Chapter 2: The Outlaw Cherokee Bill

The most famous Black outlaw from the wild west era was a Cherokee Freedmen, the mixed son of a Buffalo soldier and Cherokee mother. His name was Crawford Goldsby. But both the New York Times and his own mother called him: Cherokee Bill. This episode explores the ideas of law, order and justice at a time when there was little of any of those for Black Americans.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Come all you jolly how we men and outlaws of
the land who sworn to live as slavery for you
were complex brand attention. Pay to what I say value
with if you will will, I'll relate the natural fate
of desperate Cherokee Bill depot to prave how way men,
as you all may understand, was vanished by the natural
law from the Indian's happy band from nowhere to town.
While i've right now to the very first MANI children's

(00:34):
there indeed and title to desperate Cherokee Bill, Desperate Cherokee
Cherokee Bill, desperate desperate Cherokee Bill, veterans of the planes
warrened and newcomers who just arrived at the edge of America.

(00:55):
There's no Sunday Western St. Louis and no God wester
Fort Smith. That was the polite way of saying. The
frontier was the province of Indians and outlaws. Some men
were both. The most famous black outlaw from the Wild
West era was a Cherokee Friedman, the mixed son of
a Buffalo soldier and Cherokee mother. His name was Crawford Goldsby,
but both the New York Times and his own mother

(01:17):
called him Cherokee Bill. It's the middle of November in
the land called Indian Territory present day Oklahoma. A wagon
lifts up over the horizon. There's a man seated at
the reins driving the wagon team of horses. He's someone

(01:39):
local newspapers would call quote a prominent citizen. He's returning
from Tallaqua, capital of the Cherokee Nation. The prominent citizen
spots two riders in the distance. The men appeared to
be cowboys. They're riding their horses hard at full gallop.
Looks like they're running from a posse. The wagon driver
pulls his team to a stop. The two cowboys head
for the wagon. The prominent citizen sees the cowboys are

(02:02):
heavily armed. He immediately regrets his decision to stop. The
cowboys both clutch Winchester rifles as if they expect to
shoot at any moment. The riders come to a stop.
The dust cloud catches and then overtakes them. It covers
the prominent citizen in a fine mist of earth. One
of the riders, whereas a cowboy hat low over his eyes.

(02:22):
The sullen one is known as the Vertegree Kid. The
other cowboy is far more engaging, downright charming, talkative, excitable.
He's also bleeding from two fresh gunshot wounds. The prominent
citizen recognizes the charming outlaw. It's Cherokee Bill. He boasts
to the prominent citizen about surviving a gunfight, a shootout
with U. S. Marshals and officers of the Cherokee Militia.

(02:43):
The outlaw admits that they were lucky to escape. The
fresh gunshot wound in his thigh confirms his opinion. The
prominent citizen asks, does the outlaw need a doctor? Cherokee
Bill laughs, doctors are precisely the type of citizen who
take advantage of someone in his weakened condition. The prominent
citizen continues to make small talk, still secretly terrified the

(03:04):
bad men will steal his wagon. But Cherokee Bill operates
according to a code of his own. He doesn't prey
on the week like some other highwaymen might. He takes
pride in his profession as an outlaw. Cherokee Bill tells
the man where he's headed south to rejoin the Bill
Cook gang. Then the two desperadoes ride off just as
hard as before. The prominent citizen returns to town. Unharmed.

(03:30):
He tells the local newspaperman of his encounter. A news
story is quickly written. Cherokee Bill, though young in his years,
being only nineteen, is a hardened criminal and has no
regard for human life, having several murders to his account
in his short career. He says that he will die
with his boots on, and that some of the marshals
will bite the dust too. When he does. A score
of deputies are on his trail. Good to his word,

(03:53):
more u s marshals would die before Cherokee Bill met
his violent end. YEP, this is a home. It's been
a long road for us. We take an ownership over
everything else. To us realty were surrounded by our heritage
or fist up because we're proud to be Ammerican. I'm

(04:17):
Sarring Burnett. Welcome to Black Cowboys, and I heard original
podcast after himself was really in the name, sitting on
the muck stand right in through the plays Buffalo Soldier,
the King of the Range were in love with the
cowboy Way chapter two, The Outlaw Cherokee Bill. I admired

(04:43):
my father for the time I can remember, and luckily
he was worth admiring He was a fair person. He
was very clear about what he was doing and why
and whose idead was. Had a strong sense of honor.
He didn't uh dance around issues. He had a way
of life that he wanted to live, and his decisions

(05:04):
all went with that. That's my pop. It's impossible to
understand me until you know something about him. It's impossible
to understand the outlaw Cherokee Bill until you understand his father.
Cherokee Bills Pop loomed large in his young son's imagination.
His father shaped what it meant to be a man.
He was a Buffalo soldier, a proud man who bent
his knee to no one once he was free. George

(05:27):
Goldsby was born in Alabama, the son of an enslaved
woman and her master. He was taken to fight in
the Civil War by his master, but during the madness
of battle, he ran away from slavery and joined the
Union Army. He preferred to fight for his people's freedom.
After the Civil War was over, George re enlisted in
the U. S. Tenth Cavalry. It was one of the
two all black cavalry companies known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

(05:52):
In eighteen seventy nine law men, the Texas Rangers, showed
up at Fort Concho, Texas, where Goldsby was stationed. They
had a warrant for his arrest, presumably his lynching. I
was accused of being implicated in a fight or a
riot down there, and I saw that race prejudice was
so strong that although I was not guilty of the charge,
I deemed it advisable to get away from there. An

(06:14):
article in the nineteen o one issue of Colliers recounts
that fateful night George gold to Be got into it
down in Texas. One day, a Buffalo soldier rode into
the town closest to Fort Concho. A short while later,
the horse returned, but with no rider, just blood on
the saddle. Sergeant golds being his Buffalo soldiers, rode into
town to find their missing man. One version of the

(06:35):
story says the Buffalo soldiers discovered their man had been
beaten by a mob of local racists. In Collier's version,
the soldier was shot off his horse. Either way, it
was a hate crime, although no one in the press
would have called it that at the time. The Buffalo
soldiers blue uniform had been torn apart the chevrons indicating
his rank were cut off by angry, bitter defeated Southerners.

