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From the dawn of the New World's exploration,

people of different ethnicities and nationalities

helped shape a wild frontier into the country

we now know as the United States of America.

Among these explorers were pioneers of African descent.

One striking testament to this fact

came from the Pueblo Indians

who reportedly remarked,

'The first White man our people saw was a Black man.'

This Black man was Estevanico,

an African Spanish slave from the west coast of Morocco,

who journeyed to the New World

alongside 400 other explorers.

The party landed off the coast of Florida in 1528

and after a series of disasters,

marooned off the coast of Texas,

only Estevanico,

his master, and two companions survived.

They were discovered by Native Americans

who enslaved them for seven years

before the small party freed themselves

and continued west across Texas and Mexico,

spreading stories of the Seven Cities of Gold.

Disguised as a medicine man,

capable of performing minor surgeries

and quick to learn the local language,

Estevanico continued his exploration of the New World

until he was reportedly killed by the Zunis of New Mexico in 1539.

As Europeans continued to push westward into the interior of America,

Blacks were increasingly joining their expeditions.

Our society is about four centuries old,

for three of those four centuries,

we had a westward movement.

There was a frontier in South Carolina,

there was a frontier, you could go west in Massachusetts

and all of these other places.

- One thing about the American West is that it's wide open.

At least it was a lot more wide open back then

than it is now

and whenever you have wide open spaces,

you have young men

who are going to have adventures.

Somebody's going to want to go out there and find

what's on the other side of the mountain.

Black men were no exception.

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

commanded the first official expedition

to explore the continent in 1804,

a Black man,

William Clark's slave York,

accompanied them.

Black frontiersman James Pearson Beckworth was born April 26, 1798

in Frederick County, Virginia to Sir Jennings Beckwith,

a White planter, and one of his Black slaves.

Jennings Beckwith eventually settled in Missouri,

where he taught his son to trap animals,

hunt, and trade with Native Americans.

James Beckworth was freed by his father in 1826.

He would go on to become a famous fur trapper

who worked closely with the Crow Indians.

According to Beckworth,

he became a chief of the Crow.

Much of what we know about Beckworth

and his relationship with the Crow comes from Beckworth.

So, we'll take with a grain of salt

that he actually was an Indian chief with the Crows,

there's no doubt that he lived among them

and that he spoke their language, and he served as a guide,

and in the carrying out of his life as a mountain man

that he had a lot of relationships with them.

When Beckworth died in 1867,

his body was placed on a burial scaffold

with his feet facing east

in the tradition of the Crow.

Edward Rose was another Black fur trapper

who worked closely with the Crow Indians.

He was killed with Hugh Glass and Hilain Menard

by Arikara Indians in the winter of 1833,

when they were attacked crossing the frozen Yellowstone River

en route to Fort Union on behalf of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company.

Sanders Jackson and Jacob Dodson

were free Black men who accompanied

John C. Fremont on his expedition to California in 1848.

Dodson would go on to accompany Fremont

and Kit Carson on three more trips.

In California, named by the Spanish after the mythical Black queen Calafia,

Blacks were among the first to settle Los Angeles.

Bridget Mason was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1818.

She was taken from her parents as a child

and sold at least twice

gaining skills in agriculture and medicine

on each plantation.

Bridget obtained her freedom in 1856,

settled in Los Angeles

and worked as a midwife and nurse.

She eventually saved enough money to purchase land

in what is now the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

Haunted by the threat of slavery,

and facing severe prejudice,

free Blacks ventured into uncharted lands,

withstood adversities, and spread stories of promise,

leaving their mark on the American West.

- The roles that Blacks played in the development of

the American West were the same roles as

other people played in the development of the American West.

In many cases,

they were leaders,

though few in number,

they did homestead,

they were doctors,

they were dentists,

they led civic organizations,

they were postmasters and postmistresses.

Not only were Black people

involved in every aspect of the development

of the American West that you can think of,

I haven't been able to find an area that they haven't.

Not only were they involved in those areas,

not only were they there in larger numbers

than we generally expect,

not only did they add their creative juices

to the general

development of what we call the American West

and American society in general.

The most important thing that I took away was

they were there.

And that's the important thing.

They were there.

And we did a terribly good job of whitewashing them out

of our history and our society.

The foundation for Black progress in the West

had already been established by trailblazing pioneers

when Bass Reeves's story began here in Crawford County,

a region along the untamed frontier of Arkansas

enveloped by the Ozark Mountains to the north

and expansive farmland,

wooded ridges, and lakes in the south. In 1836,

Arkansas was admitted to the union as a slave state;

two years later,

in July 1838,

Bass Reeves was born.

Bass, his mother

Paralee Steward,

and his sister Jane

lived as slaves

under the ownership of William Steele Reeves.

William Reeves was born

on March 9, 1794 in Pendleton, South Carolina

to a family of immigrants who had migrated from Dorset, England.

In his youth, he became the ward of an uncle and moved to Tennessee.

At the age of eighteen,

William fought in the War of 1812

and he would go on to fight in the Creek Indian War.

As did many before him,

he used his military service to launch himself into politics,

serving in the Tennessee

and Arkansas state legislatures.

Bass's life on William Reeves's farm

was unexceptional for a Black boy born in a slave state

in the mid-1800s.

It was a time of great change,

in a place that was on the front line of a geographical

and cultural shift.

In 1836, the same year that Arkansas became a state,

the Texas Army

under the command of Sam Houston

won a hard fought war of independence

against the forces of Mexico's Santa Anna

establishing the Republic of Texas.

After independence,

many White Americans, like William Reeves,

saw Texas as a new land of opportunity

and migrated there in great numbers

bringing slave labor with them.

Slavery had existed among the political elite

before Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836.

Unlike other western states admitted to the Union,

Texas embraced slavery;

the state's economy depended on it.

In 1846, when Bass was 8-years-old,

William Reeves packed up thirty wagons,

his family and six slaves,

including Bass and his family,

and moved to the Preston District of Grayson County in northern Texas,

just across the border from the Chickasaw

and Choctaw nations in Indian Territory.

In the early 1850s,

Texas's population of Black slaves had skyrocketed

with many Black male slaves

also serving as cattle herders.

In fact, in the mid-1800s,

Texas was home to more Black cowboys

than cowboys of any other ethnicity.

By the end of the 19th century,

this way of life gave rise to famous Black cowboys

such as Nat Love,

Ned Huddleston, a.k.a. Isom Dart,

and Bill Pickett.

By 1860, there were 182,000 Black slaves

and only 355 free Blacks in Texas.

As Bass grew into a young man in Texas,

he began to take on more responsibility.

He cared for horses,

mules, and other livestock belonging to William Reeves.

He wanted to learn a trade,

so he became a blacksmith's apprentice.

After the move to Texas,

William was joined by his fifth son,

20-year-old George Robertson Reeves and his family.

Bass soon caught George's attention

and he was chosen to become his personal body servant.

Bass served in multiple roles for George,

including butler,

valet, and coachman.

Given his new status,

Bass reportedly

asked him for permission to learn to read and write.

George refused,

but allowed him to learn how to use a firearm

and take part in local shooting competitions

with any monetary winnings going to George for the privilege.

George's rapid rise in Texas

enabled Bass to be immersed in White society,

specifically within state government and law enforcement.

In 1848, George

assumed the role of tax collector for Grayson County, serving for two years.

He later became the sheriff of Grayson County in 1850,

holding the position until 1854.

The following year saw him elected to the Texas House of Representatives,

where he remained as a legislator until the onset of the Civil War.

- What was quite common in Southern society was for

men to learn to be a gentleman.

And I think that Bass being a body servant to George

taught him the ins and outs of how to conduct himself,

how to talk to people,

and how to judge people in terms of who they were,

and how he should treat them.

And so, I'm sure he had those mannerisms

that he learned as a body servant.

For at least fifteen years,

from the age of eight until the age of twenty-three,

Bass served as George's right hand,

always at his side,

quietly observing and learning.

Bass took advantage of his time in servitude to George

to learn social skills

and the inner workings of law enforcement

that would acquit him well later in life.

- In 1861, less than a month after Confederate soldiers

fired on Fort Sumter and tore the Union asunder,

George Reeves gathered like-minded Confederate sympathizers

and joined the Eleventh Texas Calvary Regiment

under Colonel William Young

and with him,

he brought a reluctant Bass Reeves to war.

Decades later, in 1901, Bass gave an interview to a Muskogee, Oklahoma newspaper.

In it, he recalled participating in the Civil War

on the side of the Confederacy

and how it had been forced upon him by George Reeves.

One of the first things early in the war

that the Eleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment did

was go into the Indian Territory

and engaged the Native Americans

who were trying to get out of the Indian Territory

because they favored the Union.

And the Eleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment was engaged in those battles.

Allegedly, in camp one night,

Bass and George got into a fight over a card game

during which Bass knocked George unconscious.

After the fight, fearing certain death,

Bass fled into the foreboding terrain of Indian Territory.

Land was allocated specifically

for the use of Native Americans in 1763

when King George III issued a royal proclamation

in which the British limited

the settlement of Europeans

to lands east of the Appalachian Mountains.

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783,

and America established its independence

the proclamation was ignored by settlers

who continued to expand westwards into Native lands.

Native American tribes

had long-standing agreements with the British government

and very little interactions with European-American colonists.

The influx of American settlers after the Revolutionary War

intensified the armed conflict between Native Americans and colonists

that had been going on since the time of early European settlement in the 17th century.

These conflicts became known as the Indian Wars.

In 1830, spurred by White settlers who sought

access to fertile lands east of the Mississippi,

Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act,

which forced upwards of 60,000 Native

Americans off their lands and into government

designated territory that spanned present day Oklahoma,

Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of Iowa.

The Indian Territory was set aside for the Native

Americans initially that came out of the southeast,

so we talking about Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee,

North Carolina.

And those Indians were the Cherokee,

the Choctaw,

the Chickasaw,

the Creek, and the Seminole.

- These tribes were known as the Five Civilized Tribes

due to their adoption of European customs

and societal structures.

The forced relocation,

known infamously as the Trail of Tears,

was marked by hardship,

suffering, and death.

The Indian Territory,

often unfamiliar and inhospitable,

proposed a major challenge to the tribes.

Despite these adversities,

they integrated their cultural traditions

into the new environment.

In a complex

and often overlooked chapter of American history,

the enslavement of Blacks was prevalent

among the Five Civilized Tribes.

- They had plantations in the South before they were moved to the Indian Territory

and mainly they embraced chattel slavery.

And so, when they were forced to go to the Indian Territory

they took their African American slaves with them to the Indian Territory.

- Enslaved Blacks in the Indian Territory worked in fields, homes, and businesses,

their lives bearing a haunting resemblance to slaves

on the plantations of the Deep South.

Native American slaveholders

such as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation John Ross

Seminole Chief John Jumper,

and Cherokee Chief,

later Confederate general, Stand Watie

exemplify the close ties between the Native American

leadership of the Five Civilized Tribes

and the slave-holding planter class of the South.

Born in 1800, Choctaw Chief Greenwood LeFlore

was the son of a high-ranking Choctaw mother and a French fur trader.

He was a prominent antebellum figure among the Mississippi planter elite.

On his vast estates, over 400 enslaved Africans

lived and toiled in bondage.

In 1830, LeFlore signed the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek,

a momentous act that would

dispossess the Choctaw of their ancestral homelands,

propelling many on the Trail of Tears.

As the Choctaw were forced off their lands

to face an uncertain future in the West,

LeFlore remained in Mississippi at his plantation Malmaison.

He sided with the Union against succession

and died a few months after the war ended in 1865.

He was buried on his Mississippi estate,

his body wrapped in the American flag.

The Indian Territory was a

significant battleground during the Civil War,

with pivotal clashes like the Battle of Pea Ridge

and the Battle of Honey Springs

underscoring the region's importance.

Tribal allegiances were split;

some tribes aligned with the Confederacy

because of their economic and slavery ties to the South,

while others sided with the Union.

This internal conflict and external warfare

led to widespread devastation,

resulting in deaths,

displacement,

and profound social upheaval.

The particulars of Bass's short

stint in the war are unknown,

as are his movements in the Territory

between the years 1862

until he reappears on record in 1870.

In his memoirs,

George Reeves did not mention Bass,

nor were slaves who accompanied

their Confederate owners mentioned in official records.

It's quite probable that Bass

was fighting with the Creeks and Seminoles

who were fighting

the Confederate Indians in Indian Territory.

The aftermath of the Civil War

saw the abolition of slavery in the Indian Territory

and the restructuring of tribal governments

under new treaties with the U.S. government.

These treaties

required the tribes to emancipate their slaves

and offer them full tribal citizenship,

leading to the formation within the tribal nations

of unique communities of 'Freedmen',

the former slaves of the tribes.

By the end of the war,

Bass had learned to speak Muskogee,

the language of the Creeks and Seminoles

and was conversant in the languages

of the other tribes.

He mastered firearms,

learning to fire both pistol and rifle

near-perfect with either hand.

He had become very familiar with the Indian Territory,

possibly working

as a scout and guide for deputy marshals.

Bass was not yet a lawman,

but the skills he now possessed

made him more than qualified for the job.

After the Civil War,

the movement westward gained momentum

and as the settlers came,

new, lawless towns were established.

In the thirty years following the Civil War,

over one million new farms were established in the West

and a great deal of it was due to the Homestead Act

and through other government acts

which made it easy to acquire federal land.

So, the farmers are headed that way.

If the farmers are gonna be out there in numbers,

then the merchants in the town,

see, farmers weren't the only pioneers,

the mountain men weren't the only pioneers,

the cowboys weren't the only pioneers,

there were urban pioneers as well.

And urban pioneers

were the men who wanted to get in on the adventure,

but their talent

perhaps was as merchants.

And they would come into

these new places

and they'd open the first general store,

the first blacksmith shop,

the first little hotel,

and other things.

And all of a sudden,

a town takes shape.

A preacher might be an urban pioneer

and he would come in and open the first church.

Certainly that applied to school teachers.

A professor or a school

marm would come in and open the first school.

And all of a sudden,

you got a school, and a couple of stores,

and a blacksmith shop, and a church,

and all of that, you've got a little town growing

and serving the farmers and the ranchers of the area.

- By 1870, Bass had returned from the Indian Territory

to the county of his birth.

He put down roots in Van Buren,

Crawford County,

Arkansas and brought his wife Jennie,

their four children -

Sarah, age six,

Robert, age four,

Harriet, age two,

and George, age six months

as well as his mother and sister.

Bass Reeves is just so dynamic

in that he was born a slave,

he freed himself from his slavery,

escaped, became a self-made person in many

many ways,

having by several accounts

lived among

several different tribes in Indian Territory,

learned their languages,

learned their abilities, and their skills

and then after the war was over,

went and found the woman who

was to be his wife,

came back to the Fort Smith area,

lived in Van Buren,

established a successful,

by all accounts,

a successful farm,

raised horses and was known for doing that.

Van Buren was where the federal court

was for the Indian Territory,

so, it was a very important location.

And so for Bass then to work with the Deputy

U.S. Marshals for the Van Buren court

it had attraction for him to settle there.

- What began as a land claim on the Arkansas River in 1849,

Van Buren became a bustling port

and hub of trade along the river

and the crucial launching point for the hopeful

prospectors of the 1849 Gold Rush.

Situated on the border of Indian Territory,

the town was a hive of activity,

its pulse driven by the ceaseless flow of river traffic,

the rhythmic chugging of railroad commerce,

and a robust mercantile trade

that stood

as the lynchpin of Van Buren's thriving economy.

On October 9, 1850,

the residents of Van Buren

petitioned to have the federal court

seated in their city.

On March 3, 1851,

the Western District of Arkansas

federal court was established there.

For the first ten years of the court,

Judge Daniel Ringo brought law and order to the area,

sentencing White, Native, and Black men to prison or the gallows.

He resigned in 1860

and there is no record of a federal court

operating out of Van Buren for the next ten years.

On March 3, 1871,

the court was moved from Van Buren to Fort Smith.

Fort Smith was one of the largest towns,

I mean it was the largest town

second to Little Rock in Arkansas.

And it was on the border of the Indian Territory

and had been a critical military

base previous to the Civil War.

And so it was in a prime location for the government

to deal with the Five Civilized Tribes.

Located five miles southwest of Van Buren,

Fort Smith was named after General Thomas Adam Smith,

a slave-holding Georgian

who commanded the United States Army Rifle Regiment in 1817.

