Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. We have gotten a few requests from listeners to do a show on bass Reeves recently, but guess what, previous hosts have already got that subject covered, So we're gonna share our episode, which is by prior hosts Sarah and Deblina. Bass Reeves was a deputy U S Marshal in the nineteenth century, so of course this story has its fair share of violence and daring do And just a quick note that towards the end of the episode there is also a brief description of animal cruelty. So if that's not your thing, it's cool. It's Saturday. Do what you want and everybody else listen up. Woo. Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast Time to blin a checker boardy and I'm fair dowdy. And if you're a fan of the Wild West, or maybe if you've just watched a lot of TV as a kid, you're probably at least sort of familiar with the character of the Lone Ranger, a fictional renegade lawman who roamed the American West trying to help people fight bad guys. And enact justice, and the same character has been featured in a number of ways on the radio, on TV shows, and in movies, and in all of those cases, his overall story has been pretty similar. He's a guy named John Reid who's part of a group of six Texas Rangers. One day, five of his group are killed by outlaws, and Read survives and is rescued by a Native American named Tonto. After Tonto nurses him back to health, Read makes himself a black mask and becomes the Lone Ranger. Most representations of the Lone Ranger also feature that unmistakable theme song of the William tell overture. Let's take a listen to that song. So hopefully that got you guys in the mood for this podcast. And another common point that you'll see in most representations of the Lone Ranger is that it's usually played by a white actor, but there are many who believe their inspiration for the Lone Ranger character was actually a man named Bass Reeves who was not only black, he was a former slave. So Reeves, who became a US Deputy Marshal, is known as one of the first black lawmen west of the Mississippi River and also one of the bravest and best lawmen as well. In fact, he's been called one of the bravest men this country has ever known, So in that sense, it's not too hard to see how he would have inspired the Lone Ranger character. However, Reeve's life wasn't entirely without controversy. He had more than one incident that almost compromised his reputation and his position as an upholder of the law. But it's those sort of gray areas that some might say make him all the more interesting. So we're going to take a look at reeves story and some of his most famous adventures. But first we're gonna look at how, as a black man in the eighteen hundreds he became a deputy marshal in the first place, So Bass Reeves was born into slavery in around July eight thirty eight in either Texas or Arkansas. And we should say here that a lot of the deep these details about his life, especially about reeves early life, are kind of sketchy. A lot of them derived from oral history that's been passed along throughout the year. So perhaps it's only fitting that we start out with one of these more debatable facts. Some historians believe he was born near Van Buren, Arkansas, while others think it's more likely he was born in Paris, Texas. One thing we do know, though, was that Reeves and his parents were owned by a man named will Lilliam S. Reeves, who was a farmer and a politician. That's where he got his last name from, of course, And according to the Oxford African American Study Center, Reeves worked in the cotton fields as a water boy when he was young, and that's where he started hearing adventurous stories and these songs about black outlaws. And not too much is known about rubs parents, but apparently it really worried his mother that her young son was so enthralled with violence and guns and these less than upstanding men. Maybe a little afraid her boy would become an outlaw himself. By the time the Civil War broke out, though, in eighteen sixty one, Reeves was working as the personal servant of William Reeves's son, George Reeves, who was a colonel in the Confederate Army and organized the eleventh Cavalry Regiment for Grayson County, Texas. What exactly happened to Bass Reads during the war is a little bit sketchy, though according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Reeves claimed to have served in the battles of p Ridge, Chickamaugua, and Missionary Ridge under Colonel George Reeves, but the Reeves family the slave owner Reeves that is claimed, and many historians believe that Bass Reeves actually ran away fairly early on in the war. Supposedly, Bass and George got into an argument while they were playing cards, and Bass attacked George, knocking him unconscious. But by Texas law at that time, Bass Reeves could have been killed for attacking his master like that, so he took off for Indian Territory. And we talked a little bit about Indian Territory in a podcast we did last February called Who Was America's First Black Millionaires, which was about a woman named Sarah Rector. In that episode, we learned that Indian Territory in the eighteen hundreds was basically in the area that would later become the state of Oklahoma. In the early nineteen hundreds, black people who lived there were in kind of an interesting position. Initially, Indian tribes kept them as slaves just as white people did elsewhere in North America. But after something