CHEROKEE BILL

BOLD, BRAZEN BANK-ROBBING BANDIT OF THE INDIAN TERRITORY

- ART BURTON

Cherokee Bill can be compared to John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd of the 1930s. Like these men, he garnered national press for his exploits; the well-known New York Times had a running commentary on his actions and deeds in the Indian Territory. Cherokee Bill was every bit as colorful and outrageous as any criminal on the Western frontier, perhaps even more so. There were a few things about him that made him truly unique for a famous desperado of the purple sage. First and foremost, he was an African American living in the Indian Territory. He was also a Native American, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation as an Indian Freedman from his mother’s lineage. Compare Cherokee Bill to Billy the Kid of New Mexico Territory fame. Although both outlaws received national media attention for their crimes while they were living, Billy the Kid was remembered and immortalized in books and films in the 20th century, but this did not occur for Cherokee Bill.

The boldest and most brazen robbery by Cherokee Bill and the Cook gang occurred on Monday morning, July 30, 1894, when the gang robbed the Lincoln County Bank in Chandler, Oklahoma Territory. Chandler was the county seat of Lincoln County; a few years later, the famous Dodge City, Kansas, lawman Bill Tilghman would become sheriff of Lincoln County.

At about ten o’clock on that July morning, five heavily armed cowboys rode into town from the northeast, coming down Manvel Avenue to 7th Street, where they turned and went to the alley. They rode behind Fletcher’s Hardware Store and stopped at the rear of the Lincoln County Bank, where they dismounted….

The Guthrie Daily Leader earlier on August 1, 1894, carried a front-page story that said: