The publisher of the Oregon Sentinel newspaper in Jacksonville, B.F. Dowell, called the hanging there of a 7-year-old Indian boy in 1853 “one of the saddest and most inhuman acts” of the Rogue Indian War.
Having just hanged two grown Indians, a mob had seized the boy and headed for the scaffold.
Dowell recalled years later that he mounted a nearby log and shouted for attention, telling the crowd to punish the guilty but not the innocent child.
Dowell said, “Someone called out, ‘what will you do with the boy?’ and I replied, ‘I will take him to a hotel and feed him.’” He took the boy by the hand and started up California Street when a man on horseback rushed into the crowd, shouting, “Hang him, hang him; he will make a murderer when he is grown and would hang you if he had a chance.”
The mob seized the boy and put a rope around his neck, which Dowell cut twice before being restrained.
“In a moment more the boy was swinging …,” Dowell said.
He added, “I turned away with a sad heart at this inhuman conduct towards the innocent child, against whom no crime was charged.”
Sources: "Rogue River Indian War." Jackson County, Oregon, History Notes. Wright Research and Archives, 2016. Web. 8 Aug. 2016. http://wrightarchives.blogspot.com/; "Rogue Valley Hangings." Southern Oregon History, Revised . Ed. Ben Truwe. 18 June 2016. Web. 8 Aug. 2016.