called the Treaty of eighteen sixty six between the US government and the five civil i tribes, which included the Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Seminole, these tribes had to abolish slavery and make the former slaves thereafter known as freedman full members of their tribes that had quote equal interest in the soil. So basically former slaves could own land, and some even served as Indian policemen. So Indian Territory was a great place for Reeves to escape to after supposedly attacking his master, probably for a lot of the same reasons. It was a popular place for outlaws to go and hide out in even after the war. There just weren't a lot of towns and villages, and the Indians there had jurisdiction over themselves. They weren't really subject to US laws. They're so good place to go. So Reeves went to Indian Territory, found refuge with the Creek and Seminole Indians, and while he lived among them, he really picked up their customs, became fluent in the languages that's been a theme of our recent podcast today. And besides that, though, besides going in and living with Indians in Indian Territory, it's sort of unclear what exactly Reeves did during the war. According to an article by Art T. Burton in Wild West, Reeves could have been part of the Union's first Indian Home Guard Regiment under an Indian name, or he might have even served with one of the guerrilla Union Indian vans sometimes. Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Reeves left Indian Territory and settled in Van Buren, Arkansas. By this time he had married a woman named Nellie Jenny, who he ended up having ten kids, with five girls and five boys. By the eighteen seventies, he was earning a living as a farmer and a rancher, and also occasionally served as a guide for a deputy U S Marshals who were going into Indian Territory to hunt for outlaws, so his knowledge really came in handy there. Then, in eighteen seventy five, Judge Isaac C. Parker took a for the Fort Smith Federal Court in Arkansas, and Parker became known as the Hanging judge for all the death sentences that he handed down in his court. When he took over, his court had jurisdiction over all of western Arkansas and Indian Territory, which was an area of about seventy five thousand square miles in size, and it was the largest federal court in U. S history just in terms of its size. So, as we mentioned, Indian Territory was a popular place for outlaws to hide out, and it was considered the most dangerous area in the country. So it's gonna be tough going for Judge Parker. So when he came on board, he decided pretty much right away that he wanted to crack down on criminals in that area in particular. So one of the first things he did was ordered that two hundred new US Deputy Marshals be hired. So these marshals could arrest blacks and whites who weren't members of the tribes in Indian Territory. That's what they had power to do. The Indians, of course, had their own law enforcement and courts for their people, so they were outside of Parker's jurisdiction. Parker also decided that black men would be perfect for these new deputy marshal positions because a lot of Indians didn't trust white deputies. Some white deputies hadn't always treated them so well. No surprised there, but there were. There was this precedent of black freedmen who were kind of part of the tribes, part of the community, so Indians tended to trust black people a little more. Therefore they'd make good potential marshals. Reeves in particular was just perfect for one of these positions. After all, as we mentioned, he knew Indian territory well. He once said that he knows the area like quote a cook knows her kitchen. His knowledge of Indian languages and customs was a huge plus two, because Parker really wanted to keep good relations with the tribes. That close relationship with the Indians actually might have influenced the Lone Ranger story to some extent through the character of Tonto. So Reeves was commissioned a Deputy U s Marshal in eighteen seven five went to work. Incidentally, you just mentioned his his close relationship with Indians that came in part because of his mastery of their some of their languages. That mastery of languages is even more impressive when you consider that Reeves was illiterate. So um, I mean that sounds difficult enough to have several languages in your head and not know how to read or write them, but in your own language and your own language. But for his martial work, he'd have to get somebody to read arrest warrants and subpoenas, and then he'd memorized the names of the outlaws any other details and head out from there. So now we're getting a little bit into his work, which is really interesting. I mean a lot of details about his work as a martial kind of border on legend, which is why his adventures make for such good stories, I think. But what we know for sure is that he was a natural at what he did, or he seemed to be. He was physically well suited for for one thing, he was about six ft two and anywhere from one hundred eighty two hundred pounds. According to another article of Burton's in New Crisis, Reeves personally like to dress that intimidating frame of his and snazzy clothes. He always had his boots polished, for example, and he liked to wear a big black hat that was slightly upturned in the front more often than not, though, especially when he was after an outlaw, Reeves would wear disguises, and that was kind of his