A newly appointed U.S. Deputy Marshal, Lee Atkins, had not even seen service when he was killed.

A Creek Indian, Lee was born December 20, 1860, to Thomas and Mary Jane Atkins. Atkins had just been commissioned in the Western District Court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, when Marshal George C. Crump commissioned him while he was attending a horse racing event in Checotah, Oklahoma. He was there with another U.S. Deputy Marshal, Dick Downing, who was in town to serve an unrelated writ.

Earlier in the day, Atkins had been warned that a man named Amos McIntosh, another Creek Indian and former prosecuting attorney in Muskogee, was looking to kill him. After the warning, Downing accompanied Atkins for the rest of the day, and when Atkins and McIntosh came face to face, both agreed to give up their weapons to prevent any trouble.

However, McIntosh later got his gun back, and that evening, when the two met again at the horse races, they argued. When Atkins cursed McIntosh, telling the other man that he was unarmed and calling McIntosh a coward, McIntosh pulled his gun and shot Atkins twice, once in the left side and once in the hip. Though reports stated that both men had been drinking, Marshal Downing said Atkins was sober.

Lee was buried at the Indian Territory Checotah Cemetery in McIntosh County, Oklahoma.

Why Downing didn’t immediately arrest McIntosh is unknown, but it was probably because Atkins was not in the discharge of his duty when he was killed. At the time, there was a question of which court had jurisdiction over the case—the Creek Nation or the United States Government. Most people assumed that the Creek authorities would try it. But such was not the case.

In the meantime, the killer fled the town on the next train to Eufaula, where he openly bragged about how he had killed the deputy marshal. After several weeks, Amos McIntosh was surprised when U.S. Deputy Marshal Grant Johnson arrested him on January 14, 1895, after he had long held a writ for McIntosh’s arrest.

Several Deputy Marshals transported the killer to the federal jail in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, where he was held for one year before being released to the Creek Light Horsemen.

The Indian Police then took him to the Creek Indian Nation court, where he was released.

 

©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.

Also, See:

Adventures in the Old West

Lawmen of the Old West

Timeline of the American West

U.S. Marshals – Two Centuries of Bravery

Sources:

Find a Grave
Littlefield, Daniel F. and Underhill, Lonnie E.; Journal of Negro History, University of Chicago Press, April 1971.
Owens, Ron; Oklahoma Heroes: The Oklahoma Peace Officers Memorial, Turner Publishing, 2000