The Mystery Black Lawman

Fellow historians, there are some enigmas in history that seemingly should not be enigmatic, but stubbornly remain so. This photo of a Black man astride his horse is one of them. I am hoping some crowdsourcing here may help clear it up. If nothing else, you might enjoy hearing about one of the most dynamic events in Idaho history that few people know about.

For many years the photo has been wrongly titled both “Black cowboy” and “Black Sheriff”. The location is ascribed to Pocatello, Idaho. The date often cited is 1903 which comes from the Library of Congress catalog which (unhelpfully) states the record contains “unverified old data from caption card”. Indeed. As most of us know from working with old primary sources, those devilish cards often contain annoyingly confounding errors...

My first hint that this photo is not of a “Black cowboy” came when I initially saw it many years ago in a much poorer version of the photograph. Even in that blurry image the bright star on his chest was abundantly obvious. This was no “cowboy” despite his horse and hat. He was a lawman of some sort. Being from Pocatello I was intrigued, but no further information was available. I made a couple inquiries and pointed out the star, but the only change I have seen over the years is that he is now called a “sheriff”.

While that attribution of his occupation sounds more accurately “Western” it shows a further lack of knowledge about law enforcement in the West because not everyone with a star was a sheriff. There were also city police and various government agents who wore stars, just as many do today. Even railroad police might carry a star to signify their authority. Calling him a sheriff adds some to his position in society, but it is by no means definitively accurate.

The date was odd as well. A search for other files in the Library of Congress for that date and location included a number of photos labeled as being of the “Idaho land rush”. That’s problematic because there was only one land rush in Idaho and that was June 17, 1902 when Fort Hall Reservation lands were opened to the public around the Pocatello townsite. The rush was a remarkable event chronicled in colorful detail by Ray Stannard Baker of The Century Magazine in the September 1903 edition (link below). The article includes numerous beautiful illustrations, but none that are similar to those in the Library of Congress. Of course, other media were there for the event, but the photos also do not match local publications and if there is any other significant national coverage including artwork it has eluded me. Who took the photo and for what publication or organization is simply unknown.

A relatively small break appeared when I discovered the same image included as an illustration found in an unusual book titled “What people wore; a visual history of dress from ancient times to twentieth-century America” by Douglas W. Gorsline, 1913-1985, page 222 (link below at Internet Archive). The caption for the illustration says it is of a “Pocatello land rush policeman”.

Gorsline (1913-1985) was a painter, writer, and illustrator. His Wikipedia biography is short enough to include here, “Douglas Gorsline who was born in Rochester, New York. He attended the Rochester School of Technology, the Yale School of Art and the Art Students League of New York. He taught at the National Academy of Design in New York City before moving to France in 1964. He was the first American artist invited to China (1973). His work was exhibited regularly in the United States and in France, Belgium and Germany. He received a great many awards and his works are in several museums, as well as institutional and private collections. He was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1943 as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1947. The Gorsline Museum was created by his widow, Marie Gorsline, and inaugurated in 1994, nine years after his death, at Bussy-le-Grand, in Côte-d'Or, France.”

Unfortunately, Gorsline did not provide citations in his book on historical costume. Given that it is full of hundreds of pages of similar drawings (10 or so per page) that is not terribly surprising.

Still, his descriptive caption could hardly have been pulled out of thin air. Very few people know that even in the 1900s reservations had their own police and that minorities served as law enforcement. That combined with the other misdated items in the Library of Congress makes it seem reasonable this gentleman was indeed a lawman at the Pocatello land rush in 1902.

That presents yet another problem. The land rush was a massive government operation complete with sooners, cheats, liars, and crooks (including the lieutenant governor of Idaho) who all were out to somehow find a way around the rules to file a claim and snatch-up a uniquely valuable chunk of “free land”. The entire enterprise was conducted by the Federal Government through the Department of the Interior and initially the thought was to just use the reservation police at Fort Hall. However, it quickly became apparent that there were not enough men for the job given the size of the land being opened and with large areas in rough terrain where sooners could hide. The answer was to bring in other reservation policemen from elsewhere to help ride the mountains and valleys in the weeks, days, and hours before the rush in the hopes of catching said sooners, cheats, liars, and crooks and (hopefully) to keep the peace when there was a large bunch of armed people hell bent for leather rushing to get their claim registered at the land office in nearby town of Blackfoot. How many men were brought in and from where is not known.