trademark. He disguised himself as a cowboy or a preacher, or a farmer, or even an outlaw. So this is also kind of a lone ranger ish element to his mask, except maybe even a little more interesting. Yeah, I think so, because he went to some serious trouble in these disguises, I think, and one really authentic because in one really well known mission, Reeves was pursuing two outlaws in the Red River Valley of the Chickasaw Nation and he heard that they were hiding out somewhere near the Texas border. So he wrote out that way with his posse. By the way, at this time, Deputy Marshalls would travel around Indian Territory with a few possemen a in a wagon just because the area they were patrolling and hunting for outlaws and was so vast, I mean, a typical loop was around A typical loop that they would travel was around eight hundred miles. Trip would be eight hundred miles, right, So they'd be out there for a while. So the posse set up camp about twenty eight miles from where these two outlaws they were pursuing were supposed to be hiding out at their mother's house. So then Reeves disguised himself as a tramp. He really paid attention to every detail too. He removed the heels from an old pair of shoes, He carried a cane with him, and then he put on a floppy hat that he had shot with a few bullet holes to look all roughed up. He also, of course concealed the handcuffs and the pistol and the badge that he was carrying underneath his clothes. Then he started walking twenty eight miles traveling on foot to the mother's house. When he got there, he asked her for some food, you know, complaining that his feet really hurt because he'd been walking and trying to escape from this posse that was pursuing him. The mother really sympathized with him. She let him in, she fed him. She told him that her sons were running away from the law to She even suggested that maybe he should hang out with her and team up with her own son so they could protect each other. When the sons came home, they agreed to this plan, this deal that mom has set up for them, and then that night they set up a separate room for Reeves to sleep in. He insisted that no, we should all sleep in the same room in case something happens. That way we can protect each other. When the outlaws were asleep, though, he handcuffed them without them waking up. And when morning came, they realized what had happened, and Reeves had a march right on back to his camp, all twenty eight miles, and apparently the mom followed them for at least three of those miles, cursing Reeves the entire way. I have to imagine she would be pretty upset about the whole thing. He was pretty happy about it. There The reward of returning those guys in was five thousand dollars. Typically these marshals got paid when they brought the outlaws back to court to be tried. So that story is pretty amusing, but it doesn't totally illustrate how dangerous this job really was cuffing outlaws in their sleep. Reeves was shot at several times during his career as a marshal. His belt was shot into two onnths. Another time, his hat brim was shot off, and still another time his bridal rein was cut by a bullet, but it said that he himself was never actually wounded, which I think is just fascinating. Well, he was a real gun expert to His weapon of choice was a Winchester rifle, but he was also known to carry around two cult revolvers that were positioned but forward on his belt for easy access and conveniently for a ranger a lawman. He was ambidextrous, so pretty much equally good no matter which hand he was shooting with, probably especially handy when you're shooting on horseback. Reeves was still really careful even though he was heavily armed. Though It said that he rode a big red stallion with a white blaze on its face, so just like the lone ranger. He has his signature horse, Trusty Steed. Yep, he's a flyery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust party Ohio silver. But he also kept some other horses around for his undercover work. Apparently, if you rode a horse that was too fancy, that would tip off the outlaws that you were marshal, no matter what kind of disguise or outfit you were wearing, so he couldn't just ride his red horse around. Well, I have to imagine too, if you had such a distinctive horse to a red stallion with a white blaze, people would begin to recognize that pretty easily. Very true. Most of all, though, Reeves was just unbelievably brave. He really didn't seem to be afraid of anything. For one example, there was a place eighty miles west of Fort Smith that was known as the deadline, sort of the end of civilization, and when deputy marshals crossed that line, they were thought to be as good as dead. You know, you're taking your life into your own hands by crossing the deadline. But Reeves really just thought as a challenge. He would go riding across the deadline several times just to just to do it. But his bravery is maybe most evident in the encounter where he comes as close as he ever did to losing his life, and that happened in four when he got ambushed by three outlaws, the Brunch Brothers, and they were wanted for horse stealing, robbery, and murder. When they ambushed him, they told him to get off his horse and to keep his hands away from his gun. But Reeves did not follow their instructions at all. He stayed really calm and showed them warrants he had for their arrest, and he just asked them, you know what day is it, so I can make a note of this for the