Sam Freeman (born 1860) was the Sheriff of Tumbleweed, Arizona during the 1890s and 1900s. He was one of the most Draconian lawmen of the Wild West, as he was determined to crush outlawry in his county at any cost.
Biography[]
Sam Freeman was born into slavery in Arkansas in 1860, and he was emancipated following the end of the American Civil War. Due to the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the American South following the end of Reconstruction, Freeman decided to head West to seek opportunity. He settled in the rural Arizona town of Tumbleweed, where he rose to be Sheriff of the once-prosperous boomtown. Freeman was determined to crush outlawry in the region, and he once quipped that he would hang nine-tenths of the population if it meant protecting the tenth who would live calm and peaceful lives. Freeman acquired a reputation as a draconian lawman who hired outsiders such as the Arizona Kid to enforce the law in the Gaptooth Ridge region during the late 1890s. By 1907, however, he decided to stop posting bounties after the bounty hunter John Marston took down the Del Lobo Gang outlaws Joaquin Arroyo and Esteban Cortez for him, as he wished to deal with the remaining bandits by himself in order to "earn" his authority. By 1911, he and the remaining townspeople had moved elsewhere, as Tumbleweed was ignored by the main railroad and grew desolate as a result.