Reeves, Bass (1838-1910), was a famous lawman of the American West. Reeves became the first Black deputy United States marshal in the West. He was known for his cunning and bravery in tracking down fugitives. Reeves claimed to have arrested more than 3,000 criminals in his 32-year career. He is said to have shot and killed 14 men in the line of duty.
Reeves was born into slavery in July 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas. He was held by the Arkansas state legislator William S. Reeves, who relocated to Texas around 1846. William Reeves’s son George served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865), taking Bass with him. Sometime during the war, Bass escaped and fled to Indian Territory. Indian Territory was a region west of the Mississippi River set aside for Indigenous (native) Americans by the United States government. There he lived as a fugitive from slavery, learning the languages, customs, and tracking skills of the Indigenous people who lived there, along with shooting, horsemanship, and other skills. In 1863, Reeves was freed along with other enslaved people held in Confederate states under the Emancipation Proclamation. He returned to Arkansas and took up farming.
In 1875, the federal judge Isaac C. Parker and the U.S. Marshal James Fagan hired 200 deputy marshals to round up fugitives in the largely lawless Indian Territory. Fagan recruited Reeves for his knowledge of the area and of Indigenous languages. Reeves served as a deputy marshal until 1907, when the region’s law enforcement was handed over to state officials. He then briefly served as a patrolman in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He died of illness on Jan. 12, 1910.
