A10 THE SPOKESMAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022
OFFBEAT OREGON
After frontier murder, suspect a temporary slave
I
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
n the first month of 1852, every-
one in the frontier community of
Cynthian was talking about the
big crime wave.
Well, it was big by frontier Oregon
standards. Although it was (and still is)
the seat of Polk County, Cynthian —
which was renamed Dallas later that
same year — was a tiny place, with no
more than a few hundred residents.
But, it seemed, one of those few hun-
dred people was a burglar, and had hit
three different homes over the previous
few months.
Folks around Cynthian had a sus-
pect in mind, or at any rate they later
claimed they did. Their suspicions cen-
tered on a laborer named Return Ev-
erman.
Return Everman and his brother Hi-
ram were new arrivals in town, having
traveled to Cynthian on the Oregon
Trail the previous summer, and were
living with the Goff family on their
homestead claim as hired hands. The
community’s impressions of the two
were mixed — everyone seems to have
gotten along very well with Hiram, but
Return had a more squirrely reputa-
tion.
So nobody was very surprised when,
in January of 1852, Return was spotted
sneaking out of Cyrenius C. Hooker’s
farmhouse when the family was away.
And when Hooker came back home,
and found that the unknown burglar
had struck again, he was not slow to
point the finger at Return Everman.
There wasn’t any proof. Everman, it
later turned out, had hidden the pocket
watch he’d stolen from the Hooker
home under a log by Rickreall Creek,
and he stoutly denied having done the
burglary.
But Hooker didn’t back down. And
Everman was afraid to back down. He
figured that most of the community
believed him to be innocent, but he
thought if he tried to patch things up
with Hooker, they’d interpret that as ev-
idence of a guilty conscience and turn
against him.
So he decided it would be best if he
just went ahead and, well, murdered
him.
“I would rather the news would get
home that I had killed a man for trying
to injure my character, than for news to
go home that I had stolen a watch,” he
wrote later, in his written confession.
Having decided to do this, he started
talking about it very openly. He told
his brother Hiram, as well as Samuel
Goff (his boss, the owner of the farm
at which he and Hiram were living and
working) and another friend named
David J. Coe. Nobody seems to have
taken the threat seriously, though.
A few weeks went by, and a group of
the neighbors decided to put together
a party for a journey south to the gold
fields — the gold rush was still in full
swing in ’52, of course. Hiram Ever-
man was going with them, along with
Goff and Coe … and Hooker. Because
Hooker was going, Return Everman re-
fused to join them.
One of the other men joining the
party was a Yamhill County man
named Enoch Smith. There was no
love lost between Hooker and Smith,
and when Smith heard Return Ever-
man bragging about his plan to mur-
Polk County Historical Society
The Polk County Courthouse as it appeared in 1859. It was one of the second-story windows on this building that Enoch Smith leaped out of in a
desperate attempt to escape from custody and avoid a death sentence.
der Hooker, Smith urged him to go
for it and offered to pay him $250 if
he did. At that point Hiram Everman,
Return’s brother, broke in and told
Smith to shut up and keep his money
to himself. The whole exchange was
witnessed by several of the others —
nobody made any attempt to keep it
secret. Most likely everyone thought
it was all hot air, just a couple of big-
talking men bragging.
Everyone, that is, except Return Ev-
erman, who decided that with Hooker
on his way to the gold fields it was now
or never. So on the morning of Feb. 12,
as all the members of the party of pros-
pectors packed for the road, he hurried
off to a friend, borrowed a shotgun,
and went to Hooker’s farm with it.
Hooker was plowing a field when
Everman arrived. Why he was plowing
the field on the morning of his depar-
ture, in the middle of a soggy Oregon
February, isn’t clear; perhaps he had
hired someone to work the land for
him and was getting it ready. In any
case, that’s what he was doing, so Ever-
man stole around into a rail pen at one
end of the field, hunkered down, and
waited for Hooker to reach him.
When Hooker did, Everman shot
him in the back with the shotgun.
He then hurried over to his victim,
who, recognizing him, started begging
for his life and promising never to say
another word about the watch. But Ev-
erman, according to his later confes-
sion, thought that having started the
job, it would be best to finish it; so he
pulled his pistol and shot Hooker in the
head with it.
Then he headed back to the Goff
house.
He found it empty. Everyone was al-
ready on the road, including the man
Everman had borrowed the shotgun
from. So he hurried after the party and
caught up with them at their camp, at
the end of the day’s ride, and returned
the shotgun.
“Where have you been?” someone
asked him, and Everman replied that
the deed was done, and Hooker was
dead.
That must have been quite a shock,
as all the people Everman had been
bragging to for weeks about his mur-
derous plans suddenly realized the
man had been serious about it.