It was established as a military

post by the U.S. government that same year.

After the officers' quarters

were destroyed by fire in 1870,

the U.S. government considered selling the land.

Instead, the federal court was moved there in 1871.

The city was a busy riverside community

with a large population of outlaws who found

entertainment in the brothels and saloons that lined its dirt streets.

The Fort Smith Court was no ordinary federal court,

and the Indian Territory was no ordinary jurisdiction.

At 74,000 square miles of unmapped trails, hideouts,

deserts, and vast untamed wilderness,

the Western District of Arkansas was at that time

the largest in U.S. history.

There was no extradition treaties

with surrounding states,

with Kansas, or Arkansas, or Texas,

so if an outlaw came into the Indian Territory

he wouldn't worry about being extradited

if he was located per se,

you could be extradited if you were known to be squatting,

but you wouldn't be arrested for that.

So, you know

it became a

great place to hide out.

As time went on though,

crimes were committed.

The major crime for the Deputy

U.S. Marshals was bootleg whiskey,

whiskey was illegal in the Indian Territory.

In 1875, Congress appointed Isaac C. Parker

as the new judge of the Fort Smith court.

A former lawyer,

veteran, and congressman, 35-year-old Parker

was a Republican

who had resigned from the Democratic Party

when he became increasingly dismayed by their tolerance

and passion for slavery.

Shortly after Parker switched parties,

President Ulysses S. Grant

requested that he be appointed to the Western

District as a judge.

As his bailiff,

a position that kept order in the courtroom,

escorted juries and assisted presiding judges,

Isaac Parker hired a Black man named George S. Winston.

Daniel P. Upham,

a former officer of the Union army

who had led the Arkansas

militia to crush the Ku Klux Klan,

was appointed as the U.S. Marshal of Judge Parker's court,

and together

they hired upwards of fifty Deputy U.S. Marshals

to enforce the laws throughout the Indian Territory

and Western Arkansas.

In the untamed landscapes of the Old West,

law was scarce.

And yet, order was essential to the settlers,

miners, ranchers,

and entrepreneurs forging their lives on the frontier.

The embodiment of that order often came on horseback,

badge gleaming in the sun,

riding under the authority of the federal government.

The U.S. Marshal,

a figure cloak in equal parts fear and respect,

held a position of great power and grave responsibility.

Appointed by the president himself,

each marshal was charged with enforcing federal

laws throughout a specific district within a state.

Their duties were manifold--

protecting the federal judiciary,

apprehending federal fugitives,

managing seized assets,

transporting prisoners,

quelling riots,

and keeping the peace.

Yet, the vastness of the Old West

demanded more boots on the ground,

more eyes on the horizon.

When Judge Parker first came on,

he needed the kind of deputy

that he knew he could trust,

and one he knew that could track.

Deputy U.S. Marshals were often locals

who knew the lay of the land.

Sharing many of the same responsibilities

as their appointers,

deputies brought

law enforcement to the furthest reaches of the territories.

They were the badge and the gun in towns

where the marshal's name was just a whisper

on the wind.

Though the distinction may seem trivial to us now,

in the Old West,

the roles of the U.S. Marshal,

the Deputy U.S. Marshal,

and their possemen were integral to the establishment

and preservation of law and order.

Their efforts contributed significantly to

transforming the American West

into a region synonymous with opportunity.

Through their endeavors to uphold the law

and bring outlaws to justice,

they played a key role in establishing communities

and infrastructure

in a land that was rich with potential and diversity.

Deputy marshals,

Deputy U.S. Marshals

and possemen hung out around the federal courthouses

hoping to get a job,

a warrant to serve,

or a posse to serve in,

or whatever.

Furthermore,

they were allowed to split rewards

and so they would go after the bad guys

who had rewards out.

If there was a guy with $100 on his head

or $500 on his head

well then boy you could

imagine that there would be U.S.

Deputy Marshals and possemen after him,

but rarely a U.S. Marshal

because his job was administrative.

The job was dangerous

and required no small amount of bravery

because the outlaws of the Territory

knew every trail and hideout

and was almost certain to resist arrest

for the penalty for doing so

was only one additional year of confinement.

These outlaws were no mere minor offenders,

most of them were murderers,

cattle rustlers,

or horse thieves

and the sentence for these crimes was death.

But, the marshals and their deputies'

jurisdiction had limitations.

The federal government

had no control over what the Native Americans did

except if there were crimes committed against White men

or Black men who were not citizens of Indian nations

or vice versa,

then the U.S. government came in

and those cases were adjudicated

at the Fort Smith court.

And so deputy marshals initially

who had to work out of the Fort Smith court

would have to leave Fort Smith

and they would have to go into the Indian Territory

all the way west to Fort Sill,

Fort Reno, and sometimes to Fort Supply,

and come back to Fort Smith,

it was like a round trip of over 500 miles.

And they would have warrants for certain characters

or they were given open warrants

where they could talk to the people

that lived in the Territory

and found out who committed crimes.

Now the Indians couldn't arrest these non-citizens,

but they could hold them for the Deputy U.S. Marshals

and that happened on many occasions

where they would hold felons for the Deputy

U.S. Marshals to come and pick up.

- Judge Parker's reputation did not aid the deputies

he sent into the field,

for he quickly earned the moniker of "Hanging Judge".

Over the course of his career,

Parker would send seventy-nine convicts to the gallows.

Parker's court was synonymous

with the harshest punishment permissible under the law.

This only made the danger

more pronounced for Deputy U.S. Marshals.

Determined to avoid a date with the hallowed,

outlaws in the Indian Territory and western Arkansas

who were desperate to escape

the near-certainty of death that awaited them

in the courtroom,

would murder as many as 100 deputies

in cold blood.

In no other territory or state in U.S. history

were more Deputy U.S. Marshals killed in the line of duty

than in the Indian Territory.

- To be succinct, it would be a fifty-mile radius

of the town of Muskogee

where the majority of Deputy

U.S. Marshals were killed in the Indian Territory.

So, it was very dangerous.

Today, lawmen can get on their radio and call for backup,

in the Indian Territory,

you couldn't call for backup.

You were out there on your own initiative

in terms of how you could stay alive

and you and your posse had to do that

and then you know

do the job of

arresting those people you were looking for,

and then getting back to Fort Smith safely.

It was a very,

very dangerous job.

- Bass Reeves took up his commission as Deputy U.S. Marshal

on May 28, 1875.

- Judge Isaac Parker is in control at Fort Smith, Arkansas

in the Western District of Arkansas

and it means he's in charge of the U.S. Marshals,

and one of the first hires he makes is Bass Reeves.

Not exactly sure why

except this man had already built up a reputation

for honesty,

for discipline,

he was a big man,

he was 6 foot 2,

this was in an era where most people were 5 foot 8,

so he is big,

he's strong.

Supposedly, he was ambidextrous and

a crack shot,

this was the kind of man that Judge Parker wanted.

And the fact that he was Black

which probably, probably

would have kept him from getting a number of positions,

this made him even more attractive to Judge Parker.

He wanted people of color

to be in the U.S. Marshals Service

because there were people of color

in the Indian Territory,

there were people there

who would not be able to relate to a White officer,

but they might be able to relate to a Black man.

Even some of the Indians would better be able to relate

to a Black man than they could to a White.

While by far

the most famous Black Deputy U.S. Marshal in history,

Bass Reeves was not the first.

In 1867, eight years before Bass received his commission,

the ‘Indian Pioneer Papers’ published a story

in which a Black man known as "Negro Smith"

led a posse to pursue a murderous stagecoach robber

near Atoka in the Choctaw Nation.

And there was at least one other Black Deputy U.S. Marshal

commissioned before Bass.

Bynum Colbert

who was a Civil War veteran and a former

Buffalo Soldier in the Tenth Calvary Regiment,

he got a commission in 1872

three years before Bass Reeves.

Colbert served up until 1895

and so he served for a long time

and was a very good lawman.

- Bass led a distinct class of Black Deputy U.S. Marshals.

Bob Fortune was born in Bowling Green, Virginia

on June 15, 1865

and served as Deputy U.S. Marshal from 1895

until his resignation in 1907.

- He often rode with fellow Black Deputy U.S. Marshals

Neely Factor and Zeke Miller.

