Hanging of Jack McCall

McCall went to the gallows after every remedy had been tried. His lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court of Dakota Territory, which turned them down on January 20, 1877, and a petition asked President Grant for a pardon or a sentence of life in prison; it failed. He was twenty-four when he was hanged, and he is recorded as the first person executed by federal officials in Dakota Territory. In 1876 he had been living under the name Bill Sutherland, and at his Yankton trial he claimed that Jack McCall was not his real name.

What the plaque says

Hanging of Jack McCall March 1, 1877 "Wild Bill" Hickok, famous gunman, was shot in the back of the head at Deadwood on August 2, 1876 by Jack McCall, who was tried for murder at Yankton on 4-5-6 December, found guilty, sentenced by Judge Peter C. Shannon on January 3, 1877. The story of the trial is to be seen on a marker at the site in Yankton. Throughout the trial, the sentencing, the rejection of his appeal and on the scaffold he exhibited a demeanor best told by the reportorial words: "He put on a bold front and careless air" - "the prisoner seemed least moved of all present" - at the sentencing "he evinced no shrinking" and was "more exuberant than his fellow prisoners" when his appeal failed. He refused the ministrations of two Protestant ministers but accepted Father Daxacher. Followed by every vehicle in town and hundreds on horseback, out Broadway to the school section two miles North to the gallows a few rods east of here, "he gazed out over the throng without exhibiting the least faltering or even a quiver of the lips" and as Marshal Burdick adjusted the noose he said, "draw it tighter Marshal". He had destroyed a written statement he had made two days before but admitted to the Marshal that he was the Jack McCall, the brother of a girl, who had written the Marshal from Louisville. The trap was sprung at 10:10 and he was dead ten minutes later, an unrepentant murderer of a man who had done him no wrong. Erected 1960 by Yankton "Moose Lodge No. 1356" and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 22 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Santee Sioux Nation Museum — 24 mi
  The Isanti Dakota nation's museum and research room beside its headquarters at Santee, with census rolls from 1866, the mission school's photographs and a Dakota-language newspaper that ran for 68 years.

More markers nearby

• Yankton College — 2.1 mi
• Christ Church — 2.5 mi
• Pine Street Bridge — 2.5 mi
• North Wall Yankton Stockade — 2.6 mi