Road to Ruin: Elias Boudinot and the Internal Conquest of the Cherokee Nation

Sarah Scott, University at Albany, State University of New York

This record is now permanently available at https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_history/11/

Abstract

NOTE: This record is now permanently available at https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_history/11/


(Introduction)

Our story ends on June 22, 1839 in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Three men approached the Boudinot household. Inside were Elias Boudinot, his second wife, Delight Sargent, and their six children (from Boudinot’s first marriage). The men lured Boudinot outside, asking him to get medicine from a doctor who lived at a mission a quarter mile from the home. Boudinot obliged but never made it; he was violently murdered several yards from his home, his yells alerting nearby workers. Boudinot was found alive with one stab wound to his back and seven blows from a hatchet to the head. His condition quickly deteriorated and by the time his wife, Delight and friend, Dr. Samuel Worcester arrived on the scene, Boudinot was breathing his last breath, bloody and unresponsive.