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The reason behind the hatred between Ben Collins and Pote Pruitt is lost in the dust of time. We’ll never know. A troubled history often exists behind killings on the frontier, and it resists investigation for it’s a matter of legend and family lore rather than ascertainable facts. At the root of this case may have been a matter of Indian-hating. Collins was one-eighth Chickasaw —though it wasn’t evident in his appearance except for the darkness of his eyes and hair—and Pruitt’s father came to Oklahoma from Harrison County, Georgia, originally Indian lands, where there was no lack of troubled history. As late as 1857 Herman Melville in The Confidence-Man would write a chapter called “The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating,” a profound meditation on the white man’s inherited hatred of the red man. Probably Indian hating was the source of the feud.
All agreed that there was bad blood between the two men from well before their first published encounter which left Pruitt incapacitated by a bullet wound to the neck, and their second which occurred only by proxy, when the Pruitt brothers hired hit-men, the notorious Killer Jim Miller and his agents, and left Collins with his body shredded by three concerted blasts from shotguns and rifles.
Ben Collins (1875-1906) is a well known figure among lawmen in Indian Territory, unusually well-known for a man who began his career as an Indian police and who died so young. His exploits can readily be followed in Ardmore Oklahoma’s fine newspaper, The Daily Ardmoreite, the most important news publication in the area. In 1898 Collins was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal, a post of prestige and importance for a lawman. At twenty-three he was young, but he had earned the position by his physical strength, his intelligence, his skill with weapons, and most of all by his many successful arrests followed by convictions. A photo of him suggests another reason for his success: it shows a boyish young man with the hint of an engaging smile. Most people would have liked him instinctively, but one man at least had the instinct of hatred. That man had received a severe wound at Collins’s hand, though it was in the line of the Marhshal’s duty. Could his desire for revenge be sufficient to justify the cold-blooded killing of Collins? Let us unfold the story.
The man that Collins shot and wounded was John Davenport Pruitt (1872-1909), who went by the third syllable of his middle name, spelled as it was pronounced “Pote” or “Poat.” He was the fifth of the six sons of Thomas Jefferson Pruitt, a prominent land owner who had come to Indian Territory in Oklahoma from the Pine Mountain Range country of western Georgia, a southern extension of greater Appalachia. His wife also came from Georgia--from Troup County, part of the old Creek Nation, and they were married there. His faded photograph (not shown) reveals a stern man on whose face a smile would have been incongruous. At the time when Pote first got himself shot by Collins, Pote was thirty-one years old, old enough you might think to know better, but as a son he would have imitated his father, which is to say he would have early learned to be arrogant (all that land the family owned!), aggressive, and Indian-hating. The reason for the use of that last term deserves a short explanation. Before the advent of the whites in Oklahoma, all the land belonged to the Five Tribes, granted by federal treaty for “as long as the waters flow”--a phrase borrowed by Angie Debo for her great study of the betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Whites like the Pruitts got huge holdings of land by hook, crook, gouging, murder, or marriage. So of course they despised the people they’d wronged, dismissing them as “lazy savages.” That’s just human nature.
The venue of the first known encounter between Collins and Pote Pruitt was that innocent pastoral known as the community picnic, held in the village of Orr (in the Chickasaw Country, now Love County), near where the Pruitts lived, and sponsored by Woodmen of the World. Here is the account from the June 1903 Ardmore paper headlined “Trouble at the Orr Picnic”:
Just before dinner was served on the grounds there yesterday Chas. Hare and Pote Pruitt got into a difficulty and Deputy Collins told them they must quit fighting. Pruitt turned to Collins and asked him who he was and what he had to do with it, and [added] that he was not afraid of him (Collins). It seems that Collins then shot him, the first shot striking Pruitt in the front of the neck, ranging around and coming out at the back, the other shot striking him in the back.
The crucial matter omitted above is that Collins was arresting Pote for theft, and that omission causes what we are told here to make little sense. In Pote’s initial question we hear the Pruitt arrogance, but that hardly gives Collin a reason to shoot him, much less twice. It can only be inferred that even at a picnic Pote was carrying a pistol and drawing it. Still, it makes Collins seem trigger happy. Surely the first shot through the neck would have sufficed--unless Pote were lying prone and still trying to fire his weapon. The article leaves the reader puzzled--puzzled, that is, if we don’t know the hooliganism of the Pruitt brothers.
The same article provides a few details about the background of the shooting, pointing out that
It is said that much anger has existed between Hare and Collins on the one side and Pruitt on the other. Some time ago Hare’s home was entered by unknown parties and some goods stolen, and Hare and Collins, who worked on the matter, intimated that Pruitt had had some connection with the theft.
Although for the reader of old newspapers, this doesn’t become clear until the trials of 1906-1910, Collins knew that Pote was a thief, and a thief with a firearm was dangerous. It took two shots to decommission this one.
