AN INDIAN TO BE
HANGED
Georgia
Crotan to be Executed Next Month for Murder.
New York
Times
February
28, 1897, Wednesday
ATLANTA, Ga., Feb. 27. -- For
the first time in fifty years an Indian is under sentence of death in
Georgia. He will be hanged in Glynn County next month. Marcellus Lowry,
the condemned man, is a Crotan Indian from the celebrated band in North
Carolina, many of whom have drifted with the turpentine and timber men
into Southern Georgia, where they are called "Melungeons. "
Lowery and a white man named Patrick Burns were working in the woods
together and Burns went to Lowery's camp and entered his shanty to get
something to eat. The Croatan Indians are a fierce, treacherous
and vindictive race and once their anger is aroused they do not
hesitate to commit murder.
The witnesses in the case
testified on the trial that as Burns left the shanty Lowery shot him in
the back, having concealed himself behind a tree. As to the
origin of the difficulty between them very little was brought out, but
so far as can be ascertained it was simply the ungovernable temper of
the Indian.