by Tom Clavin
One day, a reporter for The Montana Post took note of the little beggars and, after talking to them, had his story. He determined that Charlotte Canary was a “woman of the lowest grade” and that she and her husband were “inhuman brutes who have deserted their poor, unfortunate children.” Martha’s parents did not have to suffer such criticism for very long. Charlotte died in another mining camp, this one called Blackfoot City, sometime in the spring of 1866. Robert loaded up his children and the family relocated to Salt Lake City, where he died the following year. At age eleven, Martha was the head of the family.
Incredibly, for the future Calamity Jane, life was about to get even rougher. The orphaned siblings were split up, taken in by families who either had kind hearts or could use extra hands with chores. Sometime later, Martha showed up at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, and an 1869 state census had her living in Piedmont. She had been taken in by an Alton family to be a babysitter to two young boys. According to Etulain, one of the boys, when he was an elderly man living in Nebraska, recalled that Martha “spent most evenings dancing with soldiers” and she was seen “dressed in a soldier’s uniform at a party.” His mother fired her.
Martha moved about quite a bit, mostly living in mining and railroad camps and near military forts. She worked at boardinghouses and hotels, cleaning and cooking and anything else that would keep a roof over her head.2 With such a day-in and day-out hardscrabble existence, it is likely true that by her midteens, Martha was a prostitute. In a bare-bones autobiography she “wrote” over two decades later, however, she claims to have been busy as an army scout and Indian fighter.
By the early 1870s, she was living in Cheyenne. This was before the gold rush had begun, and Martha recalled that “there was not a respectable shelter in the place” and that “the proprietor of a tent was a lucky person indeed.” She was by this time known as Calamity Jane. The reason why, she contends in her autobiography, was that during a fight against Indians, she had saved the life of an army captain, and the grateful officer declared she was “Calamity Jane, heroine of the Plains.” There is no evidence to support this. (In addition, the captain apparently didn’t know the definition of “calamity.”) He also later said the story was an invention, but by then, no one wanted to spoil a good tale. More likely, the nickname reflected a dramatic personality, which those who knew her corroborated often and did not have to embellish.
What earned the former Martha Canary some measure of fame came when she was nineteen, in 1875. The year following the Custer expedition into the Black Hills saw a second one, this one commanded by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge. (Dodge City was not named after him, but coincidentally, he did command the fort there for several years.) At the request of William Ludlow and with four hundred men, Colonel Dodge escorted the geologists Walter Jenney and Henry Newton into the Black Hills. Ludlow was the chief engineer of the Dakota Territory, and after accompanying Custer the year before, he remained unconvinced that there were substantial deposits of gold in the region. If he were to prove this, the gold rush would ebb and, presumably, Paha Sapa would remain sacred land.
Embedded with the troops was Calamity Jane. (One of the teamsters driving a wagon was Harry Young, whom Hickok had helped out in Abilene.) By this time, it was common for her to dress like a man, as that made it easier to stay unmolested in the various camps, except when earning money for allowing herself to be molested was involved. That may have been her strategy on this particular expedition. However, she was not incognito for long. One day, she encountered an officer and saluted him. When he returned the salute, several other officers laughed. When the first officer wondered why, he was told the “soldier” he just saluted was Calamity Jane. Apparently, at least a few Bluebellies and officers knew who the soldier really was but saw no harm in it. The embarrassed officer did.
She would eventually be sent packing. But by this time, two Chicago reporters on the excursion who knew of her wrote stories about Calamity Jane, with a few basic facts sprinkled in among the many fictions. A photograph was taken of her at French Creek, and once the gold rush was in full swing—Ludlow’s theory having failed to restrain anyone—a peak in the Black Hills was named for her.
One of the articles about Calamity Jane, published in The Chicago Inter Ocean, claimed that she “has the reputation of being a better horse-back rider, mule and bull-whacker (driver) and a more unctuous coiner of English, and not the Queen’s pure either, than any other man in the command.” It was also said about her that she could outdrink any man. Perhaps for the latter reason and the resulting behavior, several troopers were dispatched to escort Calamity Jane from the Black Hills back to Fort Laramie.
Interviewed in 1904 about Calamity Jane by The Anaconda Standard, a newspaper in Montana, Jack Crawford, who had served as a captain under General George Crook when Calamity Jane “served” under him, said, “She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular.”
The next year, 1876, she was once again camp-following. Bowing to the pressure, the Grant administration essentially tore up the 1868 treaty and opened the Black Hills to settlers, prospectors, and whoever else wanted to stake a claim. Adding insult to injury, the remaining Sioux Indians, so as not to interfere with the influx of whites, were to refrain from hunting from the Powder River region to the Black Hills and to stay within the agencies, or reservations, that had been established for them. Some of the Sioux did not comply, so early that year, three separate army commands were ordered out to force the resisters to the agencies. Heading these commands were Generals Crook and Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon.3
If Calamity Jane had had her way, she might have died with others in the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn. She infiltrated Terry’s command, which included Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s troopers. Again disguised as a man, she drove one of the supply wagons. Again discovered, she was sent back, and in a way missed her chance for a different kind of immortality.