government. I want to make sure my paperwork is good. At that point, the outlaws just thought he was crazy and started laughing at him. And while they were distracted, while they were so amused, Reeves shot two of them dead, diverted the gun barrel of the third, and then killed him. And Reeves actually killed quite a few outlaws during his career, even white ones, which might have gotten him lynched in other areas of the country. And I'm not sure on this point if he actually got paid for the ones that he killed. I've seen sort of differing opinions and various sources out there. So if anyone out there knows if you get paid for the ones that you killed to please let us know. We're not sure how this whole deputy marshal thing worked in that respect. But of course, as we hinted at earlier, there's more to the story than just Reeves Winds. As you might imagine, with the line of work he was in. His life was tainted a little bit with scandal too. The biggest one had to do with the death in four of his black cook, William Leach. So early that April, when Reeves Posse was camping out near the Canadian River, Leech and Reeves got into an argument that supposedly started when Reeves was dissing Leeches cooking not a bad or not a good idea. Rather, things escalated though, and according to some accounts, Leech poured some hot grease down the throat of this puppy that Reeves had their in camp with them. After that, Reeves furious shot Leech. So nothing came of this incident for a while, But then in January eighty six, Reeves was indicted for first degree murder, arrested, and held in jail for six months until he could make bond. Kind of shocking that this famous lawman couldn't make bond for six months, but apparently he made it quite a bit of cash to in criminals. So his trial, though, started October seven, and Reeves hired really great attorneys who brought in ten witnesses for his defense. He testified that he had argued with Leech, but it wasn't really that big of a deal. And then later, while trying to dislodge a bullet from his Winchester rifle, the gun had accidentally mispired and happened to hit and kill Leach. Reeves was acquitted, but the trial depleted his savings and he had to move his family to a different home outside of Van Buren. And after that, Reeves went back to catching outlaws, but he was eventually stationed in different areas. In eighteen eighty three, he'd already transferred from Fort Smith to the Federal Court at Paris, Texas, and then in he transferred again to Muskogee, which was where he was until Oklahoma became a state in nineteen o seven. But Reeves had one more brush with scandal later in his career. After returning from one of his trips to deliver prisoners to federal jail in Muskogee, he learned that his own son had been charged with murdering his wife and was somewhere hiding out in Indian Territory. So, of course, knowing whose son this is, none of the other deputies wanted the job of bringing the kid in. Reeves, of course, was adamant about doing it himself. I mean, I have to imagine partly just because he didn't want something to happen to his son. Um. It took him two weeks to get him, but Reeves returned with his son, whom he later turned over to the court. His son ended up in Leavenworth Prison, another place where our podcast subjects seemed to be going lately, um, but was eventually pardoned and apparently never got into any more trouble. Reeves served as a Deputy U. S Marshal in Indian Territory for a total of thirty two years, and was the only one who did so from Judge Parker's appointment until Oklahoma statehood. All told, he said to have arrested more than three thousand outlaws and killed about fourteen, though it's very likely there may have been more than fourteen killed. His work ended after Oklahoma became a state, and after that he walked a downtown beat for the Muskogee Police Department for two years, and there was apparently never a crime on his beat, So this was kind of a relaxing retirement job almost for him. Commit your crimes on on Reeves this day off maybe right, but it didn't last too long. Reeves died at home January twelfth, nineteen ten, after being diagnosed with Bright's disease. So was he the real Lone Ranger? We have to go back to that question we posed in the title of this podcast. Well, as we mentioned, he said to have influenced or inspired the character. Obviously, some details of his life are quite different from the Lone Rangers, but it's easy to see how his brave personality and his wild adventures would have influenced a tail about a hero of the Wild West. Yeah. I mean, after all, he's been called quote one of the most successful lawman in American history. That sounds like somebody worth making a TV show on. He was also the first African American inducted into the Great Westerners Hall of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in nineteen ninety two, and then on December five, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Hall of Fame, and in November, these awards has kept on being heaped on him. Oklahoma State Legislature passed an act officially declaring the bridge that passes over the Arkansas River between Muscogee and Fort Gibson Oklahoma as bath reads Memorial Bridge. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now, so here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History. All over social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands of other topics, stuff works dot com

Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. We have gotten a few requests from listeners to do a show on bass Reeves recently, but guess what, previous hosts have already got that subject covered, So we're gonna share our episode, which is by prior hosts Sarah and Deblina. Bass Reeves was a deputy U S Marshal in the nineteenth century, so of course this story has its fair share of violence and daring do And just a quick note that towards the end of the episode there is also a brief description of animal cruelty. So if that's not your thing, it's cool. It's Saturday. Do what you want and everybody else listen up. Woo. Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast Time to blin a checker boardy and I'm fair dowdy. And if you're a fan of the Wild West, or maybe if you've just watched a lot of TV as a kid, you're probably at least sort of familiar with the character of the Lone Ranger, a fictional renegade lawman who roamed the American West trying to help people fight bad guys. And enact justice, and the same character has been featured in a number of ways on the radio, on TV shows, and in movies, and in all of those cases, his overall story has been pretty similar. He's a guy named John Reid who's part of a group of six Texas Rangers. One day, five of his group are killed by outlaws, and Read survives and is rescued by a Native American named Tonto. After Tonto nurses him back to health, Read makes himself a black mask and becomes the Lone Ranger. Most representations of the Lone Ranger also feature that unmistakable theme song of the William tell overture. Let's take a listen to that song. So hopefully that got you guys in the mood for this podcast. And another common point that you'll see in most representations of the Lone Ranger is that it's usually played by a white actor, but there are many who believe their inspiration for the Lone Ranger character was actually a man named Bass Reeves who was not only black, he was a former slave. So Reeves, who became a US Deputy Marshal, is known as one of the first black lawmen west of the Mississippi River and also one of the bravest and best lawmen as well. In fact, he's been called one of the bravest men this country has ever known, So in that sense, it's not too hard to see how he would have inspired the Lone Ranger character. However, Reeve's life wasn't entirely without controversy. He had more than one incident that almost compromised his reputation and his position as an upholder of the law. But it's those sort of gray areas that some might say make him all the more interesting. So we're going to take a look at reeves story and some of his most famous adventures. But first we're gonna look at how, as a black man in the eighteen hundreds he became a deputy marshal in the first place, So Bass Reeves was born into slavery in around July eight thirty eight in either Texas or Arkansas. And we should say here that a lot of the deep these details about his life, especially about reeves early life, are kind of sketchy. A lot of them derived from oral history that's been passed along throughout the year. So perhaps it's only fitting that we start out with one of these more debatable facts. Some historians believe he was born near Van Buren, Arkansas, while others think it's more likely he was born in Paris, Texas. One thing we do know, though, was that Reeves and his parents were owned by a man named will Lilliam S. Reeves, who was a farmer and a politician. That's where he got his last name from, of course, And according to the Oxford African American Study Center, Reeves worked in the cotton fields as a water boy when he was young, and that's where he started hearing adventurous stories and these songs about black outlaws. And not too much is known about rubs parents, but apparently it really worried his mother that her young son was so enthralled with violence and guns and these less than upstanding men. Maybe a little afraid her boy would become an outlaw himself. By the time the Civil War broke out, though, in eighteen sixty one, Reeves was working as the personal servant of William Reeves's son, George Reeves, who was a colonel in the Confederate Army and organized the eleventh Cavalry Regiment for Grayson County, Texas. What exactly happened to Bass Reads during the war is a little bit sketchy, though according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Reeves claimed to have served in the battles of p Ridge, Chickamaugua, and Missionary Ridge under Colonel George Reeves, but the Reeves family the slave owner Reeves that is claimed, and many historians believe that Bass Reeves actually ran away fairly early on in the war. Supposedly, Bass and George got into an argument while they were playing cards, and Bass attacked George, knocking him unconscious. But by Texas law at that time, Bass Reeves could have been killed for attacking his master like that, so he took off for Indian Territory. And we talked a little bit about Indian Territory in a podcast we did last February called Who Was America's First Black Millionaires, which was about a woman named Sarah Rector. In that episode, we learned that Indian Territory in the eighteen hundreds was basically in the area that would later become the state of Oklahoma. In the early nineteen hundreds, black people who lived there were in kind of an interesting position. Initially, Indian tribes kept them as slaves just as white people did elsewhere in North America. But after