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| James Butler Hickok had been made semi-legendary as Wild Bill in the
penny press and dime novels. As a genuine celebrity his death was
breathlessly covered by the popular press. |
On August 2,
1876 James Butler Hickok a.k.a. Wild Bill, was shot in the back of the head by a drifter, Jack
McCall while playing poker
in a Deadwood saloon. At
the time of his death he was losing for
the day, but held a promising hand with two pairs—black aces, black eights. The
fifth card was a Diamond but its value has never been agreed on. After
Hickok’s death aces and eights became commonalty referred to as the Dead Man’s Hand, although
that designation had previously been
given to other poker hands involved in
fatal altercations.
Hickok was born
in Homer, Illinois in 1837. His father was an abolitionist and
ran a station of the Underground
Railroad out of the family’s barn. Young
James was given his first pistols by
his father to defend the station in
case of raids by slave catchers. Although the
raids never came, the boy became an expert
marksman and something of a local
celebrity for his shooting skills.
He high tailed it to Bloody Kansas in
1855 after he mistakenly thought he had killed
a companion in a fist fight in
which both boys ended up in a canal. Likely
he was drawn to Kansas in support of his father’s views. He quickly enlisted in a Jayhawker militia fighting pro-slavery Bushwhackers. He
met young William Fredrick Cody, then 12 years old and serving
as a scout/spy for the
Jayhawkers.
 |
| A
young Hickok in his early Kansas and Missouri days is
flanked by his parents. He idolized his abolitionist father who gave
him his first pistol as a boy to guard the family barn, an Underground
Railroad station. |
By 1859 both he and
Cody had signed on with the Russell, Waddell & Majors freight company, a contractor for the Pony Express. After being
injured by a bear, he was recuperating on light duty as a stable man at Rock Creek Station in Nebraska when
he was involved in a gunfight with
the former owner of the property David
McCanles and members of his family who demanded a due payment on
the land. In a wild exchange
of fire McCanles was killed. Hickok, the station manager, his wife,
and another employee were all charged with murder but acquitted on
the ground of “defending company
property.” Whether Hickok himself made the fatal shot is still a matter of
dispute.
At the outset
of the Civil War Hickok enlisted as an Army Teamster and
within six months was promoted to wagon master. He served in
the bloody civil war with in the Civil
War in Missouri. He was discharged in September 1862 and disappears from history until late the following year when he was appointed a detective for the Provost Marshal of South-West Missouri working
out of Springfield. There is indirect evidence, and much
speculation that Hickok was serving as a spy during those missing months. He mustered out of the service at war’s
end but stayed in Springfield as a gambler.
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| Hickok's 1865 gunfight with Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri is
considered the first recorded quick draw, stand up gun fight in Western
history. His amazing kill shot at 75 feet made him instantly famous. |
On July 21, 1865 he was involved in a shoot out in the Springfield streets
that is usually considered the first
recorded “quick draw” duel in history—the kind of gunfight that though extremely rare in actuality became a staple of Western movies. He shot
and killed Davis Tutt, a drinking and gambling companion, over
an alleged poker debt and Davis’s wearing of the watch that he took from Hickok as collateral. Several witnesses
attested that both men drew and fired at a distance of 75 yards—ordinarily
far out of range for accurate pistol fire. Tutt, at least,
may have believed that both men
could fire, preserve their honor,
and survive the confrontation. Tutt’s shot
was wild and wide. Hickok sent
a ball completely through Tutt’s
torso, although he was standing in
a sideways dueling posture to reduce his exposure. The shot impressed everyone and cemented
Hickok’s later reputation. Again,
he was acquitted on a murder charge because the judge instructed the jury to considerer the incident a “fair fight.”
Shortly after the trial Hickok, who had acquired the nickname Wild Bill during
the war, was interviewed by Colonel George Ward Nichols for an article that appeared with a woodcut
of a ferocious looking Wild Bill in Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine. Either Hickok hornswoggled the writer, or more
likely given his personal reputation
for not being a braggart, Nichols simply spun a wild but entertaining yarn,
but the article portrayed Hickok as a dead shot who had killed dozens of men.
In reality Wild Bill is known to have killed five
men in gunfights over his entire life or six if credited with McCanles. He
was involved in other, non-fatal scrapes and fights, but his fearsome reputation discouraged many would-be assailants. In addition in his Civil War service and later service as
an Army Scout he undoubtedly killed others.
After losing an election for city marshal of
Springfield that November, Hickok accepted
an appointment as a Deputy
U. S. Marshal at Fort Riley, Kansas. During his
tenure there he also served as a scout
for Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Custer burnished Hickok’s reputation by extolling his “sure shot” ability with
a pistol, bravery, and honor in press interviews. Hickok was involved a number of skirmishes and led small parties seeking out Indian
raiders during Red Cloud’s War.
