Ned Christie

A little more than 130 years ago, a shooting involving a deputy federal marshal in the Cherokee Nation ignited conflict that lasted more than five years and stimulated controversy unresolved today. In Ned Christie Devon A. Mihesuah, Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in International Cultural Understanding at the University of Kansas, explores the life of her subject, a Cherokee accused of killing Deputy U.S. Marshal Daniel Maples in April 1887. The study does not end with Ned Christie's death in November 1892; it examines newspaper accounts, the literary contributions of popular writers and professional historians, and motion picture adaptations of Christie's clash with federal authorities. The author regards all three as “commercial products, shrewdly crafted to give audiences what they want” (p. 8). Truth was apparently not what most audiences sought. According to Mihesuah, many writers embellished accounts or simply fabricated details designed to enlarge their audience. She chides historians for sloppy scholarship and accuses many writers who focus on Christie of relying on earlier works marred by serious errors, written by authors who failed to check their facts. She suggests that some writers skewed their accounts of the Cherokee outlaw to support their views

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