something called the Treaty of eighteen sixty six between the US government and the five civil i tribes, which included the Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Seminole, these tribes had to abolish slavery and make the former slaves thereafter known as freedman full members of their tribes that had quote equal interest in the soil. So basically former slaves could own land, and some even served as Indian policemen. So Indian Territory was a great place for Reeves to escape to after supposedly attacking his master, probably for a lot of the same reasons. It was a popular place for outlaws to go and hide out in even after the war. There just weren't a lot of towns and villages, and the Indians there had jurisdiction over themselves. They weren't really subject to US laws. They're so good place to go. So Reeves went to Indian Territory, found refuge with the Creek and Seminole Indians, and while he lived among them, he really picked up their customs, became fluent in the languages that's been a theme of our recent podcast today. And besides that, though, besides going in and living with Indians in Indian Territory, it's sort of unclear what exactly Reeves did during the war. According to an article by Art T. Burton in Wild West, Reeves could have been part of the Union's first Indian Home Guard Regiment under an Indian name, or he might have even served with one of the guerrilla Union Indian vans sometimes. Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Reeves left Indian Territory and settled in Van Buren, Arkansas. By this time he had married a woman named Nellie Jenny, who he ended up having ten kids, with five girls and five boys. By the eighteen seventies, he was earning a living as a farmer and a rancher, and also occasionally served as a guide for a deputy U S Marshals who were going into Indian Territory to hunt for outlaws, so his knowledge really came in handy there. Then, in eighteen seventy five, Judge Isaac C. Parker took a for the Fort Smith Federal Court in Arkansas, and Parker became known as the Hanging judge for all the death sentences that he handed down in his court. When he took over, his court had jurisdiction over all of western Arkansas and Indian Territory, which was an area of about seventy five thousand square miles in size, and it was the largest federal court in U. S history just in terms of its size. So, as we mentioned, Indian Territory was a popular place for outlaws to hide out, and it was considered the most dangerous area in the country. So it's gonna be tough going for Judge Parker. So when he came on board, he decided pretty much right away that he wanted to crack down on criminals in that area in particular. So one of the first things he did was ordered that two hundred new US Deputy Marshals be hired. So these marshals could arrest blacks and whites who weren't members of the tribes in Indian Territory. That's what they had power to do. The Indians, of course, had their own law enforcement and courts for their people, so they were outside of Parker's jurisdiction. Parker also decided that black men would be perfect for these new deputy marshal positions because a lot of Indians didn't trust white deputies. Some white deputies hadn't always treated them so well. No surprised there, but there were. There was this precedent of black freedmen who were kind of part of the tribes, part of the community, so Indians tended to trust black people a little more. Therefore they'd make good potential marshals. Reeves in particular was just perfect for one of these positions. After all, as we mentioned, he knew Indian territory well. He once said that he knows the area like quote a cook knows her kitchen. His knowledge of Indian languages and customs was a huge plus two, because Parker really wanted to keep good relations with the tribes. That close relationship with the Indians actually might have influenced the Lone Ranger story to some extent through the character of Tonto. So Reeves was commissioned a Deputy U s Marshal in eighteen seven five went to work. Incidentally, you just mentioned his his close relationship with Indians that came in part because of his mastery of their some of their languages. That mastery of languages is even more impressive when you consider that Reeves was illiterate. So um, I mean that sounds difficult enough to have several languages in your head and not know how to read or write them, but in your own language and your own language. But for his martial work, he'd have to get somebody to read arrest warrants and subpoenas, and then he'd memorized the names of the outlaws any other details and head out from there. So now we're getting a little bit into his work, which is really interesting. I mean a lot of details about his work as a martial kind of border on legend, which is why his adventures make for such good stories, I think. But what we know for sure is that he was a natural at what he did, or he seemed to be. He was physically well suited for for one thing, he was about six ft two and anywhere from one hundred eighty two hundred pounds. According to another article of Burton's in New Crisis, Reeves personally like to dress that intimidating frame of his and snazzy clothes. He always had his boots polished, for example, and he liked to wear a big black hat that was slightly upturned in the front more often than not, though, especially when he was after an outlaw, Reeves would wear disguises, and that was kind of his trademark. He disguised himself as a cowboy or a preacher, or a farmer, or even an outlaw. So this is also kind of a lone ranger ish element to his mask, except maybe even a little more interesting. Yeah, I think so, because he went to some serious trouble in these disguises, I think, and one really authentic because in one really well known mission, Reeves was pursuing two outlaws in the Red River Valley of the Chickasaw Nation and he heard that they were hiding out somewhere near the Texas border. So he wrote out that way with his posse. By the way, at this time, Deputy Marshalls would travel around Indian Territory with a few possemen a in a wagon just because the area they were patrolling and hunting for outlaws and was so vast, I mean, a typical loop was around A typical loop that they would travel was around eight hundred miles. Trip would be eight hundred miles, right, So they'd be out there for a while. So the posse set up camp about twenty eight miles from where these two outlaws they were pursuing were supposed to be hiding out at their mother's house. So then Reeves disguised himself as a tramp. He really paid attention to every detail too. He removed the heels from an old pair of shoes, He carried a cane with him, and then he put on a floppy hat that he had shot with a few bullet holes to look all roughed up. He also, of course concealed the handcuffs and the pistol and the badge that he was carrying underneath his clothes. Then he started walking twenty eight miles traveling on foot to the mother's house. When he got there, he asked her for some food, you know, complaining that his feet really hurt because he'd been walking and trying to escape from this posse that was pursuing him. The mother really sympathized with him. She let him in, she fed him. She told him that her sons were running away from the law to She even suggested that maybe he should hang out with her and team up with her own son so they could protect each other. When the sons came home, they agreed to this plan, this deal that mom has set up for them, and then that night they set up a separate room for Reeves to sleep in. He insisted that no, we should all sleep in the same room in case something happens. That way we can protect each other. When the outlaws were asleep, though, he handcuffed them without them waking up. And when morning came, they realized what had happened, and Reeves had a march right on back to his camp, all twenty eight miles, and apparently the mom followed them for at least three of those miles, cursing Reeves the entire way. I have to imagine she would be pretty upset about the whole thing. He was pretty happy about it. There The reward of returning those guys in was five thousand dollars. Typically these marshals got paid when they brought the outlaws back to court to be tried. So that story is pretty amusing, but it doesn't totally illustrate how dangerous this job really was cuffing outlaws in their sleep. Reeves was shot at several times during his career as a marshal. His belt was shot into two onnths. Another time, his hat brim was shot off, and still another time his bridal rein was cut by a bullet, but it said that he himself was never actually wounded, which I think is just fascinating. Well, he was a real gun expert to His weapon of choice was a Winchester rifle, but he was also known to carry around two cult revolvers that were positioned but forward on his belt for easy access and conveniently for a ranger a lawman. He was ambidextrous, so pretty much equally good no matter which hand he was shooting with, probably especially handy when you're shooting on horseback. Reeves was still really careful even though he was heavily armed. Though It said that he rode a big red stallion with a white blaze on its face, so just like the lone ranger. He has his signature horse, Trusty Steed. Yep, he's a flyery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust party Ohio silver. But he also kept some other horses around for his undercover work. Apparently, if you rode a horse that was too fancy, that would tip off the outlaws that you were marshal, no matter what kind of disguise or outfit you were wearing, so he couldn't just ride his red horse around. Well, I have to imagine too, if you had such a distinctive horse to a red stallion with a white blaze, people would begin to recognize that pretty easily. Very true. Most of all, though, Reeves was just unbelievably brave. He really didn't seem to be afraid of anything. For one example, there was a place eighty miles west of Fort Smith that was known as the deadline, sort of the end of civilization, and when deputy marshals crossed that line, they were thought to be as good as dead. You know, you're taking your life into your own hands by crossing the deadline. But Reeves really just thought as a challenge. He would go riding across the deadline several times just to just to do it. But his bravery is maybe most evident in the encounter where he comes as close as he ever did to losing his life, and that happened in four when he got ambushed by three outlaws, the Brunch Brothers, and they were wanted for horse stealing, robbery, and murder. When they ambushed him, they told him to get off his horse and to keep his hands away from his gun. But Reeves did not follow their instructions at all. He stayed really calm and showed them warrants he had for their arrest, and he just asked them, you know what day is it, so I can make a note of this for the