Grant Johnson's parents had been held in slavery

by Native Americans.

He served as Deputy U.S. Marshal from 1888 until 1906.

He and Bass were lifelong friends.

There was also John Garrett

who became one of the many Deputy U.S. Marshals

who lost their lives in The Territory.

He was shot three times by the Rufus Buck Gang

in an ambush on July 30, 1895.

Before Garrett died of his injuries,

he identified the man who fired the shots as Rufus Buck.

The gang was captured

and sentenced twice to death by Judge Parker.

They were all hanged for John Garrett's murder

on July 1, 1896.

These Black Deputy U.S. Marshals

were members of a cohort of former slaves turned lawmen

and they were met with resistance

as Bass found out

shortly after his commission.

In July 1875,

after only two months on the job,

Bass was arrested for assault with intent to kill.

No details of the case

known as "The State of Arkansas v. Bass Reeves"

have survived.

The "Van Buren Press" reported that a jury found Bass

not guilty in September of that year.

Whatever the details of the incident,

neither Judge Parker nor his U.S. Marshal Daniel P. Upham

could find cause to dismiss Bass.

And so, his career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal began.

In the wake of the Civil War,

the Reconstruction era

marked a pivotal period in the nation's history,

characterized by efforts to rebuild

and redefine the United States.

Fueled by this mandate,

on March 17, 1877,

two years after Bass Reeves began his commission

as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in Arkansas,

in a groundbreaking move,

President Rutherford B. Hayes

appointed Frederick Douglass

as the first Black U.S. Marshal for Washington D.C..

This significant decision by the federal government

not only symbolized a commitment to integrating Blacks

into prominent positions of authority,

but also set a precedent for future appointments.

- Douglass was the... he was a fascinating individual,

as you well know,

we called him the

person of the 19th century,

he was the man in

in the spotlight

and he had wanted to become a cabinet person

in one of the presidential appointments,

but he never got that.

Douglass was officially the first Black CEO in law enforcement.

His nomination was opposed

and there were crazy

reasons for why his nomination was opposed:

number one, he was going to Africanize the courts,

he was going to get all the jurors,

all the jurors going to be Black

all the bailiffs were going to be Black.

So, with Douglass that opposition was there.

Although Frederick Douglass and Bass Reeves

likely never crossed paths,

Douglass's appointment

was a fleeting beacon of progressive change

and an indication

of the evolving roles of Black men in law enforcement

during Reconstruction.

However, the federal government's mandate of

transformation and integration

after the Civil War came to a close that same year

with the compromise of 1877,

which effectively ended Reconstruction

by withdrawing federal troops from the South

and marking a shift in the nation's approach to civil

rights and racial equality.

Despite the official end of Reconstruction,

in the Old West,

Black men would continue to serve as Deputy U.S. Marshals

for another two decades,

a testament to their efficacy

and the loyalty of their colleagues.

The first several years of Bass's career

served as a period of training

as he learned the ins and outs of the job.

In June 1877,

he was serving

as a posseman for Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert J. Topping

when they arrested a man who had stolen oxen,

and again with Deputy U.S. Marshal James H. Mershon

in 1880

when they arrested two men for selling illegal whiskey

in the Indian Territory.

In December 1878,

Bass served as a guard during the execution

of James Diggs and John Postoak.

He also acted as a guard

alongside other Deputy U.S. Marshals and George Maledon,

Judge Parker's executioner,

during the transportation of prisoners

from Fort Smith federal jail

to the House of Corrections in Detroit, Michigan.

Bass did quite well financially.

A Deputy U.S. Marshal could expect to earn $500 in salary.

In addition,

he would earn approximately 75%

of the bounty on the prisoners he returned to court,

the other quarter went to the marshal himself.

It's a testament to Bass's drive,

determination,

and intense commitment to delivering outlaws

that he earned around $3,000 to $4,000 a year,

which made him one of the top grossing deputies

at Fort Smith.

He built an eight-room cottage in Van Buren,

across the street from the Crawford County Treasurer,

a White man named August J. Ward.

He would regularly receive guests in his home

such as attorneys William H. H. Clayton,

a prosecutor,

and William M. Craves,

a public defender

who would take the train from Fort Smith to Van Buren

to discuss cases with Bass over dinner.

As Bass became more experienced,

he would pursue more dangerous criminals,

oftentimes on his own

and other times with other Deputy U.S. Marshals

or with his eldest sons forming his crew.

He would have to hire a cook,

he would have to hire a guard,

and at least one posseman.

Most times, Bass

did not hire many possemen,

you could hire four or five if you wanted to,

but Bass generally just took one with him

and you have one wagon or two wagons.

Preparations to enter the Indian Territory

in pursuit of criminals could take days

and sometimes weeks

and once the Deputy U.S. Marshals eventually set off,

there were further considerations.

The Deadline,

a term commonly used in the Old West,

referred to a designated boundary

beyond which U.S. Marshals had limited jurisdiction.

For Deputy U.S. Marshals working out of Fort Smith,

the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad tracks

located approximately sixty miles west of Fort Smith,

was considered their Deadline.

The MKT tracks served as a geographical reference point

and a symbolic division

between the territory under federal jurisdiction

and the Indian Territory,

which had its own legal system.

Although their jurisdiction typically

ended at the MKT tracks,

Deputy U.S. Marshals would

on occasion

cross the Deadline in pursuit of outlaws

or to assist local native law enforcement.

- You could be on that trip for one to two months.

Many times it was two months

depending on

if the water was high and the creeks and the rivers.

And so it will be a long time to be away from home,

to be away from your family.

Bass quickly proved his skill

in bringing criminals to justice.

He certainly had a reputation of

going out with several warrants in his pocket

and coming back with multiple people in tow.

That's how good he was,

not just I'll go out and get one guy,

I'll go out and get several people at the same time.

Bass was illiterate,

he could not read and write.

He would memorize the warrants

and take them into the

Indian Territory and serve the warrants.

He had no idea specifically

what was on those warrants,

but before he went out,

he would have somebody

sometimes it was somebody in his own family,

read those warrants to him,

he would memorize them,

including descriptions of the person,

what they were wanted for,

where they were believed to be at the time,

and he'd go out and do the job.

And he did it so, so well.

- He got so good at handling the warrants that he had,

the federal court started giving him

subpoenas to handle out

for people to appear in court

and so he would

not only have his warrants,

he'd have subpoenas to handle

to bring back.

And he would have to find the person

and tell them that they had to appear,

you know appear in court

to give testimony.

And he did all of that

without being able to read and write,

and did it well.

The legend of Bass Reeves

is not merely built on his being a Black Deputy Marshal,

he also displayed a supreme

command of law enforcement tactics

decades ahead of their time.

His intelligence and perception as a lawman

were as legendary

as his gun-fighting abilities.

During his years among the Native Americans,

Bass had mastered the arts of deception and disguise.

Instead of riding his prize steeds in Indian Territory,

he would instead ride plain-colored, slower horses

so as to blend in to his surroundings

and hide his identity as a lawman.

Donning disguises would become a regular

component of Bass's crime-fighting skills

over the course of his career.

These tactics,

precursors of undercover work

that local and federal police

would use throughout the next century,

would cement Bass's legacy

not just as a federal lawman,

but as a master detective.

He was able to take on personas

in order to help lull people into thinking

he was somebody else

right before he would slap the cuffs on them.

He was able to out-think the people he was with,

but then in many ways,

and I think part of it was the times.

Just being the period following the Civil War,

as a Black man in this part of the country,

he could walk around virtually unseen

because he was just another Black man

in this part of the country

and he could get to places where no White deputy

was ever going to be able to find them.

Bass was a skilled and decisive gunman.

Throughout his three decades of service,

he would deal swift

frontier justice to outlaws

who thought it was wise to fight their capture

rather than give up and face Judge Parker's court.

He gained a reputation

throughout his time in the Marshals Service,

in fact, throughout his time

of being a lawman,

and he basically was a lawman for the rest of his life,

of being about the best that there was.

He had some tough assignments.

We know that

at least it's reported

that he killed 14 men.

- While Bass was involved in a number of shootings

that left his opponents dead,

he knew that cold-blooded

executions would not be tolerated.

Judge Parker would just as soon charge a deputy

with unjustified murder as he would any outlaw.