In 1867 Hickok went
east for the first time to cash in on
his reputation by performing in a western melodrama in Buffalo,
New York. He was a terrible
actor and returned west within a month with a bitter taste in his mouth.
He ran for election as sheriff in Ellsworth County, Kansas but was
defeated. Resuming duties as a Federal Marshal he arrived at wild and woolly Hays City where he arrested a gang of Army deserters and was re-united with
Cody who served as scout for an army detachment sent to help escort the 11 men to trial in Topeka.
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| Hickok in his days as a Cavalry Scout around 1869. |
After an 1869 stint as a scout with the Buffalo
Soldier 10th Cavalry during which time he was wounded in the foot
while rescuing a party of ranchers who had been surrounded
by hostiles in Colorado
near Bijou Creek.
Back in Hays City in July 1869 Hickok finally won an election—two in fact—to serve as
both city marshal and Ellis
County sheriff. Hays
City was then a railhead destination
for the great Texas cattle
drives and the town and county were beset
by wild cowboys fueled on lots
of liquor at the end of a long trek. It’s clear the
Hickok was expected by the town’s “better elements” to clean things up.
In his first month on the job he was involved in two
fatal gunfights. Legal questions arose about his first
election and his defeat at the hands of his deputy for Sheriff in November was overturned on account of
election fraud, Hickok remained in “effective
control” of law enforcement in
the area through most of 1870.
In July of that year he got into a fracas with two drunk and
disorderly 7th Cavalry troopers who
somehow got the best of him. The two held him on the floor of a saloon while
one trooper, John Kile, tried
to shoot him in through the ear. When Kile’s pistol misfired, Hickok wrestled the gun from his companion, Jeremiah
Lonergan, shot him in the knee
and put two balls in Kile, who died the next day. Hickok held up in the town’s Boot Hill for
a few days where the commanding view
and clear field of fire would give
him a chance in case fellow Troopers rode after him in revenge.
That fall, after the town father’s decided to get out of
the business of running a trail head for the cattle drives, Hickok was defeated for re-election and replaced by a much less expensive officer.
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| Hickok in buckskins. He liked to wear his bone-handled Navy Colt
pistols butt forward and tucked into his belt rather than holstered.
Despite the cumbersome arrangement he could get them out with speed and
fire with accuracy...until perhaps his eyesight began to fail. |
In 1870 he became town marshal at Abilene, Kansas which had picked up most of Hays City’s former business as a cow town. On October 5, 1871
Hickok was involved in his last known fatal
gun fight, the outcome of which would haunt
him the rest of his life.
After an earlier
run-in with a drunken saloon keeper—Phil
Coe who was also a business rival to Hickok’s second profession as a gambler—he tried
to arrest the man for discharging a gun on the street. Coe pretended to hand over the
gun, but spun it and took aim at the marshal who fired,
killing him. Another man rushing to the scene caught Hickok’s attention and thinking that he was
under attack by Coe’s friend, killed the second man. That man turned
out to be his own friend and deputy, Mike Williams. Hickok
was inconsolable. He is
known to have written an anguished
letter to Williams’ widow and raised money for the support of her and her children. Some historians
believe that the incident happened because Hickok was beginning to lose his fabled eye-sight, probably from trachoma. He
now occasionally wore spectacles,
but did not have them on the night of the shooting.
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| A publicity photo for the show Buffalo Bill Cody put together in 1873.
After a few months on stage, Hickok came back west temporarily flush. Left to right Elisha P. Green, Hickok, Cody,Texas Jack Omohundro, and Eugene Overton. |
Hickok’s career as a
lawman and a gunfighter was over
within two months. He turned to full time gambling and heavy
drinking. In 1873 Cody convinced him to join with another showman, Texas Jack Omohundro in
a new western stage play. Although this was better received than his first theatrical attempt, he left the show
after a few months with a substantial
purse from the show’s success
and two new Smith & Weston revolvers from his old friend. Those revolvers soon disappeared, probably pawned, as Hickok fell on hard times back out West.
He returned to his old
favorite twin bone handled Colt
1851 .36 Navy Model pistols—by then obsolete cap-and-ball revolvers. He carried them,
usually without holsters, stuck in his belt butt
forward in the fashion of the cavalry and drew them with equal skill
with either a reverse spin or a cross draw.
Frequently a loser at cards, Hickok was arrested for vagrancy several times before winding
up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, another wide open town. He had better
luck there. In March of 1876 he married
Agnes Thatcher Lake, the operator
of a small time circus who was 14 years his senior. Her money may have been a factor, although surviving letters indicate an admiring
and loving relationship.
