So this year (2024), there's a TV show on CBS/Paramount about a black Wild West sheriff named Bass Reeves. He goes around doing the usual sheriff-y things you expect. The twist is the obvious--this is a BLACK sheriff. Of course, it turns out that Reeves was a real person, so I got curious if they were being accurate or not.
Honestly, they undersell the guy.
Reeves was born a slave in Arkansas in 1838. Reeves was the last name of the slave-holder, by the way. Reeves (the slaveholder) moved to Texas and took Bass with him (among others). When the Civil War broke out, Bass was taken into the army to serve his owner, but in 1862, he attacked his owner and escaped into the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) where he learned multiple Indian languages and customs as well as hunting and tracking skills, but when the war ended, he returned home and became a farmer in Arkansas.
In 1875, a federal judge was appointed to oversee the Indian Territory and he appointed Jim Fagan as head US marshal, authorizing him to hire up to 200 new deputies to police the territory. Interestingly, when Fagan was talking to people in the Territory, Reeves' name came up--someone respected by the Indians, someone remembered as tough, too. Fagan didn't ask about skin color and when told--didn't care. He just cared about results, so that at age 37, Reeves became the first black US deputy US marshal west of the Mississippi.
But was Reeves as good as TV says? Maybe better.
He made more than 2,000 arrests on felony charges and was forced to kill 14 outlaws in gunfights (in each case, the outlaw fired first, by the way...Reeves didn't start them, but he ended them...) Reeves even arrested his own son for murdering his wife--the son served 11 years in prison. Reeves' respect for the law above all else meant he was welcomed across the Indian Territory when working, especially because of his respect for Indian language and culture.
When Oklahoma became a state, Reeves was transferred and became a police officer instead with limited travel--which makes sense because he was nearly 70 at that point, having served 31 years as a deputy marshal.
And while looking up info on Reeves, I came across data I didn't know. I knew about the 'Buffalo soldiers'--but I never knew the number employed by the US Army. The US Army made six whole regiments of infantry and cavalry. There are 800-1,000 men in a regiment, so that's roughly 6,000 men. That doesn't sound like a lot, but the US Army circa 1870 had only 43,000 men total. Those black soldiers made up 1/7th of the US Army. Frankly, I never realized that.
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