She was seen in Custer City and Rapid City, and then she was back in Cheyenne, where she was arrested for stealing clothes. On June 8, a jury found her not guilty, and she was let out of jail. To announce her release to the citizens of Cheyenne, she strolled through town wearing a gown the wife of one of the deputy sheriffs had provided so she had something decent to wear at her trial. Her next act was to rent a buggy. To prepare for whatever journey she had in mind, Calamity Jane celebrated her release “by getting speedily and comfortably drunk,” according to a newspaper account.
She claimed she was about to ride the three miles to Fort Russell. Instead, she showed up at Fort Laramie, ninety miles away, and still quite drunk. When able, she pushed on to Fort Fetterman, and from there to Sheridan, Wyoming, this time infiltrating Crook’s command. It barely survived a furious assault by Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Rosebud. Calamity Jane may have experienced some of the fighting side by side with the hard-pressed troopers, but that did not prevent her from being sent packing again, this time accompanying the wounded to Fort Fetterman.
In her version of events, which reporters eager for stories lapped up, at this time, Calamity Jane was not a persistent camp follower but a scout and messenger for General Crook. She claimed to be the “bearer of important dispatches” that had to get to Crook, and after swimming across the Platte River, she rode those ninety miles, the ordeal causing her to come down with a “severe illness.” After fulfilling her mission, Calamity was taken back to Fort Fetterman in Crook’s personal ambulance and spent two weeks lingering near death in a hospital before recovering. This puts her in a more favorable light than does a drunken buggy ride, but little of her account is true.
In any case, it was back to her calamitous ways, setting off to join up with General Crook again. This time, Calamity Jane posed as a teamster, and a wagon master, believing she was a man, hired her. She pulled her weight well enough that it was not until the command was near Fort Reno that she was discovered. She was arrested, and accor
ding to the recollection of one of the officers, she was “placed in improvised female attire.” She may not have stayed in this costume long. Crook’s chief of scouts, Frank Grouard, later maintained that after several scouts had to be dispatched elsewhere, Calamity Jane did indeed fill that role. Given her ability to ride and shoot and her by then plentiful knowledge of the territory—in an 1896 interview, she told a reporter, “I knew every creek an’ holler from the Missouri to the Pacific”—this is not far-fetched.
When Crook’s command was back at Fort Laramie, she got into a drunken row with several troopers and was offered accommodations in the guardhouse. When she was released, it was with encouragement to move on. A lot of people were heading to Deadwood, on the other side of the border in South Dakota, north of the Black Hills. The town seemed to have sprung up overnight. Calamity Jane just had to figure out getting there.
Thus, the timing was just right when Wild Bill Hickok came along.
Chapter Nineteen
A MARRIED MAN
Only a few years after being founded and acquiring its raunchy reputation, Cheyenne was undergoing that inevitable frontier progression toward becoming civilized. Law and order, not rowdiness, was what the majority of the more established residents wanted. The efforts of the local and county peace officers had proven effective, but the big difference was the outlook along the frontier shared by many new settlers.
“The new hero of the western towns would soon be the shrewd businessman, the booster and joiner, whose sons and grandsons today let their whiskers grow and strap on guns in celebration of ‘Old Frontier Week,’ or some such, and pay curious reverence to the ‘badmen’ their ancestors kicked out of town,” writes Richard O’Connor. “Indubitably the Sons of Temperance won out over the Sons of Guns.” He added that Hickok was now “a member of the old breed.”
He was made to feel his years—though he had only just turned thirty-eight—on June 17, 1875, when he was arrested. Wild Bill was not arrested for rowdiness or shooting someone or brawling … but again for vagrancy. The loafing around had finally frustrated the local lawmen enough that Hickok was brought to the lockup, and he had to post a two-hundred-dollar bail to be let out. It was unlikely that he was the most visible or “active” loafer in Cheyenne—and with his sartorial splendor, he would hardly be mistaken for being a bum—so the thinking may have been that cuffing Wild Bill Hickok sent a loud message.
And that message was clear: Those uncomfortable with the direction toward a civilized society could move on. There was still plenty of frontier left to explore, some of it offering gold. By this time, the Grant administration had accepted that it simply did not have the political will and the military manpower to prevent the exploration and settlement of the Black Hills. The president authorized a treaty commission to travel west with an offer of six million dollars to buy the Black Hills from the Lakota Sioux.
Putting aside the belief among tribal leaders that the land was not to be bought or sold by anyone, this seemed a small amount for such precious and priceless territory. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail and other leaders said no. They told the commission to go back east and take all the white intruders with them. The response of the Grant administration was to declare victory and announce that it had purchased the Black Hills. The view was that before long the Sioux, who had fewer ways to feed their people and suffered through every winter, would come to their senses and accept the six-million-dollar payment. When that day came, the money would be waiting for them in a Treasury Department escrow account.1
As a result of the “sale,” the army ended all efforts to restrict access to the Black Hills. In the spring of 1876, the Sioux would prepare for war. Crazy Horse would again lead the attacks, this time under the command of Sitting Bull. Meanwhile, explorers, gold-seekers, freight companies, settlers, and the simply curious streamed into the newly acquired territory.
