Posted on 08/07/2013 4:31:52 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Bass Reeves's talent for rounding up outlaws in America's Old West made him the stuff of legend. But did this former slave-turned-lawman also inspire Johnny Depp's new film? Alex Hannaford goes on the trail of the real Lone Ranger.
Art Burton listened intently as the old man on the other end of the phone cleared his throat and began telling him a story. Burton had only been researching the life of Bass Reeves for a short while but that afternoon what Reverend Haskell James Shoeboot, the 98-year-old part-Cherokee Indian, was about to tell him would persuade Burton he’d stumbled upon one of the greatest stories never told.
Born in 1838, Bass Reeves was a former slave-turned-lawman who served with the US Marshals Service for 32 years at the turn of the 20th century in part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas known as Indian Territory. Though he was illiterate, Reeves became an expert tracker and detective – a man who, in Burton’s words, “walked in the valley of death every day for 35 years and brought in some of the worst outlaws from that period”.
That afternoon on the phone sometime in the late Eighties, Shoeboot recounted an event he’d witnessed with his own eyes in the early 1900s: Shoeboot had been chauffeur to Deputy US Marshal James Franklin “Bud” Ledbetter and early one morning a posse had gathered at Gibson Station, 12 miles north of the east Oklahoma town of Muskogee, to track and capture an outlaw. By the middle of the day they hadn’t made any progress and Ledbetter was irate. “That’s when somebody suggested heading back into town to get Bass Reeves,” Shoeboot told Burton.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
He looks like a major badass.
Slightly off-topic, but this movie BOMBED at the box office. Probably because Disney gave Depp the top billing and stuck an unknown into the lead.
Yes they were all Black. Daniel Boone, Wyatt Earp, Matt Dillon, The Rifleman, The Cartwrights, the list just goes on and on.
You can add Jesus and Santa Clause to that too...
It’s worth going to the article, this dude was far more hardcore than many better known western lawmen. If anything, saying he’s the inspiration for a fictional character is a demotion.
He’s more in the mold of D.A. “Jelly” Bryce, and Frank Hamer than dimestore sheriffs.
Good article, thanks for posting.
He doesn't look black to me. lol
Someone is going to say he is Chuck Norris’ great grandfather.
We, America, went through some difficult times societally that resulted in a growth in racism in the first half to the 20th century. We have come a long way since then. I think this story needs to be told and accepted.
Yeah and he rode a horse named Momeback
I always think of the exchange: "They've already proved that Jesus was an Ethiopian." "Wait a minute. You say he's an Ethiopian, a Presbyterian says he's a Presbyterian..."
And of course, there's always Kwanzaz-bot.
We all know Jim West was da pimp on WWW LOL!
They were also all muslim.
Wellll, redo the movie with Will Smith as the Ranger.
I know who he was. They actually have his gun in the Davis gun museum in Claremore Oklahoma. He was the real thing but so were hundreds of other lawmen of the day.
He is not to be spoken of in the same sentence as Frank Hamer who was the greatest lawman in history. No one else was even close. Maybe Jeff Davis Milton could be compared to Hamer but not many could.
I think Don Cheadle would be better. Or someone a little more mach than Smith.
Yo, yo, yo Silver.
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