Yesterday we commemorated the death of Calamity Jane, the colorful “partner” of Wild Bill Hickok, who died on August 1, 1903. Today, we commemorate the death of Wild Bill himself, who died this day in 1876 at the age of 39– shot to death in a saloon in Deadwood South Dakota by a disgruntled gambler. Born James Butler Hickok in 1837, he was raised on a farm in Illinois, Bill fled west in about 1855, after a violent altercation with another man who Bill thought he had killed (mistakenly). Over the course of the next two decades, he gained his reputation as a soldier in the Civil War, then as a scout during the heyday of the pioneer era. For a time, he was a sheriff and deputy U.S. Marshall in Missouri and Kansas. Bill was also a notorious gunslinger, and was involved in many shootouts, killing at least half a dozen men in the process. One of his more famous shootouts was with a man named Phil Cole, who he gunned down in the streets of Abilene Kansas in October 1871.
Bill picked his own nickname, “Wild Bill,” starting in 1861, after using several other monikers. After the shooting of Bill Coe, Wild Bill put together a touring group of cowboys and Indians, which failed to gain an audience, but he was recruited by none other than Buffalo Bill Cody to join his own touring group. He lasted only a few months in that job. He then moved to Wyoming, married an older woman, then abandoned her and left for South Dakota. The evidence is sketchy, but Bill may or may not have had an intimate relationship with Calamity Jane, who met him either before or after his arrival in Deadwood— the facts are unclear. Jane claims she married him, but there is not evidence to support that claim, even though they are buried side-by-side.
It was on August 2, 1876 that Bill was murdered by Jack McCall in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon #10 in Deadwood (which is still there). After two trials, McCall was found guilty and hanged in March 1877. A long list of movies and television shows portray the life and death of Wild Bill Hickok, including The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill— a testament, perhaps, to one of the most colorful and mythologized cowboys of the American West. The story of his sometimes troubled and violent life lives on.
