He went back to work.
## The Bob Dozier Pursuit
Among the specific documented cases in Bass Reeves’s career, one of the earlier ones involves Bob Dozier, a part-Cherokee outlaw who had been involved in various criminal activities in Indian Territory in the late 1870s. Reeves pursued Dozier, and according to the sources that describe it, the confrontation came to a head on December 20, 1878, in the Cherokee Nation, when Dozier refused to surrender and was killed.
The details of this confrontation are, as with much of the record, drawn from secondary sources that synthesize earlier accounts rather than from direct contemporaneous documentation. The date is specific and has been reported consistently, which suggests at least some documentary basis. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that a confrontation with Dozier occurred in the Cherokee Nation in late 1878 and that it ended with Dozier dead.
This case illustrates both the nature of Reeves’s work and one of its persistent complications: he was serving warrants in the jurisdictions of tribal nations that had their own legal systems. His authority as a federal deputy extended to non-Indian crimes and to crimes against or by non-Indian residents of the territory. The lines of jurisdiction were not always clean, and the practical reality of working in territory where federal authority overlapped with tribal authority required constant navigation.
## The Ned Christie Pursuit
In 1890, Bass Reeves was involved in the pursuit of Ned Christie, a Cherokee man who had been accused of killing a deputy marshal named Dan Maples in 1887. Christie maintained his innocence — he said he had been nearby but had not fired the shot — but a warrant had been issued and pursued for years. Christie had built a fortified structure, often called Fort Ned in later accounts, and had successfully resisted multiple attempts at arrest.