The deeper point about what it meant to carry the law in memory rather than on paper is worth considering. A written warrant is a document that can be presented, read, verified, and challenged. An oral memorization of that warrant’s contents is a different kind of authority — one that depends on the credibility and reliability of the person carrying it. Bass Reeves’s authority to make arrests was, in practice, partly derived from his commission, partly from the written warrant that authorized each specific arrest, and partly from his own reliable memory of what that warrant said.
This is one of the places where the tension between formal legal authority and practical human reality in Bass Reeves’s career is most visible. He was a Black man in the post-Reconstruction South, operating in a legal space that was unusual for its time in granting him genuine authority over people of all races. That authority was real and was exercised consistently over decades. And it was, in one specific practical dimension, mediated through his memory rather than through direct access to the written word — a consequence of the deliberate denial of literacy to enslaved people that was among the most systematic tools of the institution of slavery.
He did eventually learn to sign his name, according to some accounts, though the timing and extent of his literacy later in life are not well documented. His signature appears on documents from his career. Whether he could read beyond the signing of his name, and if so when and how he learned, is not part of the clear record.