(06:57):
The Army soldiers took their wounded man back to Fort Concho.
That night, Sergeant Goldsby addressed his men. Here is what
one of the soldiers in Goldsby's unit recalled from that night.
He misremembered his sergeant's name, calling him Gadsby instead of Goldsby,
But historians agree whether Gadsby or Goldsby, it's the same man.
Cherokee Bill's dad. We held a meeting in the quarters

(07:20):
and the sergeant he made a speech, and the soldiers
was wild. He ended up saying if we was men,
to come on. Under the cover of darkness, the Buffalo
soldiers snuck out of the fort. Each man was armed
with two Colt forty five six shooters. The soldiers walked
three miles back to town. When we got there, Sergeant
Gadsby opened the door and twenty one soldiers walked right

(07:41):
in single file and faced the bar. The room was
full of men. Must have been thirty five or forty
Texicans in the room. They were mighty surprised to see us.
The soldiers, I mean black men were not welcome in
saloons in Texas, not even if they were serving in
the U. S. Army. The sergeant was the last one
to come in, and he at the door and he
put the key in his pocket. Imagine that moment. What

(08:04):
that must have felt like for everyone locked inside that saloon.
We were all facing the bar. What would you have, gentlemen,
says Gatsby, whiskey? We said, we could hear the heartbeat
in that room while he was pouring our drinks. The
soldiers slammed their whiskey as we put our glasses down.
Gatsby says, about face, give him hell, And then every
soldier turned his gun loose. You couldn't hear your own

(08:26):
gun go off, and you couldn't see nothing. The gunfight
didn't last long. One white man came a crawling through
the smoke toward the door. The sergeant shot him as
he laid. When we got outside, we reloaded and waited,
but only seven colored soldiers came out of Bill Palace saloon,
some of them was bleeding, And then we went back
to the post. The white Texans anger was embodied in

(08:51):
the authority of the Texas Rangers through the reach of
local law. The citizens demanded Sergeant Goldsby be lynched. At
the time, Texas led the nation in lynchings. They called
it Texas justice. Many, if not most, of the Rangers
were former Confederate soldiers and officers. The Civil War was
not yet over for them. They remained dutiful agents of
the cause of white supremacy. So Sergeant Goldsby did the

(09:13):
smart thing. He went a wall. George Goldsby's wife, Ellen,
worked as a laundress for the U. S. Cavalry at
Fort Gibson. She had been waiting for him for nine months,
but upon his return, he told her that the Texas
Rangers were hunting him down. He couldn't stay long. Their

(09:35):
eldest son, Young Crawford Goldsby, born on February six, was
now three years old. The Buffalo soldier's son was just
old enough to remember his father's return after being gone
so long. Perhaps he was even old enough to understand
why his father was on the run. A few days later,
without explanation, Sergeant Goldsby rode off. It was the last

(09:57):
time the boy who had become Cherokee ever saw his father. Pup.
You always have made it clear to me that we
have Native ancestry, and it was always very important to
me growing up. But did our family ever think of
themselves as Cherokee friedman? On grandmom's son. There was a

(10:20):
Cherokee friedman in our family, Dave Gaddy, my great grandfather.
It was the son of a man who was half
Cherokee and have African. It's tried to disappeared into the Cherokees,
you know, into the nation with them, and then uh
produced the child and then they then they caught him.
They called him and the child and brought it back

(10:43):
to the plantation. They knew who was father. And you
see a picture of him these jet black has straight
here and like like uh sitting bowl, you know, in
steel gray eyes. You know, it was funny. We there
was so many people in my family, my mother who
looks who looks like an Indian, and we knew about
Dave Gaddy's father and all that. So we were very
aware of the Cherokee presence in that and we had

(11:05):
a certain amount of pride in that. Like let's saying
that playing cowboys, you know, most of us wanted to
be the Cherokee. We didn't want to be the cowboys.
We had we had bows and arrows. You know, we
didn't have We didn't have pistols and belts. We had
bows and arrows. We play cowboys in the woods. But
but the Cherokee was chasing the cowboys out. Ellen Goldsby

(11:29):
was half black, a quarter Cherokee, and a quarter white.
She was considered a Cherokee Friedman. In order to stay
close to her family, she had raised her children in
Indian Territory. After her first husband left, Ellen Goldsby remarried,
becoming Ellen Lynch. Her new husband was also a Buffalo soldier,
but a terrible stepfather to young Crawford Goldsby, mean and violent.

(11:50):
As Crawford's teen years dragged on, in order to grasp
some independence, he got himself a job. A local shopkeeper
said of the young Crawford, he was the best work
in the most honest negro boy that worked for us.
But he was also restless. So Crawford Goldsby got a
new job. He became a cowboy. Crawford Goldsby worked breaking colts.

