'The Sundance Kid'

10/24/21 • 55 min

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Sundance Kid aka Harry Longabaugh, or Longbaugh, was an American outlaw. He was reputed to be the best shot and fastest gunslinger of the Wild Bunch, a group of robbers and rustlers who ranged through the Rocky Mountains and plateau desert regions of the West in the 1880s and ’90s. In 1909 the two outlaws were cornered by a Bolivian cavalry unit; Sundance was mortally wounded, and Cassidy took his own life. Other stories have Sundance surviving and returning to the United States and dying in obscurity under a new name (Harry Long) somewhere in the West, in the 1930s.

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Part 2 of 2 - Butch Cassidy

Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker, was an American outlaw and foremost member of the Wild Bunch, a collection of bank and train robbers who ranged through the western United States in the 1880s and ’90s. By 1900, sheriff posses and Pinkerton detectives were capturing or closing in on members of the Wild Bunch. Cassidy escaped, first to New York City and then to South America in 1901. From 1902 to 1906 he owned and ran a ranch in Argentina, but thereafter they returned to outlawry. Drifting from country to country, he robbed banks, trains, and mine stations until 1909, when, according to Pinkerton agents, he was trapped by a group of mounted soldiers in Bolivia, where he supposedly shot himself. Another story puts their death in Mercedes, Uruguay, in December 1911, cut down by soldiers during a bank robbery. Still other stories have Cassidy returning to the United States, drifting about from Mexico to Alaska, and dying in obscurity in 1937 in the Northwest or in Nevada (possibly Spokane, Washington, or Johnny, Nevada).

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Bass Reeves

Born to slave parents in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas, Bass Reeves would become the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi River and one of the greatest frontier heroes in our nation’s history. Over the 35 years that Bass Reeves served as a Deputy United States Marshal, he earned his place in history by being one of the most effective lawmen in Indian Territory, bringing in more than 3,000 outlaws and helping to tame the lawless territory. Killing some 14 men during his service, Reeves always said that he “never shot a man when it was not necessary for him to do so in the discharge of his duty to save his own life.”