Art and Hanging Judge-TRIP 3 (2012)

We passed Bentonville High School about 9:00 a.m. The football stadium adjoining an indoor athletic complex looked more like a college facility, and the banner on the main fence read STATE CHAMPIONS 2001, 2008, 2010. At the school driveway, seven buses pulled out.
"That's the football team," said Andy.
"Really?" I asked. "On Saturday morning?"
"Yup. Fooball's big here. That's the team, cheerleaders and the marching band."
He was probably right.
"It's yucky," said Andy about the weather, as we pulled into the museum parking lot.

With lots of time before the museum opened,
we set the camera timer and experimented.

"Yes," I agreed, "and we have nearly two hours to walk outside before the museum opens."By 1:30 p.m. when we left, the temperature had soared to the low 80's, and the sun cracking through a heavy cloud layer made the land steam.
First, we walked the trails outside for about three miles: Orchard Trail, Tulip Trail, Art Trail, Crystal Bridge Trail, Rock Ridge Trail, and the short North Lawn Trail.
Mushrooms grew at the base of some of the rocks of A Place Where They Cried by Pat Musick and Jerry Carr. So perfect was the natural location that it looked planned.

The sculpture A Place Where They Cried reminds
visitors of The Trail of Tears. 

A guard near the North Entrance chatted with us before the museum opened. "The whole thing was a billion and a half," he said. "Alice Walden spent $500,000,000. on the building alone."
We knew she was one of the three heirs to Walmart.
I snapped one more outdoor picture before we went inside. Already Set in Motion from the Slipping Stone series by Robyn Horn, 2011, made of redwood and black dye, contrasted with the white concrete and bleached wood of the building and the bleached copper of the roof.
"Let's go to the very end and work our way back," suggested Andy. It was a great idea and the guides chuckled as we passed through. For an hour we had the exhibition galleries all to ourselves. Then, suddenly, we encountered the masses a few rooms from the main entryway.
I took a picture of Untitled by Ruth Asawa, 1965-1970, an intricate bronze wire wreath. It reminded me of grape vines and barbed wire and agriculture and FFA. "Tara could do this," I told Andy.
He scowled, "Yeah, along with everything else."
Volunteer Jim chatted with us for half an hour in the Museum Gift Shop.
"I love that the most about retirement," I told Andy, "having time to meet people and share ideas." I think that' s what John Steinbeck wanted to do when he set out to see America in 1960.
Rain poured down in a black cloudburst as we crossed the high pass on Interstate 540 through the Ozarks. Most of the motorcycles stopped under the overpasses. But the rain didn't last long. Inadvertently, I looked at the door frames. "We aren't leaking yet," I said.
"I glued them," said Andy. "I glued the rubber moldings with Elmers before we left home."
"You did a great job!" I grinned. Not a drop had penetrated inside Little Red.
In spite of threatening skies we walked the mile trail around the first Fort Smith and the second Fort Smith in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and explored the historical sites and museum, representing the 80 years of turbulent history on the western frontier.
Little but a foundation remains of the first fort, built in 1817 to keep the peace between native Osage and newly arriving Cherokee Indians over land use and resources. French trappers knew the area as Belle Point.  Located at the confluence of the Poteau River and the Arkansas River, this fort was abandoned in 1824. 
Nearby, an overlook reminds visitors of America's treatment of Indians. The Trail of Tears, which passed through Fort Smith, relocated five nations to Oklahoma between 1831 and 1842: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole. More than 10,000 died along the way. The tragedy goes back to Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  Jefferson wanted all southeastern Indians to move west of the Mississippi to open all eastern lands for white settlement. He inaccurately assumed the western lands were vacant. He also inaccurately assumed it would take whites 1000 years to settle the "West," when, in fact, it took just 50.

The reproduced gallows, a giant stage
of unjust punishment, towers high.

The gallows, actually a reproduction since the city tore down the infamous symbol of brutal justice in 1896, marks the site of 39 separate executions of 86 men over 23 years between 1873 and 1895. Legend says the gallows could service 12 at a time, but the most executed at one time was six. The earliest executions drew public crowds, but after 1878, a fence blocked public view.  Most of the deaths were attributed to George Maledon, known as Prince of Hangmen. All 79 were sentenced by Judge Isaac C. Parker.

This "paddy wagon" transports prisoners
to prison to the gallows.

Outside on the huge green, the 37-star flag waved in the brisk breeze. From 1867 to 1877, there were only 37 states in the Union.
In the far corner of the second Fort Smith was the Commissary, built between 1838 and 1846, to distribute supplies to relocated Indians, other Army forts farther west, Gold Rush travelers, and U.S./Mexican War recruits. The exhibits explained that Indians were usually given what no one else wanted, including rotten pork and bacon, or food not fit for the troops.
President Zachary Taylor fought the building of a second Fort Smith. He said it was a waste of money, but unfounded fears of an Indian attach prompted the Army to proceed anyway. The fort was protected by a 12-foot high wall that was three feet thick. During the Civil War the fort was a major supply post for both sides, but little-needed after that, it closed in 1871.

The brick enlisted men's barracks of the second Fort Smith
serves as jail and courthouse for the Western Frontier.
 

Judge Isaac C. Parker uses this Courtroom to issue justice.

We went inside the huge brick building to learn about the more recent history. "It must have been something else to live here between 1872 and 1896!" said Andy. More than 100 Deputy Marshalls were killed, prostitution was legal until 1924, and Ruffians infiltrated the Indian tribes, stealing, kidnapping, raping. Talk about WILD WEST!
In 1872 the enlisted men's barracks became the Federal Court for the Western District of Arkansas. One side of the first floor was the courtroom; the other side held offices for U.S. Marshall, Commissioner and Court Clerk, and the attic was used for jury deliberation. For the next 25 years, Judge Isaac C. Parker maintained law and order in the Indian Territory from here.
"The Hanging Judge" heard 13,000 cases--344 for capital crimes. Of the 160 he sentenced to hang for murder or rape, including four women, 79 faced the gallows. For 14 of the years, the condemned had no right of appeal. Parker rehabilitated convicts, reformed criminal justice and advocated for the rights of the Indian nations, but sensational cases and mass executions over-shadowed all the good work he did.  In 1896, Parker wrote, "I have ever had the single aim of justice in view. To equal and exact justice is my motto, and I have often said to the grand jury, 'Permit no innocent man to be punished, but let no guilty man escape.'"

The jail is a horror of horrors
in the mid-1800's.

Downstairs in the basement was the prison, a primitive jail with two big cells that often had 30 to 50 men in each cell. We read that officers stuffed hay in the ceiling to stifle the stench upstairs in the courtroom due to the unsanitary conditions downstairs. Prisoners nicknamed it "Hell-on-the-Border."
In 185l, Massachusetts journalist Anna Dawes described the jail as "Horrible with all horrors...hell upon earth."  The daughter of a Massachusetts Senator, she prompted change by provoking Congress to vote funds for a new jail, built in 1888, on the second floor of the building.
When we came back outside, the clouds had thickened.  "I'm not sure we can avoid a downpour this time," said Andy. "I think we had better head for the car."
And so we did.