The Gavel And The Gun

Town tamers like Bill Hickok and the Earps took on bad men in wild and open towns. But the most lawless land in the American West was the 70,000 square miles offrontier Western Arkansas and the Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes; what later would become Oklahoma. The Territory was a magnet to outlaws and spoilers of every brand. Law, order, and justice didn’t come until almost ten years after the Civil War. They came in the form of “the Hanging Judge,” Isaac Parker, a new U.S. Marshal, Mace Truax, and a Choctaw Indian Territorial Policeman named John Browneagle. Rape, robbery, murder, horse theft, gun and whiskey running were the everyday crimes that often went unpunished. It took both the gavel and the gun --- and hangman’s knot to tame this land.