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| Hickok with his long locks shorn and sporting a goatee with his new Cheyenne family.
Circus proprietor Agnes Thatcher Lake, was better looking than
the formal photographer's frown of the period would indicate despite
being Wild Bill's senior by 15 years. Her daughter Emma, on whom Hickok
reportedly doted, is center. |
Despite his new wife,
however, Hickok signed on as a teamster and guard for a wagon train taking supplies to the Black Hills gold rush town of Deadwood,
a lawless, illegal settlement on Indian
land in what is now South Dakota. His aim was to re-make his fortune in the gold fields,
not as a miner, but by separating miners
from their gold—and possibly
even from their claims. He
may also have had the notion that the new wild town might use his somewhat rusty services as a law man.
Mary Jane Canary, better known as Calamity Jane, joined
the wagon train near Ft. Laramie. This was likely the first time the two met, although she
would later claim to have previously had a child with Hickok and graciously given him up to Agnes
Lake. Calamity was an alcoholic
sometime prostitute, teamster, and a fairly
shrewd business woman who was better
looking than the most frequently seen
picture of her in her teamster’s
buckskins. They were both in Deadwood for some weeks, although
they were not known to have a relationship.
Hickok was drinking
heavily and gambling, mostly unsuccessfully. On August 1, he had a minor run in with Jack McCall that ended with Hickok buying the younger man a drink. Perhaps
because he had been humiliated,
perhaps looking for revenge for a brother he said he believed Hickok had
killed as marshal in Abilene, perhaps to just to gain a reputation as the man who killed Wild Bill, and perhaps at
the urging of local interests that may have been worried about Hickok resuming his lawman career, McCall
entered Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 where Hickok was sitting uncharacteristically with his back to the door and shot him once in
the back of the head crying out “Take this!”
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| Hickok's assassin Jack McCall miraculously was acquitted by an illegal
Deadwood jury. He would not be so lucky when real law got a hold of
him. |
After boasting around town of the killing, he
was captured and put on trial for
murder but somehow acquitted. The
trial, however, in unorganized
Deadwood, had no effect in law. The
next year Federal Marshals re-arrested
McCall and he was tried in Dakota Territory capital Yankton. This
time he was convicted and hanged.
Hickok’s friends
arranged for a Deadwood funeral and burial. The grave was later relocated to the new Mount Moriah Cemetery high
on a hill overlooking the town. Various
monuments were destroyed by souvenir
hunters as the grave became a tourist
attraction until the current bronze
bust and marker were
erected. When Calamity Jane died in 1903, old timers buried her next to Hickok, some said as a joke because “Bill couldn’t stand to be around her” but
probably to further interest tourists.
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| Calamity Jane at Wild Bill's grave after it was moved to Mt. Moriah
Cemetery. She peddled picture post cards of this to tourists for
drinking money. Later she would be buried next to Hickok "as a
joke"--and as an added tourist attraction. |
Hickok was one of the western figures who almost lived up to his reputation—if
you discount the wild exaggerations
of the dime novels and barbershop rags like the Police
Gazette. But in death he became iconic. He has been portrayed in dozens of films,
the best known of which include Wild Bill Hickok staring William
S. Hart in 1923; The Plainsman, C.B. DeMille’s fanciful 1936 epic staring Gary
Cooper; the musical Calamity Jane with Howard
Keel opposite Doris Day in the title role in 1953; Little
Big Man with Jeff Corey as Dustin Hoffman’s mentor in 1970; and the gritty Wild Bill starring Jeff
Bridges in 1995. Wild Bill Elliot and Roy Rogers
both played him in B movie
oaters.
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| Older Baby Boomers like me will remember the long running TV show Wild Bill Hickok
staring heart throb Guy Madison and Andy Divine as comic sidekick
Jingles. Absolutely nothing in the series was remotely like the life of
the real teamster/spy/scout/lawman/actor/gambler/drunk. But we can all
imitate Divine gargling out "Wait for me, Wild Bill!" |
Baby Boomers undoubtedly best remember the long running TV show (1951-’58) The
Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok starring heart throb Guy Madison with Andy
Divine as his comic sidekick Jingles. Other
than the name the TV character had nothing in common with the historical
figure. Much better was David
Milch’s riveting cable
mini-series Deadwood which ran from 2004-2006 with Keith
Carradine as Wild Bill.
Hickok has also
frequently appeared in print in innumerable cheap popular paperback novels, and in comic books, but also in serious
fiction, most significantly in Thomas Burger’s Little Big
Man, Buffalo Gals by Larry McMurtry,
and Darlin’
Bill: A Love Story of the Wild West by Jerome
Charyn.