Despite his many talents,

his steadfastness,

his loyalty,

Bass would constantly face criticism

in the courts of law and public opinion

and in the press.

The "Fort Smith Weekly Elevator" noted,

'It seems that Bass

has had a habit of letting a prisoner escape

when more could be made than by holding him'.

An accusation that had no merit.

Bass was often falsely portrayed as a lazy,

blood-hungry murderer

who would rather kill his charges

than bring them to court.

He was not a man of violence,

he never had that reputation.

But certainly, when you were in the territories,

some of the people there were not going to give up.

They were going to fight,

because perhaps they faced the death penalty,

or even worse

for some of them,

they faced going to prison for years

and they couldn't stand the thought of that.

They would fight,

he was the wrong man to fight with.

On April 9, 1884,

bound for Fort Smith with five prisoners in tow,

Bass and his posse,

which included his nephew John Brady

who was driving the team of horses, and a cook,

a Black man named William Leach,

made camp near Cherokee town

in the Chickasaw Nation of Indian Territory.

A heated argument broke out between Bass and William Leach.

Later that night in camp,

according to Bass's testimony,

he was changing the bullets in his rifle

when he accidentally shot Leach.

He reportedly sought a doctor,

but could not find one in time to save Leach's life.

Despite his involvement in the deaths of numerous outlaws,

it was this accidental shooting

that would overshadow much of Bass's career.

The reluctance of his fellow Deputy U.S. Marshals

and Judge Parker to pursue charges

is evident in the fact that it would be three years

before he faced trial for Leach's death.

Temporarily free from prosecution,

Bass carried on with his duties as a Deputy U.S. Marshal

and turned his attention to the capture

and arrest of Jim Webb,

a Texan cowboy

who had drifted into the Chickasaw Nation

in Indian Territory in 1883.

Jim Webb was the foreman of the McLeish-Washington Ranch.

When a neighboring farmer,

a Black minister,

accidentally burned off a portion of the ranch,

Webb shot and killed him.

Bass was given the warrant

and Webb was arrested and released on bond,

but failed to show up for trial.

Bass was sent after him again.

He found him at Bywater Store,

which was a stagecoach stop in the Chickasaw Nation

and they got into a running gunfight.

Webb, while trying to run away from

Bass, was shooting at him with his rifle.

He cut the brim of Bass's hat,

he cut a button off his coat,

he shot his reigns where Bass couldn't hold his horse.

And so Bass had to get off his horse and in doing so,

he grabbed his rifle.

According to D.C. Gideon,

an author writing at the time,

Bass fired the first shot from his Winchester,

hitting Webb.

And before the outlaw's body hit the ground,

Bass hit him with a second shot from his rifle.

When Bass and his posse approached the dying Webb,

his last words were for Bass,

telling him:

'You are a brave man.

I want you to accept my revolver

and scabbard as a present

and you must accept them.

Take it, for with it

I have killed eleven men,

four of them in Indian Territory

and I expected you to make the twelfth.'

Bass accepted the gift. In an interview he gave in 1901,

Bass recalled:

'The bravest man I ever saw was Jim Webb,

a Mexican that I killed in 1884

near Sacred Heart Mission.

He was a murderer,

I got in between him and his horse.

He stepped out into the open 500 yards away

and commenced shooting with his Winchester.

He was 500 yards away from me when I killed him.'

That was one of Bass's greatest gunfights

especially at that distance, because

500 yards is a quarter mile

and so,

it was quite a feat to shoot somebody at that

distance and hit them.

But Bass was very good with a rifle and pistol.

Bass came into conflict

with the law again in October 1884,

when he was temporarily relieved of his duties

as a deputy by the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Fort Smith

while charges of accepting bribes were being investigated.

After two months,

Marshal Thom Bowles determined

that there was not enough evidence to prove his guilt

and he was reinstated by Christmas 1884.

Bass continued tracking

and bringing in outlaws in the Indian Territory

throughout 1885.

The following year,

he made a surprising friendship with Belle Starr,

the infamous outlaw

whom he set out to serve with a warrant

for horse theft.

At first glance,

serving Belle Starr,

a daughter of the Confederacy,

with a warrant for her arrest

was an especially difficult and dangerous assignment

for a Black Deputy U.S. Marshal.

- Belle Starr was one of the most famous characters

of the Indian Territory

and she was known to give aid

to outlaws and sometimes be engaged herself

in stealing horses.

She was a former Confederate sympathizer.

She was fond of Bass Reeves.

She said that she found him to be courageous and brave

and he was a man of his word,

so they had a friendship.

And actually, in 1886,

Bass got the warrant for her arrest.

He didn't arrest her,

but allowed her to turn herself in.

- This unlikely friendship between Bass Reeves

and Belle Starr,

a Black former slave turned lawman

and a White Confederate sympathizer-

turned-outlaw,

highlights the complexity of the Old West.

In a time of stark racial and social divides,

Belle Starr's respect for him

is a testament to Bass's fair

and impartial approach to upholding justice,

and to the multifaceted reality of life on the frontier.

On January 21, 1886,

Bass experienced the reach of the law up close

when he was arrested

and charged with the murder of his cook

William Leach.

Given no special treatment,

he was placed in the Fort Smith jail.

- The Democrats had taken power in Washington,

we had a new,

a new federal prosecutor

and they really kind of wanted to get rid of all the

vestiges of Reconstruction

and these Black deputy marshals and other appointees

were certainly that.

- The U.S. Marshal for Fort Smith in 1886 was John Carroll,

one of only two former Confederate soldiers

who held the post during Bass's tenure.

The press was not on Bass's side.

When reporting on Bass's arrest,

the January 22, 1886 edition of the "Arkansas Gazette",

published in the capital city of Little Rock reads:

'Reeves has been constantly

on the Marshals' force here for several years,

and notwithstanding rumors reached here frequently

that he was in league with some of the worst cutthroats

and outlaws in the Indian country,

he managed to cover up his tracks so effectually

as to retain his commission

until the recent Marshal took charge,

when he was removed.'

The reporting against Bass

continued in his hometown press.

In the January 23, 1886

edition of the "Van Buren Press",

the paper reads:

'Bass Reeves has a reputation throughout western

Arkansas and the Indian Territory that no man need envy.

It is said that when he was riding as deputy,

he was in the habit of holding "kangaroo court" in camp

and extorting small sums of money from prisoners

by fining them for small

imaginary offenses

and would use the money to buy tobacco, etc.'

Although faced with these charges,

Bass was never proven guilty of bribery.

The extent of the bias that the "Van Buren Press"

held against him was underscored when

in the paper was printed

a dangerous accusation

that could have led to a horrific death by lynching

for any Black man in the 19th century.

The "Van Buren Press" reads:

'It was charged at one time he made an insulting

proposal to a White woman in the Territory

and his conduct was investigated by the grand jury

and his dismissal was the force

recommended by that body,

but for some reason

he was not dismissed

but let to go on making history,

all of which will come to light in due time.'

None of these allegations

against Bass were ever substantiated

nor was he ever found guilty of these charges.

What is undisputed

is that Bass shot and killed William Leach.

Having spent five months in jail,

he was bailed out on $3,000 bond in June 1886.

Four months later,

the trial began.

Judge Isaac Parker presided over the trial

and Bass had the best defense attorneys in Fort Smith:

William H.H. Clayton,

William M. Cravens, and Thomas Markham.

Any relief that Bass may have felt with Judge Parker

presiding would almost certainly have been tempered

by Parker's reputation as the "Hanging Judge".

- He was acquitted, after a week-long trial

and went back to work.

And I think that is what sets him apart in my mind.

Instead of saying, well take this job and shove it.

That he pinned his badge back on and his pistol

and he got on his horse and he took

a handful of warrants

after having spent some five months in the federal jail,

it was not pleasant,

and go back to work.

He lost his farm in Van Buren,

he lost his

ability to take care of his family here in the area.

He'd gotten into debt,

was living in a rented home in Fort Smith.

Even though Bass

had more than two decades of work left ahead of him,

he would never financially recover.

- By 1888 Bass was recommissioned as a Deputy U.S. Marshal.

It was a time of change in the Indian Territory.

The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

divided the Indian Territory into plots,

allowing settlers to claim surplus lands.

In 1889, Congress opened the western part of The Territory

for settlement by White and Black settlers.

