This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Black and Indian gunfighters in the Indian Territory

In The Story of Oklahoma, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as the "most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country." That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life enslaved in Arkansas and Texas made his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Black Gun, Silver Star sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late nineteenth-century America--and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Bucking the odds ("I'm sorry, we didn't keep Black people's history," a clerk at one of Oklahoma's local historical societies answered one query), Art T. Burton traces Reeves from his days of slavery to his Civil War soldiering to his career as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, when he worked under "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker. Fluent in Creek and other regional Native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas. In this new edition Burton traces Reeves's presence in the national media of his day as well as his growing modern presence in popular media such as television, movies, comics, and video games.

Sitting tall in the saddle, with a wide-brimmed black hat and twin Colt pistols on his belt, Bass Reeves seemed bigger than life. Outlaws feared him. Law-abiding citizens respected him. As a peace officer, he was cunning and fearless. When a lawbreaker he

Who was Belle Starr? What was she that so many myths surround her? Born in Carthage, Missouri, in 1848, the daughter of a well-to-do hotel owner, she died forty-one years later, gunned down near her cabin in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. After her death she was called “a bandit queen,” “a female Jesse James,” “the Petticoat Terror of the Plains.” Fantastic legends proliferated about her. In this book Glenn Shirley sifts through those myths and unearths the facts. In a highly readable and informative style Shirley presents a complex and intriguing portrait. Belle Starr loved horses, music, the outdoors-and outlaws. Familiar with some of the worst bad men of her day, she was, however, convicted of no crime worse than horse thievery. Shirley also describes the historical context in which Belles Starr lived. After knowing the violence of the Civil War as a child in the Ozarks, She moves to Dallas in the 1860s and married a former Confederate guerilla who specialized in armed robbery. After he was killed, she found a home among renegade Cherokees in the Indian Territory, on her second husband’s allotment. She traveled as far west as Los Angeles to escape the law and as far north as Detroit to go to jail. She married three times and had two children, whom she idolized and tormented. Ironically she was shot when she had decided to go straight, probably murdered by a neighbor who feared that she would turn him in to the police. This book will find a wide readership among western-history and outlaw buffs, folklorists, sociologists, and regional historians. Shirley’s summary of the literature about Belle Starr is as interesting as the true story of Belle herself, who has become the West’s best-known woman outlaw.

The people who pushed west were mostly ordinary folks, the guts of the young United States, tough, ambitious, hardworking, and anxious to leave the world better for their kids than it had been for them. Those who did not come of that hardy stock did not last. With them came the trouble-makers, to everybody’s sorrow. Some of them were already running from the law someplace else. Others were simply dishonest, looking for a time and place to blossom into full-blown hoodlums. Some of the young people emulated them: there was some illusory swagger in being a hoodlum, witness the nicknames they carried around . . . many of which they had invented themselves, a sort of phony glory. This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously bad bad guys caught in the act of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, includes famous names like the Dalton gang, lesser known bandits like Kaiser Bill Goodman, and many more. The book will include archival illustrations and photographs of the shady characters and the scenes of their crimes.

The people who pushed west were mostly ordinary folks, the guts of the young United States, tough, ambitious, hardworking, and anxious to leave the world better for their kids than it had been for them. Those who did not come of that hardy stock did not last. With them came the trouble-makers, to everybody’s sorrow. Some of them were already running from the law someplace else. Others were simply dishonest, looking for a time and place to blossom into full-blown hoodlums. Some of the young people emulated them: there was some illusory swagger in being a hoodlum, witness the nicknames they carried around . . . many of which they had invented themselves, a sort of phony glory. This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously bad bad guys caught in the act of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, includes famous names like the Dalton gang, lesser known bandits like Kaiser Bill Goodman, and many more. The book will include archival illustrations and photographs of the shady characters and the scenes of their crimes.