Red Wing

First Indian Dies In Texas Chair

HUNTSVILLE, Nov. 30 – AP – Chief Red Wing, 39-year-old Cherokee Indian, was electrocuted at the state prison early today as the convicted slayer of a two-year-old girl at New Braunfels last year.

He was the first of his race to forfeit his life in the Texas electric chair. Apparently unmoved, he seated himself in the chair.

“Well, all I’ve got to say is I am going to die an honest man. I know I am not guilty of what they accuse,” he answered when Warden W. W. Waid asked him if he had anything to say.

He clenched his fist as the first charge of electricity struck him.

Three chares of 1800 volts each surged through his body before he was pronounced dead.

Associated Press (AP). “First Indian Dies In Texas Chair.” Denton, Texas, Record-Chronicle, Monday, November 30, 1931, p. 3

RED WING CLINGS TO SLIGHT HOPE

Now Declares He Did Not Kill Baby; Claims Confession Forced

(By Associated Press)
HUNTSVILLE, Tex., Nov. 17 - Still hopefull that his sentence of death would be commuted to life imprisonment, Chief Red Wing, 39, Cherokee Indian, scheduled to die in the electric chair early Thursday for the murder of a two-year-old childd, tonight nervously awaited Gov. R. S. Sterling's action on a plea for commutation.

The Chief Executive has been asked to grant clemency to the Indian by the Mexican consul general in San Antonio. The Mexican official telegraphed Governor Sterling that the condemned man is a citizen of Mexico and asked that the sentenced be changed to life imprisonment.

"I don't feel that I will have to die for something I did not do," the Indian said today. "I was forced to make that confession at New Braunfels. I didn't kill that little girl. Another man did it and told me about it."

Prison officials here said that the Indian carnival worker, who claims to have traveled all over the world doing the war dance for various shows, appeared nervous tonight.

He did not eat his regular meal and appeared sullen. White he did not refuse to converse with guards, he ignored questions directed to him, they said.

Red Wing, unless executive clemency is granted, will die shortly after midnight Wednesday. He was convicted in New Braunfels, where Angelina Cavazos, two, was slain after she had been criminally attacked. The child's parents were members of a tent show troupe and while they were performing one night she disappeared from her bed.

Her body, with the skull crushed by a rock, was found several days later.

Red Wing, also a member of the troupe, was arrested and made a confession.

The Indian told officers that he once traveled with the [...] Wild West Show and gave his home address as Anadarko, Okla.

San Antonio Express, November 18, 1931, p. 6