On May 2, 1890,

Congress approved an act that created The Territory of Oklahoma,

which comprised all areas formerly known as the Indian Territory

that were not occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes.

The creation of The Territory of Oklahoma

led to the rapid establishment of new towns,

such as Guthrie,

resulting in the emergence of a new class of criminals.

Indian Territory did not have saloons

and so whiskey was illegal.

The Oklahoma Territory,

whiskey was legal,

so they had saloons.

And so, what some enterprising people did,

they decided that since it was such a great attraction

for many of these people

that lived in the Indian Territory,

they would set up saloons on the border.

- These "whiskey towns" were populated by gamblers,

bootleggers, murderers,

and many other outlaws on the run from the law.

In fact, the term "bootlegging" entered the lexicon

from the drovers and cowboys

who would conceal whiskey in their boots

to sneak into the dry Indian Territory nearby.

Whiskey towns

would similarly be the origin of "last chance" saloons,

as in the last chance to get liquor

before entering Indian Territory.

- The Corner was the most dangerous of all of them

there were so many gunfights

they said that

gun shells were on the ground like pebbles or stones.

They were really bad places.

And so those saloons were saloons that Bass

had to go into on occasion and deal with customers

that were really, really

rough guys.

But Bass was one of the few Deputy

U.S. Marshals who are noted to go

into these notorious saloons.

While people of all ethnicities

sought the chance for a new life in these western lands,

there was a prominent migration of Black settlers.

Among the new inhabitants of Oklahoma Territory

were 10,000 Blacks

coming primarily from southern states.

Oklahoma and the Indian Territories

became home to over thirty Black towns and settlements,

the highest concentration in the U.S. at that time.

Tullahassee,

the oldest Black town,

housed a manual labor school for Creek freedmen

and later became home to Flipper Davis College,

the state's only private institution for Black students

in the early 20th century.

Boley, the largest Black town,

boasted a thriving business district and bank.

Booker T. Washington referred to Boley as the most enterprising

and fascinating Negro town in the United States.

Langston was established by Edward P. McCabe,

the highest elected Black official in the West.

Langston eventually

became the home of Langston University,

the sole historically Black college in Oklahoma.

McCabe advocated

for more Black towns in the Territories,

envisioning Oklahoma as a predominantly Black state

with himself as its governor.

Despite facing intense threats and opposition

from armed White cowboys and ranchers,

McCabe rose to become Deputy Auditor of Oklahoma

Territory from 1897 to 1907

before passing away in poverty.

Although his dreams for Oklahoma did not materialize,

Black settlers continued to play a

significant role in the region's future.

The year 1890

found Bass still working in the Indian Territory,

and it would be his most

productive year

since the end of his murder trial in 1887.

One of the first outlaws he pursued was Tosalonah,

known as "Greenleaf",

a Seminole Indian

who had been on the run for nearly two decades.

Greenleaf was believed to have murdered three Whites

and four Indians,

with one of his victims being a federal postal worker,

as well as armed robbery and whiskey smuggling.

Bass set off into Seminole territory

in search of the infamous outlaw.

While numerous lawmen of the time

had been sent to capture him,

they were all unsuccessful.

Fortune, however,

favored Bass

for he happened to be nearby

when Greenleaf smuggled whiskey

into the Indian Territory for the last time.

Bass ascertained where he was living

and decided that the safest thing to do

was to try to catch him early in the morning

before he woke up.

So, Bass had his posse

charge the cabin early in the morning,

jumped in on Greenleaf

and they arrested him before he realized

what was going on.

In June,

Greenleaf was convicted of the lesser charge of selling

whiskey in Indian Territory and fined $100.

He was put on the train to the Detroit

House of Corrections,

sentenced to serve 18 months.

There was not enough

evidence to convict him of the murder charge.

- Bass was no stranger to the prejudices of people

unaccustomed to seeing

Black men wield the authority of the federal government.

From his youth,

Bass would have remembered how the Fugitive

Slave Act of 1850 had obligated U.S. Marshals

and their deputies

to return escaped slaves to their owners,

irrespective of whether or not the fugitives

had made it to a free state.

While racism had made Bass's job more difficult,

it had not prevented him from becoming one of the most

successful and effective Deputy U.S. Marshals in the West.

But, times were changing

and the gains

made by Blacks after the Civil War were under threat.

From 1890 onwards,

race would increasingly become a daily

concern to Bass in the performance of his duties.

And surviving evidence

suggests that the new pressures of the changing world

and the uncertainty of his future with the federal

government were getting to him.

In May 1891,

he brought in two White men--

William McDaniel and Ben Card--

for the murder of John Irvin,

a Black man.

Bass did not have warrants for their arrest.

For two months,

Bass rode the men around in his wagon.

When he returned to Fort Smith,

Bass had to let the men go without charge.

He was likely reprimanded for making the arrests

without a writ or enough evidence to support one.

Perhaps finding strength in numbers shortly thereafter,

Bass formed a small posse with his friend

and fellow Black Deputy U.S. Marshal Grant Johnson.

In May 1893,

George Crump was appointed

as the new U.S. Marshal for the Fort Smith court.

Crump was a former Confederate soldier and a Democrat.

Bass's career at Fort Smith would come to an end

a few months later.

Crump's veteran status and political

leanings were not the cause of Bass leaving Fort Smith,

the former Confederate kept on other Black deputies

such as Rufus Cannon,

Grant Johnson,

and Bynum Colbert.

Bass's departure from Fort Smith

was for personal reasons.

In July 1893,

two months after Crump's appointment,

Bass's eldest son

Robert was killed while at work

coupling cars as a brakeman for the Central Arkansas &

Houston Railway.

He left behind a wife and two children.

In his youth,

Robert had occasionally served as a posseman

while out hunting outlaws with his father.

Bass sought distance.

Now 45-years-old,

he was transferred to the

Eastern District of Texas court in Paris, Texas.

He had had an enduring

friendly relationship with Judge Isaac Parker

that extended to the Reeves family.

After Bass left Fort Smith,

his son Newland

was listed in the Fort Smith Business Directory

as working for and living with Judge Parker

for the years 1894 and 1895.

Bass's grief for the loss of his firstborn son

seems to have been substantial

and appears to have put a strain on his marriage.

When he took up his new position for the Texas court,

he left his wife

Jennie and his children behind.

- In the Senate Report of the First Session of the 48th Congress

on May 26, 1884,

bill H.R. 6074

reassigned the county of Lamar, and others

along with part of the Indian Territory,

from the Northern Judicial District of Texas

to the Eastern District.

It further determined

that the terms of the circuit and district courts

would be held twice yearly in the town of Paris,

Lamar County, Texas.

Paris was founded in 1844 by the merchant George W. Wright.

After the residents of Lamar County

voted to have Paris as the county seat,

Wright donated 50 acres of land to found the town.

It was incorporated by the

Congress of the Republic of Texas on February 3, 1845.

A railroad hub with numerous restaurants,

hotels, and churches,

Paris was prosperous.

In 1893, the year that Bass was assigned to the

Eastern District of Texas,

Paris was the scene of a horrific act of violence

that would give birth to the phrase "Spectacle Lynching".

A Black man,

Henry Smith,

was accused of the brutal murder of Myrtle Vance,

the 4-year-old daughter of Deputy Henry Vance,

a local lawman.

Some days before,

Vance and Smith had been involved in an altercation

after Vance was sent to arrest

Smith for drunk and disorderly conduct.

On the day of her disappearance,

Smith had been seen with the little girl.

When questioned by his wife

on the whereabouts of the child,

Smith fled Paris.

A few days later,

he was tracked down and returned to the town

where he was lynched by fire in front of a crowd of thousands.

Racial tensions in the town were high when Bass

began his service for the Eastern District.

Under U.S. Marshal J. Shelby Williams,

Bass was tasked to patrol the dangerous saloon towns

of Potawatomie County in Indian Territory

and he took up residence 120 miles north of Paris

in the town of Calvin

situated along the Canadian River in the Choctaw Nation.

Historically,

the Paris, Texas court

was in charge of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nation

by 1890, so the jurisdiction of the Fort Smith court

was being cut down in size.

The records of the Eastern Judicial

District of Texas were destroyed in a fire in 1916,

therefore little is known of Bass's activities

during his time there.

At least one account of Bass's work in Texas

survives outside court records.

