The Old Stone Jail

The Old Stone Jail. . , I remember the old stone jail at Doaksville, just a one-room affair with iron-barred slits for windows. I wondered when and by whom it was built. That old place was so interesting to me. , Charles Washington Ervin, 1937, The Choctaw Nation had three districts, and each had an elected judge, courthouse, and roving law enforcement officers called Lighthorsemen. There were three typical sentences ordered by Choctaw courts: fines, whipping, and death. Choctaws were proud of their traditional code of honor and voluntarily submitted themselves to whippings and executions to prove their honor. Jails were not necessary until increasing numbers of Euro-Americans moved into Indian Territory and lowered the Choctaw's code of honor. , Archaeologists uncovered the Doaksville jail in 1996. Massive, twenty-four-inch-thick stone walls enclosed three cells that opened into a narrow jailer's room. Each of the three cells was six feet long and three feet wide. Between each cell was a thick stone wall. A section of an iron rod found in the building's rubble probably once helped to bar the small windows in the cells. , Imagine what it was like to serve a six-month sentence in such a small and dark space.