Checking the Fort Hall Agency payroll records for the time period there were no Black reservation officers at Fort Hall nor at the other nearby agencies at other reservations. Nor is there a readily available accounting report of the operation. Admittedly, I have not checked every agency in the United States and the gentleman could very easily be from somewhere much farther away like Oklahoma. Also, it is possible the National Archives have his name listed on a financial report for the land rush, but that is likely buried and I am far from Washington, D.C.

There are a few other details to note. The pole fencing in the photograph is similar to that seen in other pictures at designated areas where rushers were allowed to begin within the confines of the opened lands. The background is sparse, but to a local it does seem to be similar to Pocatello.

The man’s horse is a nice enough animal, but not necessarily expensive - there were much better horses around at the time. His saddle and rope are normal for the period and do not indicate him being as anything more or less a cowboy since Indian police often had to deal with stray livestock on reservations and a rope is extremely useful anyway.

No firearms are shown, but that does not mean he is unarmed. Despite all the John Wayne movies, horsemen did not always ride with a “Western” holster on their right side because it got in the way and was hard to draw while seated (John sometimes struggles with it in his movies too). Rather, riders more often carried in a cross-draw holster with the pistol butt facing forward to allow drawing from both the opposite hand and the near hand more easily.

Similarly, the apparent absence of a firearm is not indicative of anything either. No matter what we have all seen in movies and TV, it was fairly rare for people to wander around with guns all the time because, again, they were heavy and got in the way. Photographs of street scenes in the West almost never show people packing iron. Firearms also got dirty easily and required a lot of maintenance because the grease used for protecting the metal tended to attract and capture dirt. A person typically only carried a gun when he was expecting that trouble was possible or likely.

It is true many rushers that day in 1902 had guns on them (which itself was remarked upon as being unusual in press accounts). There were some concerns the whole affair would end up with people blasting each other, but there are no reports of shootings. So, if this gentleman’s job was only to help start the run he may have felt no need to bring a firearm with him. That may fly in the face of everyone’s experience watching Clint Eastwood, Chuck Connors, and James Coburn, but it would not be unusual for the time. The visual presence or absence of a firearm neither adds to nor reduces the authority of the star on his chest.

We can tell though that the man with the star is used to riding his horse. He sits in his saddle in a way that is common among those who work with livestock or who compete in rodeos. Some may question this, but it is not insignificant and most equestrians will quickly confirm his rig and posture are common for a working rider. He knows what he’s doing and he’s been doing it for a long time. His horse's tack has some southern or Mexican hints as does the man's clothes.

During the time period, many Black men worked in the West. Buffalo soldiers who had previously been stationed at Fort Douglas near Salt Lake City quite often looked for land and jobs in the region. Just as many others did, Blacks came to new territories and states like Idaho in an effort at getting in on the ground floor of opportunity. Pocatello itself was long known as a place where a Black man might get a job working for the railroad at the Union Pacific shops. There were also at different times and places where Black men worked in law enforcement. The most famous is probably Bass Reeves - the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River.

Unfortunately, none of the Black men named in early local history worked as Indian policemen. The most notable Black men of the time (including a well-known rodeo champion by the name of Thompson) seemed to have come into the area after 1902.

It is also possible the man in the photo may be a tribal member. It was not uncommon during the time for reservation police to be drawn, at least partially, from the tribes because they knew the people, knew the languages, and the tribes demanded representation in law enforcement. In a number of tribes outsiders were accepted as part of the tribes and, especially in the South, quite a few Blacks became tribal members through marriage, being freed slaves and part of the community, or through birth between an interracial couple. So, not only may he be a reservation policeman, he may even be a tribal member from someplace like Kansas.

The issue then becomes more difficult. Tribal family history is often quietly kept within the community. Records of who the man may be could be limited to a tribal police group photo or a family photo album. He could also just as well be a well-known lawman from somewhere else. Or he may have been doing this job during the rush to make a few extra dollars before moving on.

Of course, his ethnicity is not definitively determined by this single photograph. He may be of mixed heritage, a Native America, Latino, or maybe another ethnicity we have not considered. It's simply assumed that since his features seem Black they must be Black, but that's not a defensible conclusion based solely on this photo.

So, we are still left with an enigma. Who is the reservation policeman captured in this photo in Pocatello, Idaho on June 17, 1902? Can you help identify him?

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Century/q1dNAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22pocatello%22+land+run+rush+idaho&pg=PA651&printsec=frontcover

https://archive.org/details/whatpeopleworevi00gors/page/222/mode/1up?q=Pocatello