government. I want to make sure my paperwork is good. At that point, the outlaws just thought he was crazy and started laughing at him. And while they were distracted, while they were so amused, Reeves shot two of them dead, diverted the gun barrel of the third, and then killed him. And Reeves actually killed quite a few outlaws during his career, even white ones, which might have gotten him lynched in other areas of the country. And I'm not sure on this point if he actually got paid for the ones that he killed. I've seen sort of differing opinions and various sources out there. So if anyone out there knows if you get paid for the ones that you killed to please let us know. We're not sure how this whole deputy marshal thing worked in that respect. But of course, as we hinted at earlier, there's more to the story than just Reeves Winds. As you might imagine, with the line of work he was in. His life was tainted a little bit with scandal too. The biggest one had to do with the death in four of his black cook, William Leach. So early that April, when Reeves Posse was camping out near the Canadian River, Leech and Reeves got into an argument that supposedly started when Reeves was dissing Leeches cooking not a bad or not a good idea. Rather, things escalated though, and according to some accounts, Leech poured some hot grease down the throat of this puppy that Reeves had their in camp with them. After that, Reeves furious shot Leech. So nothing came of this incident for a while, But then in January eighty six, Reeves was indicted for first degree murder, arrested, and held in jail for six months until he could make bond. Kind of shocking that this famous lawman couldn't make bond for six months, but apparently he made it quite a bit of cash to in criminals. So his trial, though, started October seven, and Reeves hired really great attorneys who brought in ten witnesses for his defense. He testified that he had argued with Leech, but it wasn't really that big of a deal. And then later, while trying to dislodge a bullet from his Winchester rifle, the gun had accidentally mispired and happened to hit and kill Leach. Reeves was acquitted, but the trial depleted his savings and he had to move his family to a different home outside of Van Buren. And after that, Reeves went back to catching outlaws, but he was eventually stationed in different areas. In eighteen eighty three, he'd already transferred from Fort Smith to the Federal Court at Paris, Texas, and then in he transferred again to Muskogee, which was where he was until Oklahoma became a state in nineteen o seven. But Reeves had one more brush with scandal later in his career. After returning from one of his trips to deliver prisoners to federal jail in Muskogee, he learned that his own son had been charged with murdering his wife and was somewhere hiding out in Indian Territory. So, of course, knowing whose son this is, none of the other deputies wanted the job of bringing the kid in. Reeves, of course, was adamant about doing it himself. I mean, I have to imagine partly just because he didn't want something to happen to his son. Um. It took him two weeks to get him, but Reeves returned with his son, whom he later turned over to the court. His son ended up in Leavenworth Prison, another place where our podcast subjects seemed to be going lately, um, but was eventually pardoned and apparently never got into any more trouble. Reeves served as a Deputy U. S Marshal in Indian Territory for a total of thirty two years, and was the only one who did so from Judge Parker's appointment until Oklahoma statehood. All told, he said to have arrested more than three thousand outlaws and killed about fourteen, though it's very likely there may have been more than fourteen killed. His work ended after Oklahoma became a state, and after that he walked a downtown beat for the Muskogee Police Department for two years, and there was apparently never a crime on his beat, So this was kind of a relaxing retirement job almost for him. Commit your crimes on on Reeves this day off maybe right, but it didn't last too long. Reeves died at home January twelfth, nineteen ten, after being diagnosed with Bright's disease. So was he the real Lone Ranger? We have to go back to that question we posed in the title of this podcast. Well, as we mentioned, he said to have influenced or inspired the character. Obviously, some details of his life are quite different from the Lone Rangers, but it's easy to see how his brave personality and his wild adventures would have influenced a tail about a hero of the Wild West. Yeah. I mean, after all, he's been called quote one of the most successful lawman in American history. That sounds like somebody worth making a TV show on. He was also the first African American inducted into the Great Westerners Hall of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in nineteen ninety two, and then on December five, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Hall of Fame, and in November, these awards has kept on being heaped on him. Oklahoma State Legislature passed an act officially declaring the bridge that passes over the Arkansas River between Muscogee and Fort Gibson Oklahoma as bath reads Memorial Bridge. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now, so here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History. All over social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands of other topics, stuff works dot com