Fine and Rare Image: Murderers of the Spicer Family, Winona, North Dakota ~ 1897 $1200, SHIPPING INCLUDED Fascinating image of four suspected Sioux renegades and a mixed race black man in the hands of frontier justice, Fort Yates, North Dakota, 1897. The Sioux are Alec Coudotte, Phillip Ireland, Paul Holy Track, and George Defender (all identified in the image) and were suspected of murdering the well-liked Spicer family outside of town while searching for whisky there. Tom Spicer, the town blacksmith, his wife, his wife's mother, and their married daughter and twin boys about 18 months old were all killed and a party quickly formed to hunt them down. Coudotte and Frank Black Hawk are shown in handcuffs, Black Hawk with a silver shield pinned on his lapel. One of the accused Indians, unaware of his fate, is shown smoking a cigarette. The brutality of the Spicer Family murders and the eventual lynching of the three accused men was the subject of considerable controversy that "long, mean winter of 1897. Paul Holy Track and Phillip Ireland, both probably Standing Rock Sioux Indians from the nearby Standing Rock Reservation, confessed to their part in the murders and fingered Alec Coudotte as the murderer. Coudotte was brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, but the ND Supreme Court said there was insufficient evidence and authorized a retrial. At that point a mob of 40 men in masks entered the jail where Coudotte, Holy Track, and Ireland were incarcerated, and lynched all three. Defender and Black Hawk, in a different jail in Bismark, were never brought to trial and were eventually released.