The next day the Ardmoreite adds a short valediction: “The affair cast a gloom over the entire gathering and was deeply regretted by the people of that community.” Gloom cast over the Woodmen of the World picnic would indeed have occasioned regret, but more than gloom was cast that day. A fire was ignited in the wounded man’s heart, and it burned for vengeance. In this he would have been aided by his brothers. His father, who normally would have carried the burden of family honor, had died in 1889, but he had sons, Pote’s brothers Henry and Clint. Pote himself was left crippled by his wounds, but he remained nonetheless part of the planning of the vengeance they would exact.
Another valedictory performance was handed in by the commission that tried Collins for the shooting. In the case of lawmen in early day Indian and Oklahoma Territory, this was largely a pro forma performance. If a lawman killed a man in the performance of his duty, he still had to be tried for murder, but the commission or jury found the shooting justified. Likewise in this case, the commissioner “arrived at the conclusion that the defendant Collins was justified in doing as he had and dismissed the defendants.”
That was Act I of this three-act play. Act II would be just as short, but Act III takes place in the courtroom, where it is drawn out over a period of years.
Act II is quick and brutal. It is first reported in the Ardmoreite for August 2nd, 1906, starting with a quick overview.
Indian Policeman Ben Collins was waylaid and shot at his home five miles south of Milburn at 10 o’clock last night. When his wife, who witnessed the tragedy from a short distance, reached Mr. Collins, he was dead. The nature of the wounds indicates there were two parties to the assassination. Bloodhounds have been sent for and will be put on the trail early today.
The first thing to note is that Collins is no longer a deputy U.S. marshal but has been demoted to the rank of Indian Policeman. I find no reference to this event in the papers and so cannot explain it, but since the appointment was political to begin with Collin’s demotion must have been of the same stripe. (The U.S. Marshal occupied a desk and appointed his deputies They did the field work and made the arrests. For the area of Carter and Love Counties, the U. S. Marshal’s office was in Paris Texas.). Collins was hired by John S. Hammer, but he died in 1903. In all probability, a new U. S. Marshal was appointed and personnel was juggled. Secondly, while in fiction and film bloodhounds rarely fail, especially on a scent as hot as this one must have been, we hear no more about the canine quest.
The Ardmoreite continues, now in more detail, but with little substance. There is the usual encomium--“he was of fine build and a young man and made a daring officer”--followed by the mention (but not the naming) of two suspects. And we learn that the Collins home was no longer in Colbert , where he was born, but in Emet, home of the last governor of the Chickasaw Nation. (Emet is about three miles south of Milburn, which in turn is about ten miles east of Tishomingo.)
By December of 1906, Act III --the courtroom non-drama--has begun, and it would seem, I owe the dogs an apology for evidently they had done their work. Five men have been indicted for the killing of Collins and four arrested, including Pote Pruitt. We may begin with the arrest of Pote’s brother Clint (full name George Clinton Pruitt): Clint Pruitt is in Jail, with the subheading “Charged with Being Implicated in the Killing of Ben Collins”:
Pruitt was arrested on this charge some four months ago by Deputy Hahn of Cornish, but escaped from the officers as he was being brought here in company with his brother, Henry Pruitt, to jail. . . . About a week ago word was received that Pruitt was in Texas. Officers were informed to hold him there and later to bring him to Ardmore, with the result that he is now in jail . . . . The arrest of Pruitt is the fourth in connection with the murder of Ben Collins on which officers and special detectives have been working since Collins was assassinated at his home near Emet. At the session of the Ada grand jury at the recent term of court in that city it is said indictments against five men were returned in connection with the killing of Collins. Of the five indicated four have been arrested, and it is presumed that there is still one more who is included in the indictment. The four who have been arrested . . . are Henry Pruitt, A. Washmood, J. B. Miller and Clint Pruitt. All are out under bond . . . excepting Clint Pruitt.
Henry Pruitt is Pote’s brother, a hard man more than once indicted for murder. The most arresting name here should be that of “J. B. Miller” --Jim Miller, aka Killer Miller, aka Deacon Miller, the most prolific hit-man in the southwest whose kill number is hovering around thirty as he approaches the end of his career. Called Deacon Miller because between jobs he was active in the Methodist Church, he will be hanged in Ada in April 1909. Hanged by irate citizens for the good and simple reason that the courts couldn’t convict him, and this too for a good and simple reason. Killer Miller didn’t leave witnesses. He either eliminated them, or they were wise and fled for their lives. I’d like to think the baying of a bloodhound would have counted as a witness in his trial, but by this point in his baroque career Miller often wasn’t present at the killing itself, leaving no scent for the hounds. He hired local triggermen and hid himself behind a wall of deniability.
Miller didn’t go to trial for the killing of Ben Collins because the good citizens of Ada had already hanged him before his trial could be scheduled. Pote wasn’t tried either because he been gunned to death in a grudge fight in 1909. I have found no newspaper discussion of the judicial reasons for Henry’s omission from the proceedings. The one man they did put on trial was A. Washmood, whose fate will now concern us as we continue the courtroom battles of Act III.