(12:17):
He was damn good at it. He worked a few
seasons for a cattleman named Jim Turley. Seven. The cattleman
Turley was interviewed for the w p a collection of
oral histories. He recounted how his family met Cherokee Bill.
Jim hired a young colored boy who came up to
their place looking for work. This boy, wearing a ragged cap,
was barefooted in copus, and he said his name was

(12:39):
Crawford Goldsby. The colored boy stayed with Jim's father and
did the chores for his room and board. The cattleman
liked him so much the ranchers lent him a horse
so Crawford could go visit his family. The teenager promised
to bring it back. Crawford Goldsby was good to his word.
Crawford was gone for about three weeks, but came back

(13:00):
with the horse and saddle. But something bad had happened
in those three weeks. Crawford was gone, something that would
change the course of his life forever. Crawford asked for help.
He asked Jim for advice on what to do about
him killing a man at Fort Gibson, and Jim advised
him to go back and give himself up to the marshal.
Crawford didn't do that. In the spring of rolled around.

(13:23):
Crawford Goldsby was eighteen years old. One night Crawford chose
to attend a dance and fort Gibson over in the
black section of town. Jake Lewis was a Cherokee Friedman
slightly older than Crawford. He was a local tough, a brawler.
That night, he decided to pick on Clarence Goldsby, Crawford's
little brother, just a year younger. Crawford stepped in to

(13:44):
protect his little brother. That didn't happen. Instead, Crawford Goldsby
got his ass stopped. It might have been a fair
fight if a deputy sheriff hadn't pulled his revolver on Crawford.
As Lewis stomped Crawford into the ground. Some of Lewis's
friends even joined in. It was like a prison fight
on the prairie. Crawford wasn't just bloodied and battered, he

(14:04):
was publicly humiliated. That was one feeling he couldn't abide.
Bruises would heal, but his reputation wouldn't. The next day,
Crawford found the bully, Jake Lewis, working at a horse stable.
Crawford shot him three times or four times, he depended
on who told the story. After he thought he'd killed
the man who bullied his brother and wronged him. Crawford

(14:26):
gold to be stole a horse. He rode hard for
the safety he could find. Deep in the Cherokee Nation.
At a place called fourteen Mile Creek, the notorious Bill
Cook gang was hiding out. Crawford rode up and asked
to join him. He was now officially an outlaw. That's
when Crawford Goldsby became Cherokee Bill Pop. As you've put it,

(15:00):
you've been something of an adventurer. What do you think
it means to be a black outlaw in America? Being
an outlaw in America for me is living almost a
completely lawful life. The first part of being an outlawed
thinkers to be a free person. You have to be
a free person to live outside of a system. You
have to be free yourself and confident that you can

(15:21):
achieve it. And then you have to set up and
get a set of rules for your conduct and stick
to them. And they can't be in decience of anything,
that can't be against anything. They have to be just
for you. Cherokee Bill immediately took to the outlaw life.
After he killed his first man, he carved a heart
into the wooden stock of his winchester. Then Cherokee Bill

(15:44):
added a spear through the heart, like a pirate flag.
It was his mark. He kept that same rifle from
the first day he joined the Bill Cook gang until
his final day he spent free. His winchester was a
tool of his outlaw trade and a totem of the
myth he told himself. Cherokee Bill was something of a
flashy man for the prairie. He favored Mexican style flat

(16:05):
brim hats, white with a wide, eye catching red band.
He decorated the band of the hat with a feather.
When he walked, you could hear him coming. He preferred
Mexican style jingle spurs to match the flash of his spurs.
His chaps were studded with metal. A line of metal
dots outlined his long legs. He cut quite a figure

(16:25):
on the prairie. He looked like a black Cherokee Zoro,
but he wore no mask. He was proud to be
an outlaw, seemingly unafraid of the consequences. He's eighteen years
old and hell bent for the hangman's noose bowl. Chackie Bill,
in his comrades, wrote out one afternoon, not thinking about
the hand in depth that might overtake him. Soon the

(16:47):
shares Posse did advance. They came quickly on the hill.
The Shares Posse did advance to take bowl Chack keep
Bill Jackie Bill says Cherokee O. It was comrades. And
if you proved true to me today Volcano liberty and rivals.
Man believe will stay what you says Boat Bill Cook

(17:07):
to surrender. Will never agree. Although there's a dozen of them,
and of us there was only three. Be gone from me,
you cowardly dog, So frind I never will. I will
fight to stay until I die, says desperate Cherokee Bill.
Till I die, says desperate Cherokee Bill. The Bill Cook

(17:28):
Gang was made up of black Cherokee Friedman Like Cherokee Bill,
there were also a few white Cherokees like Bill Cook
and his brother James. There were Mexicans, a few non
Cherokee Indians Chocotaw and Muskogee Creek, and of course a
few black cowboys. But that's how life was in the
Indian Territory. There was even a pair of young white
cowboys new to outlaw life, drawn up from Texas to

(17:49):
go find, as they put it, quote either diamonds or shackles.
Guess which one they found. Many of the bad men
had outlaw names. There was, of course Cherokee Bill, but
there was also Comanche Bill and six toed Pete. There
was the Vertigree Kid, as well as Texas Jack and
Dynamite Dick. The infamous Bill Cook gang was best known
for robbing trains and stage coaches, and sometimes they hit

(18:12):
banks standard outlaws stuff, But as their success accrued, their
ambitions grew larger. One day the gang got when the
federal agent was going to be handing out money, lots
of it, to anyone who could prove they were a
citizen of the Cherokee Nation. But to understand why that
federal agent will be coming to town with a wagon
full of money, we have to talk about how the

(18:34):
Cherokee arrived in the Indian territory and why the US
wanted their land yet again. There was a wide stretch
of grassland near Kansas called the Cherokee Outlet. It was
roughly sixty miles wide and two d miles long. It's
the part where the finger of Oklahoma meets the rest
of the state. This Cherokee Outlet wasn't just a plot

