A Wild West Story of How a 19th-Century Danish Outlaw Reformed Himself and Became a US Marshal

A photograph of Chris Madsen, between 1890 and 1916, in the Frederick S. Barde Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. (Oklahoma Historical Society)

America has always drawn much of its strength from the diversity of its population. As Abraham Lincoln said, America was the “last best hope,” especially so for immigrants, many of whom had escaped from repressive regimes or were looking for new opportunities. And America provided that fresh start for countless immigrants, including a young man from Denmark, Christen Madsen Rormose.

Rormose had gotten off to a bad start. By the time he was in his early 20s, he had served five sentences in the Copenhagen prison, between 1869 and 1874, for convictions of begging, vagrancy, fraud, and forgery. While prison records reveal him to be perceived as intelligent, he was also “a cold, artful scoundrel who evidently had no intention of changing his ways,” according to his biographer Nancy B. Samuelson. Denmark had given up on Rormose as a habitual offender and deported him to America. Deportation was a common practice in several European countries in the late 1800s. The Danish government paid his passage to the United States. This was a turning point in the young man’s life.

A New Name and a New Life

Immigration greatly increased in the 1870s due to numerous factors, including land and job shortages, rising taxes, and crop failure and famine. In 1875, the Page Law placed restrictions on the immigration of criminals, prostitutes, and other undesirables, but it mostly targeted Chinese contract laborers. Rormose managed to evade detection of his past.

A portrait of Madsen in the Rocky Mountains around the time he was appointed as President Chester A. Arthur’s guide to Yellowstone, circa 1883–1885. Frederick S. Barde Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. (Oklahoma Historical Society)

Upon his arrival, he dropped his last name of Rormose and became Chris Madsen. Arriving in New York, he found the nearest Army recruiting station and enlisted on January 21, 1876. The Army agreed with him, and he served for 15 years. Madsen told fanciful stories about his prior service in the Danish Army and French Foreign Legion. However, no documentation of this military service exists.

When Madsen signed on, the United States was heavily into the Plains Indian Wars. He participated in the Bighorn-Yellowstone Expedition shortly after the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876) when Custer and his column were annihilated. Madsen claimed to have helped bury Custer’s lost men. He did fight the Ute people in September 1879, and in 1883 he served as a guide to Yellowstone National Park for President Chester A. Arthur.

While at Fort Reno in Oklahoma Territory, Madsen received an offer to be a deputy U.S. marshal. He put in his papers for discharge, and the Army released him on January 10, 1891. He became deputy U.S. marshal under Marshal William Grimes, with his job being to help police the vast Oklahoma Territory.

President Roosevelt and a team of his Rough Riders in San Antonio, Texas, 1905. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

The Roughest Job in the West

Madsen soon learned that Oklahoma and Indian Territory were magnets for the worst elements in society. All the desperadoes fleeing the law made Oklahoma and Indian Territory their destination, where they thought they were safe. Col. D.F. MacMartin wrote this about the beginnings of Oklahoma City, making picturesque descriptions of the characters of the time:

History has never recorded an opening of government land [land run of 1889] whereon there was assembled such a rash and motley colony of gamblers, cut-throats, refugees, demi-mondaines, bootleggers and crooks of both high and low degree. … The spectacular array included the Kansas Jayhawker, the Arkansaw Reuben Glue, shaking with the buck ague; the Missouri puke, the Texas Ranger, the Illinois sucker, et. al. There were nesters, horse thieves, train robbers, high-jackers, bank raiders, yeggmen, ragamuffins and vagabonds, brand blotters, broncho busters, sheep herders, cow punchers, spoofers, bull whackers, cow punchers, range riders, minute jacks, wildcatters, fourflushers, Chevalrie d’industrie, outlanders, mountebanks, confidence men, sand lotters and proletariats, sun chasers, blown up suckers, fire-eaters, camp followers, tender feet, land whales, butterfly-chasers, bubble-blowers, remittance men, blue-sky promoters, sour-doughs, ticket of leavers, fellows with nicked reputations, geezers who had just been liberated from the hulks and had ugly corners in their lives to live down. … There was Paiute Charley, Cold Deck Mike, Alibi Pete, Alkali Ike, Comanche Hank, False Alarm Andy, Poker Jim, Rattlesnake Jack, Six-shooter Bill and Cactus Sam.

This was the world Chris Madsen stepped into as a lawman—probably the toughest assignment for a lawman in the country. Yet Madsen thrived in his job, often working with Deputy U.S. Marshals Heck Thomas and Bill Tilghman. Over 300 outlaws were either apprehended or killed by Madsen, Thomas, and Tilghman. They became known as the “Three Guardsmen.”

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The three were responsible for bringing down Bill Doolin and the Doolin–Dalton Gang. Madsen was personally responsible for the killings of Doolin Gang members Dan “Dynamite Dick” Clifton, George “Red Buck” Waightman, and Richard “Little Dick” West.

A 1915 document by the Eagle Film Company describes the motion picture “Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws,” in which Madsen and his colleagues play themselves. (Public Domain)

Always a Man Ready for Action

In 1898, Madsen joined Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, serving as quartermaster sergeant. Following the Spanish–American War, he returned to his old job as deputy U.S. marshal. In 1906, Madsen worked as the chief deputy under Marshal Jack Abernathy and became interim U.S. marshal from January 1 to March 31, 1911.

Madsen completed his career in law enforcement in 1913, but he continued in various roles as a guard, court bailiff, and superintendent of the Union Soldiers’ Home. When World War I began, he unsuccessfully tried to enlist in the Army. On January 9, 1944, at the age of 92, Madsen died in the Masonic Home for the Aged in Guthrie, Oklahoma, while suffering a broken hip. Thus ended one of the most remarkable careers in American law enforcement. Madsen had lived the immigrant’s dream, beginning as an ex-convict and ending his career as the U.S. marshal for the State of Oklahoma. Only in America was such a journey possible.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.