Pages

Monday, July 20, 2015

Innocent Man Released 34 Years After Disappearing in Legal System, 1914

“Spopee, A Black Foot Indian, Spent 34 Years Behind the Bars,” from The Review, High Point, N.C., July 30, 1914

Washington, July 17—After 34 years behind the bars under life sentence for murder, Spopee, a Black Foot Indian, was unconditionally pardoned today by President Wilson. He will be released at once from the federal hospital for the insane here to return to his daughter at Browning, Mont., whom he has not seen since she was a baby.

A party of Blackfeet, sightseeing in Washington months ago, happened upon Spopee, grown gray with his long imprisonment. They established his tribal identity by an Indian song and one of the interpreters recognized in Spopee the hero of an old legend, who had disappeared a score of years ago into some white man’s jail. Blackfoot mothers have been singing their children to sleep with a song about him ever since.

Officials of the Indian office, advised of the discovery, began an investigation which resulted in his pardon.

Spopee was charged with the murder of a white man near the Canadian boundary north of the Montana line. It is thought by the department of justice that the murder probably was committed in Canada and that the territorial courts of Montana which tried him at Fort Benton had no jurisdiction. Moreover, it is now believed Spopee committed the murder in self defense.

No comments:

Post a Comment