(18:56):
of land. It was roughly the size of three small states.
For obvious reason, the U. S. Government wanted that land
to settle. So the U. S. Government did what it
does best. It forced the Cherokee Nation into a bad
land deal. The Topeka State Journal recounted all the land
losses of the Cherokee Nation and it's many and I
used their term business dealings with the US government. In

(19:19):
seventeen twenty one, the Cherokees dominated fast tracts of land
in the east and southeast. In that year, they ceded
to South Carolina one million, six hundred and seventy nine
thousand acres. Since that time, they've sold or disposed of
by treaty no less than eighty seven point eight million
acres to the United States. The Cherokee Indian is not
much of a businessman. Out of all these transactions, he

(19:41):
received but two million dollars. For the strip. He received
eight point six million dollars, but only after a hard
fight with the US government. Nowhere does that news story
mention that in May thirty eight, President Martin van Buren,
following in the racist steps of Andrew Jackson, sent US
troops to violently enact the removal of communities of the

(20:02):
Cherokee Nation from their lands east of the Mississippi. It
fails to recall that the Cherokee were herded together like mustangs.
It leaves out that any person who attempted to flee
federal troops was shot. That's how the US conducted it
so called business deals. The forced march of the Cherokee
to Indian Territory is remembered as the Trail of tears.

(20:25):
A quarter of the Cherokee population who made that march
died on the way to their new allotted homeland. That's
hardly what anyone would call a business deal. In the
rare instance of the Cherokee outlet, the US opted to
buy land from natives rather than just taking it. That
is purely due to the Cherokee self regard and negotiations.
But let's be real about it. Negotiate is a kind

(20:46):
word for what the US did. For years, cattlemen had
paid the Cherokee to rent the grasslands of the Strip
for grazing to jump start negotiations for the land. In
eighteen nine, President Benjamin Harrison forbade grazing. They Congress passed
that into law, which made it impossible for the Cherokee
to rent their land to the cattleman. The Cherokee Nation
eventually agreed to sell the outlet to the U. S. Government.

(21:10):
After the sale was complete, the US government almost immediately
announced it planned to give away the newly bought land too.
You guessed it, settlers, and for free. They called it
a land run, and no one called the U. S.
Government a thief or an outlaw. Cherokee Bill and the

(21:32):
Bill Cook gang focused on the eight and a half
million dollars the US government had paid for the land,
so they waited until the following spring, when the money
for the outlet would be distributed equally among all the
citizens of the Cherokee Nation. This included Cherokee friedman like
Cherokee Bill and his family. Only Cherokee Bill planned to
steal it all. Ironically, that made it a very American plan.

(21:55):
On June, a federal agent came to Talliqua, the capital
of the Cheri Key Nation, to disburse payments. Cherokee Bill
and the others saddled up and rode out to catch
the stage coach, the one with the federal agent and
a big bag of that Cherokee outlet payout cash. Cherokee
Bill and the gang robbed the federal agent and then
rode hard back to their hideout. Sheriff Ellis Rattling Gourd

(22:18):
was a veteran of the Cherokee Lighthorse, who were the
Cherokee tribal police. He was a deeply respected law man.
He heard word about where he could find Cherokee Bill
hold up. With the element of surprise on his side,
Sheriff Rattling Gourd felt like the Bill Cook gang was
as good as caught. He gathered up a ten man
posse and rode out to capture the outlaws. Cherokee Bill

(22:39):
was the one to spot the posse. He was outside
having a smoke under a wide shade tree when he
spotted a dust cloud, the sign of riders approaching. He
watched the cloud intently until he could make out individual riders,
ten men on horseback a posse. He recognized one man
by his brilliant white horse and wide, flat brimmed hat.
Deputy Sequoia Houston. He was a handsome, full blooded Cherokee lawman,

(23:04):
a five year veteran known as a marksman. Shot Cherokee
Bill crushed out his hand rolled cigarette picked up his
Winchester and ducked back inside. Sheriff rattling. Gord rode up,
brave and stout in the saddle. We have you boys round,
it might as well give up. Cherokee Bill shouted back.

(23:24):
We will never do it, but we will slop out
with you. Jerokee Bill drew aim at the man he recognized.
With one squeeze of his Winchester's trigger, Cherokee Bill shot
the thirty two year old Sekoia Houston right off his
white horse. The handsome law man died almost instantly. The
rest of those sheriff's posse fled from Cherokee Bill's deadly winchester.

(23:47):
The outlaw snuck out the back and escaped under the
cover of darkness. The outlaws all new the Cherokee Lighthorse
and the U. S. Marshals would demand revenge for the
death of dear departed Sekoia Houston. The only one who
was I'm afraid of that fact was Cherokee Bill. Throughout
the summer of eighteen Cherokee Bill continued to rob whoever

(24:08):
and whatever he wanted an outlaw on a crime spree.
He was particularly fond of robbing trains. Those smoke belching
locomotives packed stuffed with faced settlers, the ones that were
obliterating the wildness of the West. On October, the Daily
Oklahoman reported on Cherokee Bill's latest spectacular train robbery. The

(24:30):
train was going at a speed of about twenty five
miles per hour, and when within one of the switch
a man sprang from behind an embankment and through the
switch for the sidetrack, running the train into a string
of empty box cars. The outlaws hopped on the wrecked
train and searched the cars to see if there are
any big shots to rob There weren't, but there were