A Texas pioneer named J. B. Sparks wrote,

'Bass Reeves was a Negro,

but he was a U.S. Marshal and made a brave officer.

He was sent to get two outlaws near Atwood.

He caught and arrested them

and that night

he went to Frank Casey's home

and had them fix beds in the yard

so he could sleep with both prisoners handcuffed to him.'

The years away

would bring more personal tragedies for Bass

as his family fell apart in his absence.

In June 1895,

his sons Newland and Edgar

were arrested and sentenced to several years in prison.

Edgar was eventually

pardoned by the governor of Arkansas

in exchange for his testimony against his brother.

The arrest and conviction of his sons

was a great disappointment to Bass,

but he continued his service to the federal court.

On March 19, 1896

Bass's estranged wife Jennie died in Fort Smith

following a two year battle with cancer.

She was 56-years-old.

A few months later,

on May 18, 1896,

the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Homer

Plessy v. Ferguson,

a direct challenge to segregation laws.

The court ruled that separate facilities

for Blacks and Whites were constitutional

as long as the facilities were 'equal'.

This snowballed and quickly extended to restaurants,

bathrooms, schools,

theaters, and other facets of public life.

After Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896,

and it was a

the racism came to a new crest

in a separate, but equal kind of phase.

The restrictions against deputies who were Black

began to kick in.

It is probable that Bass

felt some sense of betrayal at this ruling.

The very government

he had been in service to for the past two decades

had determined that while he was a man

deserving of equal facilities as Whites,

he was not deserving of

access to the same facilities as Whites.

Bass had cleared the saloons of outlaws,

yet was now told he could not drink there.

The federal government had embarked

upon an ambitious quest to ensure frontier justice

was dispensed by men of all races.

Bass exemplified this effort.

Yet, no one could halt the nation's move

towards segregation

sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

On September 1, 1896,

Judge Isaac C. Parker's

court at Fort Smith officially came to a close.

Two months later,

Judge Parker,

who had presided over a fair and just court

and whom Bass considered a friend,

died after a long illness at the age of fifty-eight.

Bass's career was in flux once again

when in September 1897,

President William McKinley appointed Leo E. Bennett

as U.S. Marshal for the Northern

District of the Indian Territory.

In '97 he was transferred to the

Muskogee court

because at that time

they had opened up three courts in Indian Territory:

one was at Ardmore,

one was at McCallister,

and the other one was at Muskogee.

Marshal Bennett commissioned Bass and his friend

Grant Johnson

as Deputy U.S. Marshals

assigned to the federal court in Muskogee.

They would primarily work in the Creek

and Cherokee nations under Judge John Robert Thomas.

This was the last federal court that Bass would serve.

Bass and Grant joined an impressive

group of seasoned Deputy U.S. Marshals

working for Bennett out of the Muskogee court.

By 1898, an increasing number of White settlers

were streaming into the Indian Territory,

bringing with them the prejudices of the era.

This led to racial violence.

Two of the most horrific events

occurred in early 1898

in the Northern District of the Indian Territory.

The first incident,

known as the Seminole Burnings,

occurred in January 1898.

A White woman and her young infant were found

dead in the Seminole Nation,

with murder the suspected cause.

Instead of waiting for the law to deliver justice,

two young Native

Americans were erroneously identified as the culprits.

They were lynched by fire.

The perpetrators,

all White men,

were apprehended and put on trial.

Six of the men were convicted by a jury

composed of White,

Black, and Native American men,

making the case the first successful prosecution

and conviction for lynching in the southwest.

Later that spring, in the same area,

another act of mob violence claimed three lives,

when a Black man and a White woman

who were living as common law

husband and wife, were attacked by a mob and killed.

The crime was known as the Wybark Tragedy.

Because of Bass's work,

several men were arrested as suspects. However,

despite the efforts of the District Attorney's office,

no one was ever convicted of the murders.

In May 1898,

Bass was assigned to work inside the city of Muskogee

with a mandate to assist in curbing the vice that was

overflowing from the gambling dens and brothels.

The days of hunting down outlaws

and riding his magnificent horses

across the prairie for weeks or months at a time

were now gone.

Bass was 60-years-old,

and he more commonly used a one-horse carriage

or walked a beat

than he spent time in the saddle.

The one constant from his days in the field

was his dedication to catching criminals.

On May 27, 1902,

the U.S. Congress divided the Northern

District of Indian Territory into two,

creating a Western District.

The Western District

was comprised of the Creek and Seminole nations

and headquartered in Muskogee.

Bass, along with Grant Johnson,

were the only two Black Deputy U.S. Marshals

assigned to the new district.

By the 1890s,

the Indian and Oklahoma Territory population

exceeded 200,000

a leap from 60,000 in 1875.

In 1893, Congress allowed negotiations for Native land,

and the 1898 Curtis Act applied federal law to all,

signaling the Territory's decline.

Allotments distributed for U.S. settlement

ended Native sovereignty and sped up Oklahoma's statehood.

Incorporated in 1898,

Muskogee's voters included 1,088 Blacks,

74 Whites, and 406 Native Americans.

The population of Muskogee continued to skyrocket

from 4,300 in 1900 to 15,000 by 1906,

but despite their numbers,

Blacks' voices remained secondary

in politics.

Blacks, Whites,

and Native Americans lived together in relative peace,

without segregated communities.

In fact, at the turn of the century,

Muskogee had one of the most progressive Black business

communities in not just the Indian Territory,

but the entire United States.

- This was a time of personal contentment for Bass

and a second chance at marital happiness.

In January 1900,

he married Winnie J. Sumner,

a former Cherokee slave

with two children from a previous marriage.

Being newly married did not slow Bass down.

On May 8, 1900,

he arrested Lee Peters for the theft of five

hogs and one sow,

valued at sixty dollars.

Peters was convicted

and sentenced to serve one year and one day

at the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The following year

Bass would suffer the loss of yet another son

when his youngest,

Bass Reeves Jr.

died of pneumonia in Muskogee at the age of fourteen.

Bass had suffered the loss of three children

and witnessed two more sons sent to prison,

tragedies that would test the resolve of the

strongest men.

But, it was the arrest of his son Benjamin

a year later in 1902

that would stand as testament to his unwavering

commitment to the law and his strength of character.

In his confession,

Benjamin Reeves details the circumstances

of the crime he committed:

'On the morning of June 7,

1902 about 11:00am,

I called upon my wife at her cousin's house in Muskogee

asked her if it was true she was having

or did have improper relations with John Wadley,

she answered me that she thought

more of his little finger than she did of my whole body.

By constant worry over her actions

and the breaking up of my home

and receiving such an answer,

I lost all control and shot her.'

Further down the page beside the question

'Where and by whom were you arrested?'

Benjamin Reeves wrote: 'Muskogee by Bass Reeves,

my father who was Deputy Marshal.'

Reportedly, shortly after the murder,

as word began to spread throughout the town,

Bass walked

into Marshal Bennett's office and said simply,

'Give me the writ'.

Bass took up the warrant himself,

he was humiliated,

a member of his own family doing this,

humiliated beyond belief.

But, he said

this is my responsibility and I'll do it

and how many men would do that?

Would have the guts,

the fortitude,

whatever to go out and arrest their own son for first

degree murder?

And that was what he did.

Bass went to the home

in the northern section of Muskogee

where he knew Benny was

was at and told Benny to give yourself up,

I don't want to have to shoot you,

just come out.

And the people that were following Bass

when he went up to the house told Benny

don't do anything stupid or Bass will kill you.

He brought him in

and he made sure that he was taken care of,

but he also allowed the judicial system to play out

as it was going to do.

His son broke the law,

he had to pay.

- Bass handed over his son to Marshal Bennett for trial.

Benjamin was found guilty on January 22, 1903,

sentenced to life in prison

and transferred to the federal prison at Leavenworth

in February.

In Leavenworth, Benjamin was a model prisoner.

On November 13, 1914

having served eleven years of his sentence,

he was pardoned and released from custody.

Despite the heavy burden that the arrest and

conviction of his son must have placed on the 64-year-old

lawman, Bass

continued his duties as Deputy U.S. Marshal,

serving the community of Muskogee.

He was chasing

outlaws with the vigor of a man half his age

and in line with the times,

his arrests were now generally

limited to Black criminals.

On November 11,

he arrested Jameson Brown

who was wanted for larceny in the Creek Nation.

