The Old Stone Jail

The Choctaw Nation had three districts, each with an elected judge, a courthouse, and roving law enforcement officers called Lighthorsemen. Choctaw courts typically ordered fines, whipping, and death, and Choctaws took pride in a traditional code of honor that led them to submit voluntarily to whippings and executions to prove their honor. Jails were not necessary until increasing numbers of Euro-Americans moved into Indian Territory and lowered the Choctaw's code of honor. At Doaksville, archaeologists uncovered a jail in 1996 with massive twenty-four-inch-thick stone walls enclosing three cells that opened into a narrow jailer's room. Each cell was six feet long and three feet wide, separated by thick stone walls, and a section of iron rod found in the rubble probably once helped bar the small windows, making a six-month sentence there a confinement in a very small and dark space.

Oklahoma · United States