(24:52):
a few lawmen on the train. The embarrassment was they'd
been sent to handle the lawlessness of Cherokee Bill, and
they had immediately failed a Acording to the newspaper accounts,
the marshals were caught flat footed. The attack was so
sudden that they were all covered by winchesters in the
hands of the bandits before they had time to make
a move. Deputy Marshall heck Bruner would come to take

(25:12):
all this embarrassment quite personally. Cherokee Bill's legend as an
outlaw folk hero only continued to grow. The most important
law man in the territory was Marshall Crump of Fort Smith.
He hated to admit it, but he was losing control
of the territory, so he wrote to Washington. Later that

(25:34):
same month, the U. S Attorney General announced the US
government had officially declared war on the outlaw Cherokee Bill.
In news stories from coast to coast, the name Cherokee
Bill became synonymous without law, being that he was quote
a negro outlaw in Indian Territory. The media of the day,
just like our media of today, went out of their

(25:55):
way to clutch all of their pearls. His crimes were
somehow more savage. Saw newspapers reported he had a new
outlaw nickname Guerrilla that was a flat outlie. But in
response to the outlaw Guerrilla, the US government promised violence
to calm the citizens fears. The oct Sunday morning edition
of the Los Angeles Herald reported on the man hunt underway.

(26:19):
At perhaps no time in the history of crime and
bold outlawry has this country been in such a fever
of excitement and universal dread. Is at the present moment
martial law has been declared and is enforced strongly at
every point in the nation. There are three d Cherokee
militia in the field approaching the stronghold of the Outlaws
from the east and north, while Indian police are scarring

(26:39):
the country towards the west. A large force of United
States Marshals have gone straight into what is supposed to
be the home of the gang near Red Fork at

(27:02):
the end of After Cherokee Bill spent the summer on
his lawless spree of train robberies, bank robbery shootouts with Lawman,
the eighteen year old Outlaw wrote to his sister and
asked her to come see him. He missed her. She
wrote him back and promised she'd come visit. Georgia Goldsby
told her husband Mose Brown, she planned to take the
train to visit her little brother, but her controlling husband

(27:22):
forbade her to go. Being a Goldby, she ignored her
husband's command. Mose Brown warned her she went, he'd go
with her. Georgia responded with a threat of her own.
You always mistreat a crossfits. That was the cause of
him leaving home once, and he told you he would
kill you some day if you did leave him alone.

(27:44):
You had best not go about him or molest him again.
From a local newspaper account, we learned what happened next.
On Saturday afternoon, December twenty nine, he and company with
his brother in law Mose Brown, were at the house
of a colored man named Frank Daniels, a few miles
west of Talala. There had been trouble brewing between the
two men for some time. Past or were the rather

(28:05):
brutal manner in which Brown treated his wife, who was
the outlaw's sister. Cherokee Bill made sure Mose Brown never
hurt anyone ever again. Cherokee Bill walked his brother in
law away from the homestead over to a small grove.
The two men talked where no one could hear them.
After a while, the outlaw made his brother in law
head back toward the house. Then he shouted move faster,

(28:30):
but Mose Brown didn't move fast enough for Cherokee Bill,
so he fired three times. Mose Brown stumbled, he fell
and died. Cherokee Bill stood over the dead man, He
kicked him, rolled him over with his boot, then shot
him twice more. No longer an abusive husband, Mose Brown
was rendered into a meal fixed for the Coyotes and
turkey vultures. Cherokee Bill holstered his winchester, remounted his horse,

(28:52):
and rode off. Soon enough, he was lost to view.
He disappeared over the wrinkled brow of a distant hill.
Where does one determine that line of morality of like,
I'm going to take this man's life because he harmed
my sister. It is something that both you and I
agree on. But where is that line drawn? I think
is drawn right there. If somebody has infringed on your

(29:15):
on your sister like that, and it's also a continuing threat,
you know, then then to me, that's self defense. I
know the police don't see it the way you need
to do to courts. So this is my time earlier
about by my code of conduct. To me, that's self defense.
So I would have no trouble doing that, but it
would have to be because their person was an ongoing threat.

(29:35):
Do you find that that is important that we individually
also have a relationship with what we determined to be justice,
especially in the country that has been unjust two black Americans.
I think most people need um an external set up
rules for them because they can't they can't consistently apply
rules to themselves. I can how it can one determine

(30:03):
their own code of conduct as a black man in
determining justice in an unjust country and say, I don't
think America is an unjust country. Really yeah, I think.
I think there are a lot of people who are
prepared to be who are prepared to work in an
unjust way. But but the country itself structurally is just

(30:24):
as always moving towards justice. That's why the unjust stick
out so bad in the face of so much systemic injustice.
Black people have a historical requirement to insist on justice,
But I don't think justice changes as words spread. The
Cherokee Bill shot his brother in law to death for

(30:45):
abusing his sister, Georgia. The men of the Indian territory
understood why it was a form of lawless justice, but
women who heard the story felt differently. They related to
his sister, and thus many rejoiced at what Cherokee Bill
had done. Violence against the women was far too common
on the prairie. It was less enforced than a property
crime like horse theft. The fact that Cherokee Bill defended

(31:07):
his sister, a Cherokee freed woman, saving her from her
abusive husband, and his extreme violence. This too, was a
big part of his outlaw folk hero status, at least
in the Indian territory. Cherokee Bill was also popular with
women just for being a charismatic cowboy. In particular, Maggie
Glass had her heart set on the eighteen year old outlaw.

(31:27):
Like him, her people were also Cherokee Friedman. On January,
Maggie Glass plan to celebrate her seventeen with a big
birthday party. Cherokee Bill promised he'd come, even though he
was on the run. The U. S. Attorney General had
sent a militia to hunt him down. Hanging Judge Parker
had placed a bounty on his head. Wanted dead or alive.

