Wild Bill Hickok

Young Bill                         Abilene                        Deadwood

James Butler Hickok (1837-1876)

Gun fighter, Indian scout, Union spy, U.S. Marshal, gambler and actor, James Butler Hickok is one of the Old West's best- known frontier personalities!   

James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was born in Troy Grove, LaSalle County, Illinois on 27 May 1837, the fourth of six children born to William and Polly Butler Hickok.  His father was an abolitionist, who would later be killed because of his stand.  Like his father, Wild Bill was also a supporter of abolition and often helped his father in the risky business of running their "station" on the Underground Railroad.  Later, during the Civil War, he would work as a scout and spy for the Union Army.

The insert is of an 1849 Pocket Colt presented to Wild Bill Hickok by the Pony Express Company.  He later gave the revolver to Captain Jack Crawford.

On 12 July 1861, convalescing from injuries sustained while a wagon master, he was assigned to light duties at the Pony Express stage freight station at Rock Creek, Nebraska.  Conflict developed between Dave McCanles over business and a shared woman, Sarah Shull.  When it was all over, Hickok had killed McCanles from a protected position inside the station, and two other men also lay dead at the hands of Hickok's friends.  It was enough to start the legends and myths, which would begin to spring up surrounding his name.  By the time he was a scout for the Union Army, his reputation with a gun was well-known.  Sometime during his Army days, he backed down a lynch mob, and a woman shouted, "Good for you, Wild Bill!"  It was a name which has stuck for all eternity.

This photo, taken in 1873, is (left to right) Eugene Overton, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Elisha Green.  Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming

After being critically wounded by a Cheyenne lance during a fierce battle, Hickok ended his scouting career and became the U. S. Marshal of the wild town of Hays City, Kansas, moving from there to Fort Riley and on to the even wilder cattle town of Abilene.  In the Fall of 1871, while Marshal in Abilene, he met the notorious James Gang, led by Frank and Jesse James, whom he had gotten to know prior to the Civil War.  He allowed them to stay in town, while they replenished their supplies, on the condition they caused no trouble, a promise the gang kept, but he received a lot of criticism from the townsfolk for his actions.  The next year, he left Abilene, taking up odd jobs, until his friend Buffalo Bill Cody convinced him to join him on the stage in a melodramatic play recreating their alleged exploits.  Wild Bill hated it and finally gave up acting, but he remained with Cody in an early version of Cody's Wild West Show.  Since he had a wide-flung reputation for his speed and accuracy with a weapon, he was an instant star.  With his eyesight failing, however, he left the show in 1874.

Wild Bill was a dashing figure of a man at over six feet tall with bright blue eyes and auburn hair.  According to some reports, he met and married actress Agnes Lake in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1876, but the two never got along, and Bill never liked the tame life.  He soon left, opting for the wild and rowdy mining town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory.  There, in the Black Hills, Calamity Jane would also claim to be married to him, but no proof for this has ever been established, and most historians consider it another one of Calamity's many tall tales.

Martha Jane "Calamity Jane" Canary was an expert with a horse and rifle.  She was also an expert at cussing and drinking, two "sins" which did nothing to endear her to other women.  She led a rough life, supporting herself and her two younger siblings the best way she knew how for her young age of 12.  Through her determination and survival instincts, she became one of the Old West's most famous, and colorful, characters.  Often clad in men's clothes, Jane warned that to offend her was to court calamity.  Legend claims that Wild Bill barely tolerated her, but she always claimed she and Wild Bill were married.  There is disagreement on the year of her birth, either 1848 or 1852, but she died in 1903.

On 2 August 1876, Wild Bill Hickok sat playing poker in the Number Ten Saloon in Deadwood.  He was older, slower, and suffering the early stages of blindness, so he normally sat with his back to the wall, where he could study the room.  On this day, his back was to the door.  He was shot and killed with a bullet to the back of his head by a drunken stranger named Jack McCall, who may have lost $110 to Hickok in a card game the day before.  The hand that Wild Bill held, two pairs -- black aces and black eights -- has gone down in history as the "Dead Man's Hand."  Legend claims his fifth card was the jack of diamonds, but some maintain it was the queen of diamonds.  Calamity, on learning of Bill's death, stormed all over Deadwood looking for McCall.

Wild Bill Hickok lies buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood, South Dakota, and after she died, Calamity Jane, the "White Devil of the Yellowstone," was buried (at her request) next to him for all eternity.  Some historians think Wild Bill groaned and turned over in his grave.  

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