Calcasieu War

Seven Persons Killed in the Affray--Two Suspects Arrested

Lake Charles, La August 4, 1891 ( Special)

The coroner and the deputy sheriffs returned tonight from the Bearhead settlement, in the northwest portion of Calcasieu Parish, where the shooting occured last Sunday. They were accompanied by three white men, G H Morris, Rufus Morton, and Olly Glosson who are now in jail here, charged with murder. There were seven men killed in the affray, namely; Old Man Swan, and Jesse Ward, white,  and Jesse Dyson and Andrew Ashworth,Owen Ashworth, Lee Perkins, and Marion Markle, mixed blood.

Jesse Dyson has had more or less criminal prosecutions against him in Louisiana and in Texas for several years past. About the middle of last week he struck and maltreated a white boy about 18 years old near the scene of Sunday's shooting. The same night a small party of mixed blooded men went to the log camp of where Austin Ashworth ordered Jesse Adams to leave the camp before sunrise. On Sunday morning Jesse Adams, with some of his white fellow laborer went to a saloon about a mile distant, where they found about the same number of mixed blooded young men, and inquired for whisky. Jesse Dyson came out of the saloon and told the white men he thought they came there not for whisky but to settle that fuss, at the same time saying that he was the best man there for that job, and placing his hand in his bosom. Then Jesse Adams shot Dyson in the head, Dyson falling and lying where he fell, for about sixteen hours, when he expired.

When Adams shot Dyson there was a regular battle for a few minutes, both parties using shotguns, rifles, and revolvers. In this affray Jesse Wade, Jesse Dyson, Lee Perkins, Andrew Ashworth, and Marion Markle were killed and two or more persons were wounded. The same afternoon a party of white men while reconnoitering the scene of the battle, Old man Swan and Owen Ashworth were killed. The prisoners came her voluntarily and were arrested after there arrival here.

Nov 2, 1857

Michigan Sentinel

Life in The South West -Back Woods.—On the 12th of September, we. learn from  the Red River American, Claibome Hart and his son Charles, of Point Coupee Parish, called at the houses of Benson Wilburn and Jas. M. Wilburn, and warned them to leave under pain of death. The next day the bodies of Hart and his son were found riddled with buckshot.. On the 26th  Benton and James M. Wilburn, Jackson McGee and Bowie McGee were examined before Justice Evans, in Calcasieu Parish, and by him acquitted. A number of friends of the murdered men then seized them, and having first liberated James W. Wilburn, took the others across the Sabine river into Texas, where their bodies were soon afterward found, riddled with balls.