LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Paramount is producing a new show based on the true story of a legendary Arkansas Wild West lawman who was one of the first Black U.S. Marshals and by some accounts an inspiration for the Lone Ranger.
Perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was because he was faster with a gun than the outlaws he hunted, but Bass Reeves, unlike so many of his fellow Marshals, survived the worst the lawless Indian territory threw at him.
The exceptional lawman overcame more than most in his time. Born into slavery in Arkansas, he eventually escaped and allegedly lived for years with Indian tribes in what is now Oklahoma.
In 1875, after he’d returned to Arkansas, Reeves was among 200 men recruited as Deputy U.S. Marshals at the direction of the famous Judge Isaac Parker, best known as the “Hanging Judge.” Reeves quickly demonstrated that he was among the most effective Deputy Marshals…and is said to have arrested as many as 3,000 during his career.
This is the only place where he would have been able to have that much success as a Black man in post-Civil War America,” said David Kennedy, curator at the U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith. “He was able to go into Indian territory and arrest Indians, Black, and white Americans…with no social repercussions. The Fort Smith community in many ways respected Bass Reeves, however, there was very definitely an undercurrent of people who felt that Bass and other Black men who were starting to see success in life—they did have issues.”
Reeves had more to worry about than public opinion, however.
Close encounters with death were a constant in his line of work. Differing historical claims estimate he killed anywhere from 11 to 14 outlaws in the line of duty.
“But at no point did anyone ever list out all the different people who were gunned down by Bass Reeves. So, one of the things that I’m trying to do in my research is, I’m trying to get together a full list of all those people and just yesterday I think I’ve found one of them that I don’t believe anyone else has been able to uncover yet,” Kennedy said. “So, as a historian, I’m pretty excited about that.”
His steely determination and success as a lawman earned Reeves a place in the pantheon of Wild West legends, but when the history books were written, he was largely left out of the picture.
The unfortunate thing is that, after 1910, after Bass passes away, and you start to see the rest of Western history start to get written,” Kennedy said. “Bass disappears for about half a century from American memory, outside of some small pockets of historians and small pockets of the Black community in Muskogee or within Fort Smith.”
Though much of Reeves’ life is shrouded in mystery and may be lost to time, Paramount’s new show—the most serious effort yet at featuring his story—will at least bring his legend to a wider audience.
“Lawmen: Bass Reeves” premiered Nov. 5 on Paramount+.
