Heck Bruner
Eli Hickman “Heck” Brunerwas a fearless U.S. Deputy Marshal who served in Oklahoma during the time that it was Indian Territory.
Eli was born on February 13, 1859, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, to Eli W. and Mary E. Collins Bruner. When he grew up, he became a U.S. Deputy Marshal and was commissioned in 1880 in the Western District of Arkansas, assigned to the Cherokee Nation, serving under Marshal Jacob Yoes. The following year, he married Sara A. Laura Bradley on June 23, 1881, and the couple would eventually have three children.
His career as a federal lawman brought him into contact with numerous criminals over the years. In March 1892, he brought in James Craig, a member of the Wahco Hampton Gang, who had killed Deputy Marshals Thomas Whitehead and Josiah Poorboy. On November 2, 1892, Heck was one of the 16 deputy marshals who stormed Ned Christie’s cabin in the Cherokee Nation, leaving the alleged outlaw dead. Later, the lawmen rode with a posse to arrest two members of the Rogers Brothers Gang – Sam Rogers and Ralph Hedrick, who had been charged with robbing a bank in Mound City, Kansas. When they came upon the pair of outlaws, gunfire erupted, Hedrick was killed, and Rogers was wounded.
In January 1894, Heck led the posse that captured a murderer called Dynamite Jack. The following year, he was at the Fort Smith, Arkansas jail when Cherokee Bill tried to escape and killed Deputy Marshal Larry Keating on July 26, 1895. On one occasion, the federal officer was forced to shoot his cousin when the man resisted arrested for train robbery. On June 22, 1899, while Bruner was trying to cross the Grand River near Vinita, Oklahoma, to serve several warrants for the Muskogee Federal Court, he found the ferry boat unattended on the far side. Heck made the unfortunate decision to swim across the rain-swollen river and drowned. His body was found the following day.
© Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated November 2022.
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