(31:51):
But Maggie Glass wanted to see your bow, so Cherokee
Bill promised her he'd be there. There was one big
problem for their plan, her uncle Mike Rodgers. He was
a black former US Marshall. He'd often worked with the
famed law man Marshall bass Reeves. Remember that name, because
we'll get to him in the next episode. He was
a legend all of his own, But Ike Rogers he
was not. He was the shady sword. On Maggie Glass's

(32:16):
birthday Cherokee Bill rode up to Ike Rogers farm. Something
wasn't right. His girlfriend told him to leave. Maggie urged
him to get back up on the horse and ride
for the horizon. Cherokee Bill didn't listen. Instead, he sat
down and played cards with Ike Rodgers, but he kept
a wary eye. Ike suggested Cherokee Bill take his Winchester
rifle off his lap and maybe leaning against the wall.

(32:37):
That way he'd be more comfortable. That's something I never do.
I offered Cherokee Bill a glass of whiskey. He'd secretly
doctored up the amber booze with morphine, but Cherokee Bill
politely declined the offered whiskey. Ike Rogers waited for the
right moment to strike. It never came. Hours passed, the birthday,
girl grew bored. Maggie Glass went to bed around four

(33:00):
in the morning. The men were through playing cards and
turned in for the night. The next morning, after breakfast,
Ike Rodgers feared his best lay plans were failing. I
know that we had to make a break on him
pretty soon. I was afraid the girl would take a
hand at it when trouble began, so I gave her
a dollar to buy some chickens at the neighbors is
to get her out of the way. With his girl gone,
Cherokee Bill's luck was about to run out. Bill finally

(33:22):
took a notion that he wanted to have a smoke,
and he took some paper and tobacco from his pocket,
and he rolled a cigarette. He had no match, so
he stooped over towards the fireplace to light it and
turned his head away from me for an instant. That
was my chance, and I took it. But Ike Rodgers
didn't draw on Tyrakey Bill. Instead, he suckered him from behind.
There was a firestick lying by on the floor, and
I grabbed it and I struck him across the back

(33:43):
of the head. I must have hit him hard enough
to kill an ordinary man, but only knocked him down.
My wife grabbed Bill's winchester, and we three tussled on
the floor full twenty minutes. Cherokee Bill for twenty minutes
to stay free and wild. I thought once I'd have
to kill him, his great strength, his hundred and eighty
pounds eight. But finally we got a pair of handcuffs
on him. He promised me money and horses all I wanted,

(34:05):
and then he cursed. We put him in the wagon
and started for no water. A local reporter at the
jailhouse collected Cherokee Bill's thoughts on his capture. I am
nineteen years old and was born and raised in the
Cherokee Nation. I've been on the scout for several years
and was never caught before. I would not have been
caught this time if I had listened to my girl.

(34:26):
News of his arrest made headlines around the country. So
I remember being uh, very little, and if you would
get upset, you insisted that I look you in the eye.
I couldn't look down at my feet if I was
getting yelled at, if I had done something all wrong.
I very much remember that you didn't do much wrong,

(34:47):
but I would it stood me well in the future,
because now, like any time a man yells at me,
I'm like, this is nothing. That was me my dad.
As with tearing black when you got mad, I got
to look at his eyes, but black tooth will be
both sad in their black eyes. When Cherokee Bill faced

(35:09):
justice in the courtroom of Hanging Judge Isaac Parker, the
outlaws body count had become rather staggering. In his short
time as a bad man, he killed five people for
certain Deputy Sheriff Zicoya Houston, a train brakeman named Samuel Collins,
a barber, J. B. Mitchell, his brother in law Mos Brown,
and lastly Ernest Melton, a handyman whose murder was the

(35:31):
reason for the trial hanging. Judge Isaac Parker had certainly
earned his nickname. On May, his first session as the
new judge of the Federal Court at Fort Smith, he
tried eighteen men. All eighteen men were up on murder charges.
Fifteen men were convicted by a jury of their peers.
Judge Parker sentence eight of the guilty to hang. Starting

(35:51):
with that first day, Judge Parker operated his court six
days a week, and over his career he tried thirteen thousand,
four hundred and nine cases. He said, since one hundred
and sixty people to be executed, seventy nine were hanged.
Many never lived long enough to make it to the gallows.
Bodies were constantly dropping through the trap at Fort Smith,
the hangman's noose stayed warm. Ironically, though Judge Parker was

(36:15):
against the death penalty, he hated it, but he followed
the law to the letter in a federal court that
meant men guilty of a capital crime hanged. To save
her son, Cherokee Bill's mother hired the best lawyer in
the territory. Every day, regardless of heat or the stink
in the courtroom, she and his sister, Georges sat in
that court to ensure the outlaw they loved god a

(36:36):
fair trial. The jury debated for ten hours straight. The
next morning they returned a verdict guilty. His sister and
mother wept. The judge sentenced Cherokee Bill hanging by the
neck until you are dead. He set the date of
execution for June. Cherokee Bill's lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court

(36:57):
to intervene, and surprisingly, the Court agree to consider Cherokee
Bill's case. Judge Parker ordered a stay of execution to
give the Supreme Court time to deliberate. Cherokee Bill's lawyers
also asked President Grover Cleveland for clemency, and reportedly the
President began to seriously consider it. But Cherokee Bill didn't
leave his fade up to the federal government. Few, if any,

(37:18):
member of the Cherokee nations still trusted the United States
of America, Cherokee Bill was being held in the federal
jail under Fort Smith. It was known as Hell on
the Border. He was locked up with some of the
wildest men captured by the law. The stench was reportedly
so bad in that jail that in the spring and summer,

(37:38):
a horrid, shutred smell often polluted Judge Parker's courtroom. It
was located one floor above the jail. Somehow, while he
was behind bars, Cherokee Bill bought a gun from a
corrupt deputy and hit it in his cell. The Dalil deputies,
known as turnkeys, were sometimes lax with the rules. One
hot summer night, they'd allowed prisoners to stay out of

(37:59):
their cell an hour past curfew. That was a mistake,
the kind that Cherokee Bill had waited for. Still inside
his cell, Cherokee Bill decided it was the right moment.
Two deputies came down to Murderer's row to lock up
the prisoners for the night. When they reached Cherokee Bill's door,
the key wouldn't go into the lock. It was jammed
up with paper. Cherokee Bill shoved the cell door open.

