until her death.
Never again was a "witch" put on trial in the Seminole nation.
Photograph research by Rachele Vaughan.