deputy marshal and allegedly violently beating and raping their victims. In the 1890s, Buck created a gang with other Black and Creek Indian teens and proceeded to rampage through Arkansas and Oklahoma, robbing stores, killing a U.S. Buck was born in the late 1870s, the son of a Black mother and Creek Indian father. In real life, Rufus Buck didn’t make it past 18. He believes that through his criminal enterprise, he can build legitimate business structures that will better his community-but takes ruthless approaches to get there. Like Bell, Buck is a lifelong criminal hardened by systemic injustice and racism. Idris Elba’s Rufus Buck walks a path not unsimilar to one of his most famous characters: The Wire’s Stringer Bell. He was a devout churchgoer and famously principled: He even arrested his own son Benjamin, who had been charged with killing his wife. He had a legendary walrus mustache and equally legendary disguises, sometimes posing as a cowboy or a con man to win the trust of his targets. One sharpshooter said Reeves “could shoot the left hind leg off a contented fly sitting on a mule’s ear at a hundred yards and never ruffle a hair.” Legend has it that he was barred from turkey shoots at picnics and fairs because he would win too easily. Reeves was an exemplary lawman for several reasons: he spoke several languages, was a diligent detective and an honest shooter-in multiple senses of the word. In 1875, Reeves signed up to be a marshal when Judge Isaac Parker recruited hundreds of new officers to attempt to bring law to a territory full of violence and subterfuge. Some accounts say he fled after killing his enslaver in a dispute, and proceeded to live among the Cherokee, Creeks and Seminoles until emancipation made him a free man. Reeves was born a slave and escaped to Indian Territory as a young man. Reeves was a revered lawman in Indian Territory for three decades starting in 1875, handcuffing more than 3,000 felons he was known for being unbuyable at a time in which many lawmen accepted bribes or were part of criminal enterprises themselves. deputy marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), who helps him hunt down Rufus Buck. In The Harder They Fall, Majors’ Nat Love finds an unlikely ally in the U.S. “There was no law respected in this wild country,” Love writes, “except the law of might and the persuasive qualities of the 45 Colt Pistol.” Love shares stories of riding up to 100 miles a day, fighting Mexicans and Native Americans-who he demeans often and refers to as “blood thirsty red skins”-and befriending other cowboy icons like Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid. Over the coming years, Love says he roved around the west, herding steers and winning contests in roping bridling, saddling and shooting, earning the moniker “Deadwood Dick” for his prowess (This nickname was claimed by at least five other people, however). After the Homestead Act-which allowed former slaves to claim land in an expanding America-Love rode west and became a ranch hand in Kansas. In his autobiography, Love writes that he was born a slave in 1854 in Tennessee, where he learned to break horses on his owner’s plantation. Searles contends in the book Black Cowboys in the American West that “few sources corroborate his story.” Much of what we know about the real Nat Love comes from his 1907 autobiography: The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as “Deadwood Dick.” But it’s disputed how much of Love’s book is fact as opposed to self-mythology. Majors’ Love engages in petty thievery and seeks revenge on a man who killed his parents and then branded him when he was a child. Riding at the center of The Harder They Fall is the outlaw Nat Love, played with a smoldering intensity by Jonathan Majors. “We have been ignored from the history of the Old West and the cinematic presentation of what the Old West was,” Samuel told the New York Times earlier this month. In making The Harder They Fall, Samuel hopes to call attention to how Black pioneers shaped the culture and history of the American West but have since been cut out of its legacy. Samuel’s characters share some resemblances with their namesakes while diverging drastically in other ways most have no actual connection to each other. ![]() 3, starts with a message plainly stating that its “events are fictional.” Over 137 sprawling minutes, director and co-screenplay writer Jeymes Samuel weaves an epic and blood-splattered tale of revenge in the Wild West, tracing an outlaw as he hunts down the man who killed his parents.īut while the story is fake, many of the characters in the film share their names with real life historical figures: Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Rufus Buck, Cherokee Bill. ![]() The Harder They Fall, a film arriving on Netflix on Nov.
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