(38:20):
He drew his revolver. The element of surprise was on
his side. Throw up and give me that pistol. The
turnkey deputy, Lawrence Keating, reached for his pistol, a fatal mistake.
Cherokee Bill catching Keating in the belly with a bullet.
The deputy staggered, clutch for his gut. Killed. The deputy
said he collapsed well and truly dead. Marshall heck Brunner

(38:42):
arrived on the scene after being embarrassed by Cherokee Bill
during a train robbery and shootout. The Marshal brought a
certain amount of overkill to the jail house gunfight. He
fired a shotgun into the cloud of gun smoke. It
boomed with authority, but it claimed no victims. Cherokee Bill
poked his gun out of his cell. He took an
unnamed shot at Marshall Bruner. He gobbled like a turkey.

(39:04):
It was a traditional Cherokee war cry, a promise of
certain death. An inmate named Henry Starr shouted to the
deputies they promised not to shoot him. He'd go in
and get that Cherokee Bill's gunn Henry Starr recalled for
the curious press. What happened next? I said, Bill, you
can't get out? Why kill a lot of people. He replied,
I'm gonna kill every white man inside. I'm gonna kill

(39:26):
you who coming to closure. That Bill had one soft spot.
It was his devotion to his mother. I said, your
mother don't want you to kill any more than you
have already. Why hurt her more? My plea to give
up the piece of for her sake? Touched him. Take it,
he said, and handed over the gun. As a reward,
Henry Starr had his death sentence revoked. Years later in Nree.

(39:49):
A big fan of Henry Starr's bravery, President Teddy Roosevelt
pardoned the outlaw once he was safely locked back up.
Cherokee Bill laughingly told his jailer's, damn man who won't
fight for his liberty. That's the only thing you really
should fight for your liberty, liberty in your family's safety.
You know those those two. And of course your nation

(40:10):
was under attack. But uh, but that's that's about it.
Everything else should be negotiable. You know, if a man
is willing to fight for his liberty, how does a
man know when to stop? Well, you have to define
what your liberty is see it from For me, my
liberty is defined as my ability to conduct my life

(40:30):
exactly as I please, like anybody else having a vote.
That's my idea of liberty. If if the decision makers
are deciding against you and and what you think is
an unjust way, and then you have an obligation to
come up with your own code. So then you have
to come up with the month that also doesn't put
you in conflict with the laws, so that you're not

(40:52):
just walking around waiting to go to prison for the
rest of your life. You have you have an obligation
for your justice to not put you away. Uh. So
it's it's it's not as wide open as it first
would appear. After murdering the Turnkey, Cherokee Bill was back
in Judge Parker's court for a new trial. It lasted
just three days. It surprised no one when the jury

(41:15):
foreman read the verdict guilty. At sentencing, Judge Parker informed
Cherokee Bill of his new fate. The sentence of the
law is that you'll be hanged by the neck until
you are dead. Cherokee Bill had finally caught up to
the fate he'd so furiously chased. The hangman awaited. On

(41:39):
December three, the New York Times reported the latest from
the Supreme Court on Cherokee Bill's first murder case. The
Supreme Court today, in an opinion read by Justice White,
affirmed the judgment in the melting case. Cherokee Bill will
hang as soon as Judge Parker gets the mandate from
the Supreme Court. Later that spring, the Salt Lake Tribune
reported on the last hope to Jurkey Bill had for freedom. Saturday,

(42:02):
dispatches from Washington settled the fate of Cherokee Bill, the
most noted outlaw of the fast receding border. The President's
refusal to interpose removes Bill's last possible chance, and he
will hang. On St. Patrick's Day, after Cherokee Bill killed
a U. S Deputy Marshal, that one act cost him
any hope of help from the powerful stranger who had
once spoken favorably of clemency. President Grover Cleveland officially backed

(42:27):
away from the outlaw folk hero. He left the sheriff's posse,
and one was called as still, for he had been
pierced by the bullet from the rifle the Cherokee Bill.
And when he made good his escape to Rock, he

(42:49):
went straight away. The people were afraid of him to
travel night and day Cherokee Bill, Desperate Cherokee, Cherokee Bill.
Every day of some daring deed, the newspapers would tell
concerning the daring highwaymen called desperate Cherokee Bill. The highwaymen

(43:14):
called desperate Cherokee Bill. Georgia Brown was running late to

(43:34):
her brother's execution. Judge Parker made the hangman wait. Once
his sister arrived, She and Cherokee Bill's mother were brought
up onto the scaffolding. They stood with the now nineteen
year old outlaw as the hangman's news was tightened around
his neck. The crowd for his execution was estimated to
number in the thousands. Cherokee Bill waved to some that
he recognized, and then he stepped through the trap in

(43:58):
his neck was snapped. The headline for the March New
York Times article read, Cherokee Bill die smiling at PM
today Crawford Goldsby a k A. Cherokee Bill was hanged.
He was declared dead in ten minutes. The desperado showed
no fear and went to the trap. The coolest man

(44:19):
in the party on the gallows. In reply to the
question if he had anything to say, he answered no,
I came here to die, not to talk. Turning, he
kissed his mother goodbye, and with a smile on his face,
walked to the place on the trap. The New York
Times also noted Bill got his wonderful nerve from his mother.

