Oftentimes the men who assisted Reeves were Native Americans, like the character Tonto who assisted the Lone Ranger. marshals have at least one posseman with them whenever they went out in the field.
WHAT DID TONTO CALL THE LONE RANGER TV
Much of what we know today about Bass Reeves persisted in oral stories told by individuals and families whose origins are in frontier Oklahoma I thought about the uncanny similarities between Bass Reeves and the tv and radio character, the “Lone Ranger.” Federal law mandated that deputy U.S. Reeves was known for catching bad guys in feats that seemed larger than life, many of which were mirrored in the fictional Lone Ranger’s story.īurton speculated about the origins of the Lone Ranger and his similarities to Reeves in the early section of the book: The book started as an attempt by Burton to chronicle the underreported and exciting exploits of Bass Reeves, a marshal in the American West who was Black and a former slave. As a result, it is estimated that over 100 blogs and websites on the Internet today are reprinting the false connection between Bass Reeves and The Lone Ranger, with many going so far as to report the story as factual.” argued that Burton’s words were frequently cited, and misrepresented across the internet, “Casual readers overlooked the precise and nuanced wording that Burton employed, and were led to a false impression regarding the facts.
Some of those claims appear to have originated from misinterpreting sections of the first and most definitive historical account of Reeves’ eventful life, “ Black Gun, Silver Star: the Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves,” by Art T. But one particular claim has made traction over many years, with numerous articles and blogs claiming that a real life Black lawman named Bass Reeves may have been the original inspiration for the character. Wearing a black mask, and frequently atop his iconic horse, Silver, the Ranger character was first introduced in a 1933 radio series, followed by numerous television and film iterations.īut what inspired the character in the first place?Īt the time of its creation, there was no shortage of vigilantes in masks catching bad guys in popular fiction, from Zorro to Robin Hood. Everyone knows the Lone Ranger as the fictional masked man who fought outlaws in the old American West with his Native American sidekick, Tonto.