Enoch Smith may have been just
as shocked as everyone else, although
the Oregon Statesman reports that he
displayed “the most fiendish satisfac-
tion” at the news; but in any case, he
did give Everman $250. Everman, in
his confession, said it was a loan, not
actual blood money; but it certainly
didn’t look very good when it inevita-
bly ended up in court.
Because of course it ended up in
court. Nobody as incompetent as Re-
turn Everman could possibly last more
than a day or two on the lam with a
posse on his track. Nobody was will-
ing to go with him, either — brother
Hiram included, although Hiram did
help him out with a fresh horse. Finally
David Coe agreed to go along, and the
two of them headed south as fast as
they could.
But, of course, it wasn’t fast enough.
Word of the murder spread through
Cynthian just as fast as you would ex-
pect such news to spread, and the over-
whelming majority of the neighbors
were outraged by it. A posse quickly
formed, rode to the prospectors’ camp,
and brought them all back to Cynthian.
Asked if they’d seen Return Ever-
man, Enoch Smith and brother Hiram
said no; but someone else in the party
apparently decided this was going too
far, and spilled the beans. So the posse
lit out again on fresh horses, and after
60 hours of hard riding caught up with
the two fugitives staying with a farmer
in Roseburg.
BACK IN CYNTHIAN
The fugitives were lodged in an up-
stairs room in the county courthouse
— Polk County didn’t have a jail yet.
Both the Everman brothers, along with
Enoch Smith and David Coe, were put
in leg irons under guard there. Return
Everman, of course, was charged with
murder; the others were all charged
with being accessories before and after
the crime.
Of the four, only one “copped a plea”
— Hiram Everman pleaded guilty to
being an accessory after the fact, for
lending Return a horse, and the other
charges were dropped. Then David
Coe was tried, found innocent, and re-
leased.
That left Enoch Smith and Return
Everman himself.
Return’s case came up first. It was
over rather quickly, and he was sen-
tenced to be hanged.
Smith’s case was more complicated.
Lending Return Everman $250 af-
ter having offered to pay him that
same sum as blood money, in front
of witnesses, looked an awful lot like
a murder-for-hire put-up job, which,
of course, was definitely a hanging of-
fense.
But one of the members of Smith’s
jury balked. The juror believed him to
be guilty, but thought the death penalty
morally indefensible and refused to be
a part of sentencing someone to hang.
A new trial would have to be sched-
uled.
This brush with death scared Smith
badly. In desperation he tried mak-
ing a break from the “jail,” jumping
out of the two-story window when his
guard was getting a drink of water; but
he hurt himself too badly to run, and
was soon recaptured. Back to court he
went, and was found guilty. He was
sentenced to be hanged a week after
Return Everman.
But it was not to be. Return Ever-
man, a day or two before his hanging,
wrote a full confession giving complete
details of who did what — and com-
pletely exonerated Smith in it.
The confession changed the com-
munity’s sentiments completely. Every-
one figured Everman had no reason
to lie at that point, just days away from
Eternity. Smith’s hanging date was post-
poned a couple times, and finally the
territorial governor pardoned him.
WHAT HAPPENED TO HIRAM
Probably the most interesting story
from this early Oregon murder drama
was that of brother Hiram Everman.
Hiram, having entered a guilty plea,
didn’t go on trial; they simply sen-
tenced him to three years in the peni-
tentiary. There was just one problem,
though: Oregon didn’t have a peniten-
tiary yet.
So in lieu of incarceration, Polk
County literally auctioned Hiram off
as a temporary slave — an indentured
servant on a three-year contract. He
was purchased by Theodore Prather, a
farmer from the Buena Vista area.
Hiram reported stoically for his term
of service to the Prather. He must have
been an extraordinarily hard worker,
because when, two years into his three-
year sentence, he was pardoned by
Governor George Curry, Prather didn’t
hold the loss against Hiram. Instead,
he shook Hiram’s hand, slipped $20
into it, gave him a horse and a saddle,
and wished him all the best. (He did
petition the county commissioners for
a refund of the unused portion of his
sentence, though, after Hiram left. But
the commissioners voted to keep his
money.)
Hiram ended up down in the Myrtle
Creek area of Douglas County, where
he settled down, started a family, and
enjoyed a blissfully crime-free life.
— Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon
State University and writes about odd
tidbits of Oregon history. His book, He-
roes and Rascals of Old Oregon, was
recently published by Ouragan House
Publishers. To contact him or suggest a
topic: finn@offbeatoregon.com or 541-
357-2222.
█
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University
and writes about odd tidbits of Oregon history.
His book, Heroes and Rascals of Old Oregon, was
recently published by Ouragan House Publishers.
To contact him or suggest a topic: finn@
offbeatoregon.com or 541-357-2222.