Hickok, however, was not yet in a hurry to journey into the Black Hills. By this point, he may have felt even less able physically to undertake long days of prospecting. In addition, during the rest of 1875 and into the winter, his eyesight had continued to fade, perhaps at an accelerated rate as he continued without any treatment other than the blue-lensed glasses to reduce the painful impact of the sunlight. By this time, he may have felt familiar enough with his surroundings in Cheyenne that he thought he was not as much at risk as he would be out in the open. Now, bravado and his reputation were better protection than his pistols.
Joseph Rosa comments that Hickok “displayed an air of confidence that he obviously did not feel. It is alleged that several times, at risk of losing face” by not responding to a challenge, “he laughed off would-be glory hunters by hinting that his eyes had ‘gone back on me.’” Rosa speculates that this could also be “a gesture of contempt for the individual concerned—that even without his eyes Hickok believed he could still beat them—and would not deign to waste his time and energy. Regardless of the reaction, Wild Bill Hickok never wasted time in explanation. He continued to maintain that princely aloofness that had marked him through life when he meant to make it obvious he wished to be left alone.”
With the exception of that one vagrancy charge, he was. But when the new year began with celebrations across the country for the centennial of the United States, Hickok determined to get moving in the spring. He had been hearing about Deadwood, where some people were getting rich overnight. And then life took an unexpected turn: Mrs. Agnes Lake came to Cheyenne.
This was not by chance. She and Hickok had continued to write each other. He addressed her as Mrs. Lake and then more often as Agnes, and she would address him only as James. He may have asked her to visit him, though midwinter in Wyoming was not a desirable time to travel, especially for a lady used to the warmer destinations of the circus season. And Hickok was probably reluctant to admit he needed her; his pride would not allow that hint of weakness. Most likely, Agnes, a successful businesswoman and far from being a delicate flower, decided to go west because she loved Wild Bill Hickok and they had danced around their feelings long enough.
Her stated reason for arriving in Cheyenne was to visit with S. L. Moyer, a businessman who was related to Agnes in some fashion, and his family. February was not the most appealing time of year to undertake such a journey, but Agnes still had a circus to operate and take on the road come spring. And from their correspondence, she knew Hickok was there and had not followed through on plans to go to the Black Hills. Just in case, if she truly wanted him, she had better get to Cheyenne before he did find sufficient motivation to prospect for gold—and while the tender feelings he had expressed in letters were still fresh in his heart.
Agnes stayed at Moyer’s home, and it did not take long before Hickok learned of this. After letting Agnes get settled in with the Moyer family, on March 4, Hickok called on her there. He may have done this because of those tender feelings, or simply as a courtesy, or perhaps, given his uncertain circumstances, he was not as opposed to marriage and circus life as he had been years earlier.
Neither one of them had a lot of time to play with. Hickok would be thirty-nine that May, with plenty of mileage on him. On her last birthday, Agnes had turned forty-nine. She now even had a married daughter. The previous November, Emma had married Gil Robinson, who represented yet another generation of Robinsons in the circus industry. Conceivably, Agnes could be a grandmother in the near future.
Accepting the march of time, Wild Bill and Agnes did not waste any of it. The result of their conversation behind closed doors in the parlor of the Moyer house that day was the two emerging to announce that they were to be married. If that was not surprising enough, they insisted that they would have the ceremony performed the very next day.
On March 5, 1876, James Butler Hickok and Mrs. Agnes Lake were married. The ceremony took place at the Moyer home, performed by the Reverend W. F. Warren, a Methodist minister. It was witnessed by the Moyer family and a handful of Hickok’s Cheyenne acquaintances.
That evening
, Mr. and Mrs. Hickok got on a train that took them to St. Louis, where they transferred to another train, this one to Cincinnati. They would honeymoon there for two weeks, with Agnes introducing her new husband to her hometown, friends, extended family, and no doubt a few strangers who were astonished to find the famed Wild Bill Hickok in such sedate surroundings.
During this time, the plan they formulated was that Agnes would remain in Cincinnati to attend to circus business, which could include exploring a way to turn all or most of the management over to others, possibly Emma and especially Gil Robinson, given his family’s “wagon show” background. Hickok’s exploring would be in the Black Hills area. When he did indeed find things going his way, he would either send for his wife or return in triumph.
“I expect to join him sometime in the Fall,” Agnes wrote to Polly Hickok, her new mother-in-law. “He is going to take a party to the Black Hills and I expect to remain [in Cincinnati] until he sends for me. It is hard to part so soon after being married but it is unavoidable and I am content.”
The evening came when Agnes saw her new husband off on the train that would take him to St. Louis and then back to the new frontier. After just the two weeks of marriage, they would never see each other again.
This would also be true of the Hickoks in what was now Troy Grove, Illinois. On his way west, James Butler stopped there to see his mother and siblings. This may have been for only a couple of days. He was now excited about getting to the Black Hills, making a solid strike at the gaming tables or in the field. When he saw his family again after that, it would be as a successful man, not as a fading frontier legend.