(44:40):
She stood by him on the gallows without flinching or
shedding a tear. Pop. You also taught me not to
mistake law and order for justice, because law and order
the other part we often overlook, which is order is

(45:02):
determined by somebody or his law is determined by the
law books, and justice is determined by the objective sense
that we all agree. This is just Do you think
that that is an important distinction that other people start
to understand that law and order and justice are not
always the same. Absolutely, the law and order are just
reflections of the momentary set of the least. All the

(45:25):
things I did illegal in nineteventy are now legal. I
was against the law then, so I was outside law
and order now I'm not. I haven't changed a bit,
but in my sense of justice, I felt it was
okay then, and I think it's okay now. So it
turns out I was right. That's got to feel good

(45:50):
if you can believe that Cherokee Bill's story didn't end
with his death at the end of The Hangman's News.
One year later, his little brother got his revenge against
Mike Rodgers. Clarence was the little brother that Cherokee Bill
defended at that dance which led to the shooting of
Jake Lewis and ultimately to Bill's outlaw life and death.

(46:11):
And Clarence crossed pass at a town called Hayden, the
site for disbursements of the Cherokee Friedman payments. Rogers had
planned to receive his Meanwhile, Clarence planned to kill him.
He missed his chance. Nearly a year after Cherokee Bill
was hung, Ike Rodgers took a train to Fort Gibson.
When Nike Rogers stepped off the train and onto the platform,
Clarence was there, and this time he was ready. As

(46:34):
The New York Times reported, it was Cherokee Bill's brother
who lay in wait for the informer who had delivered
Cherokee Bill into the meshes of a cold and heartless law.
When the informer descended from the train, Cherokee Bill's brother
fired three shots from a six shooter into his head.
Once Ike Rogers was dead, Clarence reached down and grabbed

(46:55):
Cherokee Bills Winchester from beside the murdered man. It had
a heart with a spear through it, car into the
butt of the rifle which the outlaw had etched into
the wood after the first man he'd killed. Now Clarence
had killed his first man, he took the Winchester and ran,
knowing his vengeance had been wrought us. Marshall's run hand
a calm the large crowd of Cherokee citizens who had

(47:16):
come to claim their allotment of money. Memories of the
stagecoach robbery by Cherokee Bill may have motivated the Marshal's
large numbers. The marshals were quick to respond. Clarence was
chased by a hail of gunfire. He ducked under the
still idoling train, and he ran off. He escaped in
the ensuing chaos, just like Cherokee Bill would have done it.
Clarence didn't stop running until he got to St. Louis.

(47:38):
He started a new life. He was never captured or
ever punished for the murder of Mike Rogers. Most everyone
recognized what he had done was what they call justice
in the West, economic justice for the Cherokee Freedman was
a different story. During the giveaways of the eighteen nineties,
Not all the Cherokee Freedman received the allotted money promised

(47:59):
to because of you guessed it, racism. A lawsuit was
filed by Cherokee freedman named Moses Whitmier. When his claim
was finally settled, the ancestors of the Cherokee Freedman ultimately
did receive their money and their citizenship in the Cherokee
Nation was restored. This happened just a few years ago.
In the past is never gone. Faulkner was right. Crawford

(48:22):
Goldsby's life story is a short but proud example of
the life of a Cherokee freedman, the son of a
Buffalo soldier and a proud Cherokee mother, a black cowboy
folk hero, an unmistakably American story. Cherokee Bill was a
headline sensation to the newsman and an outlaw folk hero
to the people. Even the President wanted to forgive him.

(48:42):
Cherokee Bill lived by his own code, loyal to friends
and family, betrayed by his own hubrists. He should have
listened to his girl, but by then it was far
too late for Crawford Gold to be for his entire
cut short life. He demanded that he would live and
die a freeman like his father before him. It's like
Cherokee Bill onces d damn any man who don't fight
for his liberty. I'm Zanon Burnette, thanks for listening. Coming

(49:07):
up on the next episode of Black Cowboys will check
in with the other side of the law, another fame
Black cowboy, U S. Marshall Bass Reeves. Black Cowboys is
written by me Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Ryan
Murdoch and Michelle Lands. Our theme song is written and

(49:28):
performed by Demeanor. Sound design and music by Jeremy Thal.
While in federal jail, Cherokee Bill wrote his own folk
hero ballad. I discovered the lyrics in the December edition
of The Caney Phoenix. Music for the Ballot of Cherokee
Bill written by Demeanor and Jeremy Thal and performed by Demeanor.
Additional music by Alvin young Blood, Heart research and fact

(49:49):
checking by Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown, Jocelyn Sears, and Aaron
Blakemore performances by Malika bob and o Adam Copeland, Tom Combs,
Ryan Murdoch, Parker Anderson. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia. Executive
producers are Jason English and Man guest part and always
Special thanks to my problem. This is a home. It's

(50:10):
been a long road for us. We take it ownership
over everything else. To us realty, were surrounded by our heritage.
Are frisked up because we're proud to be Ammericanoy. He
asked himself, what's really in the name. Sitting on a

(50:33):
Mustang Friday through the place Buffalo, So to the King
of the Rains. We in love with the childboys way