Rushed wildfire risk map recalled by Department of Forestry
BY MICHAEL KOHN
CO Media Group
The Oregon Department of
Forestry recalled the use of its
wildfire risk map on Thursday
after public criticism that the
online tool is causing home in-
surance rates to increase or not
be available at all.
The Department of Forestry
removed the current iteration
of the wildfire risk map from
its online Oregon Explorer tool
and withdrew notices to prop-
erty owners in extreme and
high-risk classifications that re-
quired some to make changes
and improvements on build-
ings.
“We will immediately begin
working with Oregon State Uni-
versity on some refinements to
improve the accuracy of risk
classification assignments based
on what we’ve heard from prop-
erty owners thus far,” Cal Mu-
komoto, the director of the Or-
egon Department of Forestry,
said in a news release.
Climate change and decades
of fuels built up in forests are
making wildfires burn hotter
and last longer in Oregon. The
2020 Labor Day fires that rav-
aged large parts of the state have
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
George Endicott, mayor of Redmond, with defensible space on his
property in Redmond. Endicott says mitigation to reduce fire risk on
his property should play a role in the wildfire risk assigned to the prop-
erty by the state.
emboldened state agencies to
increase fuel treatments and
raise awareness among home-
owners to increase their defen-
sible space.
The Department of Forestry
was assigned to develop and
maintain the statewide wildfire
risk map following the 2021
passage of Senate Bill 762. Or-
egon State University helped in
developing the mapping tool.
Passage of the bill allowed the
Department of Forestry to make
investments in fire-adapted
communities, wildfire response
and the development of wildfire
resilient landscapes — 11 state
agencies were tasked with de-
veloping various components of
the bill.
The purpose of the map is to
identify the risk of a wildfire oc-
curring in a given area to help
determine where resources are
needed most to protect lives and
property, said Mukumoto.
The agency was also tasked
with defining the wildland-ur-
ban interface where devel-
opment meets combustible
vegetation. It assigned a risk
classification at the property
ownership level for all 1.8 mil-
lion tax lots across the state.
Each parcel was placed into one
of five categories of wildfire risk
— none, low, moderate, high or
extreme.
Property owners in the high
or extreme risk categories were
suddenly faced with new regu-
lations, including special build-
ing codes and fire-safe land-
scaping. Tonkon Torp LLP, a
Portland-based law firm that
reviewed the legislation, said the
regulations impacted around
120,000 tax lots statewide, in-
cluding 80,000 structures.
In Bend, there are pockets of
high and very high risk, partic-
ularly in Century West, Tethe-
row, NorthWest Crossing and
surrounding areas. A few neigh-
borhoods on La Pine’s west side
are also in the high-risk cate-
gory. Parts of Sisters, Redmond,
and Prineville were also desig-
nated as high risk.
The Senate bill tasked other
state agencies with developing
new codes for defensible space
and home hardening to increase
resiliency in the event of a wild-
fire.
David Gilmore, a real estate
agent with Coldwell Banker
Bain in Bend, said the bill has
made the challenge of buying a
home even more difficult than
it was, especially in high-risk
areas. He had a client recently
who was buying a home in Sis-
ters and was initially denied in-
surance coverage. Gilmore later
found a broker in Redmond
that would insure the home.
“There’s definitely more
talk about insurance now. This
is one more potential hurdle
homebuyers and sellers need to
be aware of,” said Gilmore. “The
map doesn’t necessarily take
into account if a neighborhood
is a Firewise neighborhood or
not.”
Firewise USA is a national
program that encourages neigh-
bors to work together and take
action to prevent damage from
wildfires. There are dozens of
Firewise communities in De-
schutes County.
George Endicott, the mayor
of Redmond, said the land that
he owns was rated high risk for
fire even though he had taken
steps to mitigate risk, including
removing trees and vegetation
and replacing the siding on his
house.
He was one of the many hun-
dreds of Oregonians to file an
appeal. His constituents were
similarly unimpressed — En-
dicott has only heard negative
feedback about the map from
people in Redmond.
“I realize the Legislature in-
cluded a strict timeline, but that
created a situation where the
state agencies could not fully
analyze the changes made to
areas such as Central Oregon,”
Endicott said. “Pulling the map
was a good idea.”
Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend,
agrees.
“The growing outrage over
high-risk classifications of pri-
marily rural property threatens
to overwhelm the Oregon De-
partment of Forestry with thou-
sands of appeals that the agency
will be unable to handle,” said
the Senate minority leader in a
statement Thursday on behalf of
Senate Republicans. “Ultimately,
we need better management of
our public forests at the state
and federal levels so that we can
begin to reduce the dangers of
wildfire for rural and urban Or-
egonians alike.”
Despite the public anger over
the bill, others maintain the
spirit of the law was correct and
only needs fine tuning.