Some of this has been posted before, but the Vinita piece is new. I decided to repeat the rest for new readers.
Indian Chieftain (Vinita, OK)
September 24, 1885
Killing at Caddo
While the circus which showed here on the 12th was at Caddo a week later, a particularly cold-blooded murder was committed. The account of the Denison Gazetteer is as follows:
While the performance was in progress, Bill Jones, who was under the influence of liquor, became involved in a dispute and was ejected from the tent. On the outside he met Matt Bouton, and without a moment’s warning, Jones pulled his revolver and fired two shots, killing Bouton at the first fire.
It seems that Bouton and Jones had not been on good terms for some time. A few moments after Jones killed Bouton, the family of the dead man arrived at the scene. The wife, nearly crazy with grief, threw herself on the dead body of her husband. Jones pushed her rudely away and slapped the children and then kicked the dead man in the body and head.
He then mounted his horse and in true bravado style, “took the town”, armed with a Winchester which was discharged at random. Jones is twenty-five years of age, a bully, and braggart, and always seemed to want to leave the impression that he was a bad man from the B.I.T. His father, Wilson Jones, is considered the wealthiest cattleman in the Choctaw Nation, and his money will probably save his son’s neck from the gallows. The killing is pronounced a cold-blooded murder, but we doubt very much if Bill Jones gets his just desserts, as Indian justice is very tardy. Bouton is a citizen by marriage and the U. S. Court has no jurisdiction in the matter.
Our Denison friends are mistaken as to the matter of jurisdiction. A man may take upon himself Indian citizenship, but the United States retains jurisdiction over him whether he desires it or not. Jones stands a very good change of stretching hemp at Fort Smith.
The Dallas Weekly Herald reported the same story with a few differences in details and this ending:
A friend of Jones then brought him his horse and they started together for his ranch, but on the way, they met the partner of Mr. Bouton and Jones tried to kill him also, firing several times at him and run him all the way back to Caddo, but he succeeded in escaping. The crime of Jones seemed to make him a devil of the worst kind, and he rode through the streets shooting off his pistol and driving everybody into houses, defying powder, lead, and officers, and finally left town and was seen 12 or 14 miles from Caddo, near his home.
And this from the New York Herald:
Galveston, Texas- A special from Denison says “Yesterday at Caddo, Indian Territory, Bill Jones, while intoxicated, was ejected from a show tent. Outside Jones met Matthew Bouton, a peaceable citizen, whom he shot and killed without a word of warning. He then mounted his horse and escaped. A posse is now in pursuit.”
Later, Willie Jones and Steve Belvin killed Alex Powell of Mayhew.
Belvin also unsuccessfully attempted to shoot L. A. Morris, a clerk at Hancock’s store in Caddo.
Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 14, No. 4
December, 1936
CHIEF WILSON NATHANIEL JONES.
by John Bartlett Meserve.
Grim fate arrested the hectic career of Willie Jones on the night of January 26, 1888. The young man and a party of friends consisting of Tuck and Chris Bench and Josh Crowder, who was then sheriff of Jackson County, were engaged in a drunken carousal, near Garrett's Bluff on the Red River. The party was badly intoxicated, save Tuck Bench, and as the supply of whiskey became exhausted, they crossed on the ferry into Texas to replenish their supply. The party became belligerent and particularly young Jones and in the melee which ensued after their return to the Nation, Tuck Bench, in anticipation of drunken threats made by Jones, shot and killed him. Sheriff Crowder, half crazed with drink, witnessed the tragedy and is reputed to have offered no interference and the bullet-riddled body of the only son and heir of Wilson N. Jones was found upon a sand bar on the Choctaw Nation side of Red River, near Garrett's Bluff, the next morning.
Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 15, No. 3
September, 1937
NECROLOGY
CHRISTINE FOLSOM BATES
1849-1937
… At Elm Hill in 1875 Christine Folsom was united in marriage by the missionary preacher, W. J. B. Lloyd, to Madison Bouton, a young white man from New York State who had come west to seek his fortune. A few years before, up on the Plains, he was shot through the body by an arrow in a fight with wild Indians. With the building of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad he came to Caddo, which thereafter became his home. The marriage of white men to Indian girls aroused the antagonism of many of the Choctaw patriots of that day. Some think this was at the bottom of the tragedy that occurred in 1885, when Willie Jones, son of Chief Wilson N. Jones, met Madison Bouton on a Caddo street and shot him to death, apparently without provocation. Some years later, the widow married W. H. Bates who died in 1899. Both husbands sleep in the cemetery at Caddo, where the remains of Mrs. Bates were laid in May of this year.