Darn it, Lobo, that's nearly all incorrect. There was no confusion between the Blood Indian and the Cherokee; Tom himself took the identity of the Blood to enter a rodeo in 1916 (as Tom Three Persons), then used that to join the U.S. Army (as Tom T. Persons), then used that new identity that the Army issued him to continue his life (changing the spelling to Tom Threepersons). He did not ever spend any time in Alberta, taking that connection from the Blood Indian who was a Canadian citizen and indeed won the Calgary Stampede in 1912. This is all heavily documented; what you've repeated is from the legends that Tom and his second wife sold to writers like Cunningham and Arnold to pay the bills.

The legendary friend he is said to have avenged, Bill White, does not appear to have existed. Instead the friend first receives a name in the legend the year after Tom serves with Doc White at Treasury; so likely that's where the White name came from. Tom was illiterate (the Army notes he could only sign his name) and he did not give any interviews because he spoke very little; instead his wife would give the interviews whilst he was doing the dishes (set out in several Oren Arnold articles).

If he ever spent time in San Antonio, it was nothing to do with being an LEO. The sequence was Army 1916, civilian blacksmith 1920, El Paso P.D. 1920, Treasury 1922, back to EPPD 1922, furloughed from EPPD to Cudahy Ranch 1923, then Customs 1923, then Sheriff's deputy 1925, asked to leave deputy Dec 1927. The end. Then at Heart Bar Cross ranch until 1929 when he sold his guns to Power who died 1931. His own ranch from 1930 until he retired 1958. Died 1969 (believed to have been born 1889, his tombstone states ten years later) after selling his last gun in '68. ALL of the facts about Tom came from the Blood Indian: year of birth, height, weight, schooling, Alberta, all of it.

Tom was with Treasury during Prohibition and Myres did not make such holsters until the 1930s; instead from a one hundred page saddlery catalogue of 1922 he had a few scabbard with enclosed trigger guards. Some legends confuse the 'tomato can' legend with the Threepersons holster; but that tomato can is correctly associated with the first metal-reinforced Border Patrol holster of the '30s; and generally associated with Charlie Askins (who by the way, gave Tio Sam his nickname).

Hopefully he really was Cherokee; certainly all three of his wives were, and there was a monetary and real property benefit to being Cherokee circa 1900 because it was one of the five 'civilised' tribes shifted into Indian Territory, then out again when it became part of the State of Oklahoma (Jelly Bryce was from a tribe in the western part of the State that then was called Oklahoma Territory vs. Indian Territory) in 1907. Cherokee were given land; and unable to prove he was Cherokee, he relied on the benefits of being married to those women who could prove it (Susie, Lorene, and Rose, all appear on the Cherokee Rolls as required).

The real Tom Three Persons, who was a Blood Indian in Calgary, died in 1949 after being trampled in a stampede of his own horses on the Blood Reservation in 1946. He learned of 'our' Tom's scam in 1928 and threatened to sue, because he was shown an article that appeared in a London magazine that said Tom Threepersons was a killer (and he was Tom Threepersons of Alberta after all). As a reservation Indian this was understandably libellous -- he wasn't permitted even to be armed. Neither was he permitted to leave the reservation there without a permit from the Indian Agent. The Blood Indian was a prosperous horse rancher and his herd sold for a half-million in 2018 dollars, in 1950.

The legends spread by Askins and Skelton are good fun but they aren't correct. It appears that Bob McNellis of El Paso Saddlery spread some of these tales about Tom; certainly they appear in a 1988 article about McNellis' company that appeared in American Rifleman.

We've (that's not the royal we) done the research and they didn't; they were working from a scrapbook that had belonged to Tom, held by a collector and loaned out, which contained newspaper articles that Cunningham and Arnold had written. But they didn't have the resources to investigate, and now several authors (I can think of a half dozen) have written the real story of the two different Indians.

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Red Nichols The Holstorian