The “A.” might stand for Anonymous but but in later accounts it’s revealed as Alford. The report in the stalwart Ardmoreite first notes the unlamented absence of Jim Miller among the men to be tried. “J. B. Miller, one of the defendants in this case was hung at Ada by a mob together with three other men for the assassination of Gus Bobbitt, also a former United States deputy marshal.” The word “mob” may tell us that the Ardmoreite doesn’t approve of vigilante justice, but it doesn’t tell us what other recourse the citizens of Ada had. Should they have watched the Deacon go free to kill again?
The rest of the article is cut and dried, but how it was cut and put out to dry is still of mild interest.
These men were indicted by the grand jury at Ada in September, 1906, they each got a change of venue from Ada and also from Tishomingo, bringing the case to Ardmore before statehood. The county attorney of Carter county upon the advent of statehood sent his case back to Johnston county, where the crime occurred for trial. The district judge at Tishomingo [Johnston Co.] transferred the case to Ardmore again upon the ground that a change of venue from Tishomingo had been legally granted and therefore his court had no jurisdiction.
It sounds like they were playing hot potato with the case, no one wanting to hold on to it.
The defendant Henry Pruitt has been let out on bond…. It is alleged that he had no direct connection with the killing, but that he furnished and paid Washmood and Miller to do the killing.
Huh? I’m no legal scholar but isn’t paying for a murder a direct connection? “Your honor,” says the defendant, “I had no direct connection with the murder. I just paid the killer and provided him with a gun.”
The motive for the crime is thought to be that Ben Collins while attempting to arrest Port Pruitt in 1904 shot Port Pruitt, from the effects of which he never recovered.
This is news indeed and we can only wish we’d been told earlier. Back in June 1903 (not 1904) the Ardmoreite had us persuaded that Collins shot Pote when the latter was getting into an argument with a man named Hare. Readers were left to think that Pote resented the interference and drew on Collins, but in fact Collins was trying to arrest Pote for theft and Pote resisted, which of course made the shooting justified. Happy the reader who keeps back issues of the Ardmoreite to compare stories separated by a few years.
A. Washmood forfeited his bond and has been a fugitive from justice until apprehended recently in southern Texas and he is now in jail.
Judge Russell was employed to prosecute this case long before statehood and he will probably conduct the prosecution. Judge A. H. Huston of Guthrie has been assigned by the supreme court to hear said case. Many of the witnesses in the case are dead or have moved.
Clearly events have intervened to trouble the waters of this case. Legally, the biggest event was statehood in 1907, which discombobulated the whole judicial applecart. But in closing the Ardmoreite mentions another big development: “Many of the witnesses in the case are dead or have moved away.”
Sometimes the arguments involved seem niggling. A 1910 article offers this report on the court sessions:
The defense scored yesterday in the Washmood case when Judge Huston ruled out the testimony of some of the most important witnesses, on the ground that the correct name and postoffice address was not served upon the defendant two days before the trial. In this case, which has been pending four years, many of the witness have died and . . . many of the witnesses have changed their postoffices, and Judge Huston excluded all the witnesses who have done this.
It is from such practices as these that the English language has been blessed with the descriptive word pettifogging. Even the bloodhounds had probably changed their postal address, explaining why we don’t hear from them.
But there we have it, wrapped, sealed, delivered. In the primitive state of law-enforcement forensics in this period. it was impossible to get a murder conviction without witnesses. Washmood was found not guilty for “lack of evidence”--the cant phrase for “no witnesses.” It seemed unlikely that there would ever be justice for Ben Collins.
The courts twice convicted Washmood and would have ordered him hanged, but each time there was legal yammering, both the defense and the prosecution attorneys developing diarrhea of the jaw bone, the verdict was overturned, and a new trial was ordered. There was a finale to Act III, though its mercy will provide the eye-for-an-eye reader little satisfaction. If Act III concerns the attempt to convict and hang Alford Washmood for his part in the assassination of Ben Collins, the finale shows the court granting mercy because Washmood’s advancing age had left him feeble. In July of 1914 the Ardmore paper reported:
There are two sides to all cases. Washmood may or may not have been guilty. He is an old man of good address, and the trouble through which he has passed has whitened his hair to the consistency of snow. He may be guilty of the crimes with which he is charged, but the more charitably inclined attribute his troubles to his associates, and aver the he, like old dog Tray, was led astray.
It’s not clear how old dog Tray affects the case--the editors of The Ardmoreite know a verse of the song that Stephen Foster didn’t write--but their argument for clemency seems motivated by laudable charity.
Washmood had been in jail for nearly a decade. The penalty for murder was death by hanging but for manslaughter it was typically ten years, sometimes life, but nearly always commuted to about five years. It might well be thought that Washmood had served enough time to wash away his debt to society. Probably very little satisfaction would have been felt by the public from hanging a feeble old man for his part in a murder almost a decade earlier. It may nonetheless be wondered whether Ben Collins or his wife would have felt that he had received justice. Four of the five men responsible for his killing died violently, but none was hanged by the state.
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