Brown stole a horse, saddle,

bridle, and blanket valued at $117.

He was convicted and sentenced to five years

in Leavenworth.

He arrested Dick Lucky,

a resident of the Creek Nation,

on March 11, 1904

for selling cattle that he did not own.

Lucky was sentenced to sixteen

months of confinement at Leavenworth.

Later that year,

Bass arrested J.A. Tatnull

for burglary and larceny in Muskogee.

Tatnull was accused of stealing twenty pairs of shoes,

twelve hats, and one pair of pants

for a total of $94 worth of goods

from the Barbee and Company department store.

He pled guilty

and was sentenced to four years at Leavenworth.

The year 1905 found Bass as active as he ever was.

On March 4, 1905

he arrested Alfred Barnett

for trying to kill Edward King,

shooting him several times with his pistol.

Barnett was convicted by a jury on May 28, 1906

and sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor

at Leavenworth.

Bass remained a target of would-be assassins.

In 1906,

when he was traveling in his buggy near Wybark,

site of the infamous Wybark Tragedy,

someone fired several shots at him.

Always composed,

Bass quickly shifted on his seat and returned fire.

The assassin's shot

missed him by mere inches.

His career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal

would outlast that of Grant Johnson's,

his friend and colleague.

In February 1906,

Johnson was dismissed from service by Marshal Bennett.

Johnson had been Marshal for fifteen years,

but a personal dispute with another famous marshal

and friend of Bass,

Bud Ledbetter,

would be Johnson's undoing.

Bud Ledbetter

had raided several drugstores in Eufaula,

a city considered to be Johnson's territory.

Johnson was angered by this encroachment.

On the same afternoon

that Ledbetter carried out his raids,

Johnson caught a train to Muskogee,

Ledbetter's territory,

and single-handedly arrested twelve men.

Johnson considered the matter settled.

However, Marshal Bennett did not

and Johnson was relieved of his duties.

Though his career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal was over,

Johnson remained in law enforcement,

serving as a Negro policeman after Oklahoma statehood.

But, his law enforcement powers were limited

to servicing only the Black communities of Eufaula.

It was also around this time

in 1907 that Bass made yet another personal arrest.

Bass had a minister named Hobson

who was selling illegal whiskey,

the church was in arrears

and the church congregation told the minister

they give him approval to sell whiskey

to make some money to catch up with the debts they owed.

Bass found out about it

and he arrested Reverend Hobson

who was the same minister that baptized him.

On November 16, 1907

Oklahoma's territorial period came to an end

and the state of Oklahoma was born.

On that day,

Bass and many of the other Deputy U.S. Marshals

had their photo taken.

The newspapers called them the 'First Federal Family'.

This was their final official act as Deputy U.S. Marshals.

It is fair to say that Bass was a legend in his time.

From a pool of many Deputy U.S. Marshals,

it was Bass who was chosen as the subject

of an article in the Oklahoma City 'Weekly Times Journal'

on Friday, March 8, 1907.

When questioned about his career by the reporter,

Bass simply stated:

'For thirty-one years going on thirty-two,

I have ridden as a Deputy Marshal, Sir.

And when Marshal Bennett goes out of office,

I'm going to farming for a living.'

Despite statehood and his age,

Bass hoped to continue in his role as Deputy U.S. Marshal,

but it was not to be.

The day after statehood,

many of the duties of the Deputy U.S. Marshals

were transferred to municipalities

and counties throughout Oklahoma.

It was the end of an era for Bass in more ways than one.

Jim Crow laws of segregation

were named after a popular vaudeville act

created by Thomas Dartmouth Rice,

who had been performing the act in blackface

as early as 1832.

They had been enacted throughout the States

since the Compromise

of 1877 when federal troops

sent south to enforce the civil rights of freed Blacks

were withdrawn from the southern states

bringing about the end of Reconstruction.

Although President Theodore Roosevelt

refused to sign the Oklahoma state constitution

if it contained Jim Crow laws,

once Oklahoma became a state,

the first law passed by the Oklahoma State Senate

was Senate Bill No. 1,

which made Jim Crow laws legal across the state.

After statehood,

Black men could only become 'Negro Police',

with orders to only arrest other Blacks

in town with a large Black population.

Bass wasn't out of work long.

Now over 70-year-old, walking with a cane,

he was given a beat in downtown Muskogee.

Bass became bedridden during the summer of 1909.

In his final days, he was visited daily by Bud Ledbetter.

On January 12, 1910 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon,

Bass Reeves died of complications from Bright's disease.

He was 71-years-old.

- Bass Reeves was able to go through all of that

and be the person that he was

and have the career that he had

in the face of blistering racism,

in the face of the deadliest

job you could take in the United States at the time.

He would go and do his job that he needed to do

because it was the job that he had to do

as a Deputy U.S. Marshal.

His obituary is printed in newspapers

across the country,

it was printed in New York,

it was printed in Chicago,

it was printed in Los Angeles.

Bass Reeves,

for a short period of time,

was one of the best known individuals in law enforcement.

He paved the way,

he cut that path

so that other deputy marshals,

and I've met a few other deputy marshal,

but during the western time

there's no parallel.

There's no parallel with him,

because there's nothing else

written out there about any other

person that you could compare to Bass Reeves.

So, he stands alone.

- Bass Reeves, one of the most remarkable lawmen,

I don't care if it's a U.S. Marshal or local lawmen,

whatever, probably one of the most remarkable

lawmen in U.S. history.

When reporting on Bass's funeral,

the "Muskogee Phoenix" eulogized

him in a manner that was appreciated only by those

who had not lived under slavery and oppression.

The paper reads:

'Bass Reeves,

Negro, was buried yesterday

and the funeral was attended

by a large number of White people.

Black-skinned,

illiterate, offspring of slaves

whose ancestors were savages,

this simple old man's life stands white and pure

alongside some of our present-day officials.

His simple, honest faith in the righteousness of the law

would brook no disrespect for its mandates.

Bass is dead.

He was buried with high honors,

and his name will be recorded

in the archives of the court

as a faithful servant of the law and a brave officer.

It is fitting that, Black or White,

our people have the manhood to

recognize character and faithfulness to duty.

And it is lamentable that we

as White people must go to this poor,

simple old Negro to learn a lesson

in courage, honesty, and faithfulness to official duty.'

It was men like Bass and countless other Black lawmen,

lawmakers, tradesmen

and women who represented the promise of what America

could have been after the Civil War.

Successful former slaves

who had prospered during Reconstruction

and may have gone on to build wealth for generations

to come. Instead,

their promise and dreams would be crushed

under the oppression of Jim Crow

for another three generations.

The 1910s, 1920s rolls around

and outside of the Fort Smith/

Muskogee area

his name starts to slowly get forgotten.

There are stories in the '50s and '60s

when people start to finally come back to

learning more about Bass Reeves. Through these stories,

they start to find out like

'What do you mean there was a Black deputy?'.

This was a time when

every movie that had law enforcement in it,

Deputy U.S. Marshals

they were all White,

they all were White

law enforcement in a White community

and occasionally

you might have Black characters in the film

or in the TV show,

but they were not that position,

in that role. And so,

people were intrigued by the character of Bass Reeves.

His whole life was dedicated to

to law enforcement.

And from all reports,

a fair and just and

brave man

enforcing the law and doing the best that he could.

What more could you ask of a man?

In my estimation,

the greatest

frontier hero in United States history.

For him to arrest over 3,000 felons,

over a thirty-year career,

kill upwards of twenty people that he had to kill,

became quite proficient with gun and rifle,

probably the greatest gunfighter in the Wild West.

He was the real deal

and he lived it every day of his life.

Walked in the valley of death every day for thirty years

and came out. True American hero.

Bass escaped slavery,

spent decades enforcing the law,

and protecting lives and livelihoods in Indian Territory,

but was never able to shake the

racism that followed him

and witnessed only a short period of progress

before segregation took hold.

He was a lawman

right up until days before his death.

He never hung up his badge,

he never quit

to take pleasure in the ease of retirement

on that farm he spoke of so fondly. In truth,

one can't help but doubt that Bass would have ever

enjoyed a life of retirement

that did not involve bringing criminals to justice.

And although we do not know where Bass is buried,

we need not have a grave to remember his

significant contribution to bringing law,

order, and justice to the Old West.