by Enss, Chris
Beard was drunk when he chased his lover out of his place and into the Rowdys’ establishment, located a mere fifty feet away. Kate was busy dealing cards and Joe was conversing with a half dozen cowhands from Texas when Josephine and Beard burst into the den. Josephine hurried away from the angry man, disappearing down a long corridor of the upstairs bordello. Lifting his gun out of his holster, Beard raced after her. Kate and Joe left their work and quickly hurried after the pair. Each had a weapon drawn. By the time they made it up the stairs, Beard had already fired off a shot. The woman he hit was not Josephine, however. It was Annie Franklin, a prostitute mistaken for the fleeing woman. Joe followed closely after Beard, and Kate remained behind to care for the injured woman.
After a classic street gunfight in which an innocent bystander was caught in the crossfire and blinded, Joe shot Beard in the side. Beard never recovered from the wound. Joe was arrested for the murder, subsequently tried, and acquitted. The man that was left blind from the ordeal pursued a lawsuit against Joe, and he was bound over by the local sheriff’s office for another trial. Convinced Joe would not be as lucky in a second hearing, Kate helped her paramour escape custody. She was then arrested for aiding an accused criminal.
Kate was not convicted and was later released. She never saw Rowdy Joe again. He was shot and killed at the Walrus Saloon in Denver on February 11, 1899.
In spite of the demise of her relationship with Joe Lowe and her recent run-ins with the law, Rowdy Kate managed to keep the saloon open for a while. In 1877 she pulled up stakes and moved to Fort Worth, Texas. She purchased another business that catered to the debaucheries of mankind and in no time was turning a hefty profit.
Politicians and citizens opposed to the combination gambling den/saloon/bordello fought such places. On two separate occasions Kate was charged with “keeping a house of ill-fame” and fined $100. The amount was a pittance in comparison to the money she made from the business as a whole.
Kate remained in the Fort Worth area for eleven years. According to records at the Kansas Historical Society, she then moved on to Big Springs, a fast-growing cattle town in the heart of Texas. From there she went to Fort Griffin and continued with her usual line of work, gambling and managing prostitutes.
In 1888 Kate was traveling via stage from Fort Griffin to Fort Worth and back again when she met a little girl who changed the course of her life. The stage passed the young girl afoot on the road, and she ran after the vehicle, begging the driver to stop. When he did she asked if the road she was on led to Fort Griffin. The driver assured her it did and then hurried his team along. Kate witnessed the exchange, took pity on the child, and demanded the driver stop to give her a ride. At first the teamster refused, stating he believed the girl had no money for a ticket. After Kate paid for the girl’s passage, the stage stopped.
Once aboard, the girl told Kate that she was an orphan and had no home. Upon their arrival in Fort Griffin, Kate made arrangements for the local hotel owner and his wife to take the child into their home. The couple, who had one adopted son, eventually adopted the girl. The child grew up to be a schoolteacher, and she and Kate were a major part of one another’s lives.
According to Josiah Wright Mooar, a buffalo hunter and one of Kate’s closest friends, the close relationship she had with the girl helped change her immoral ways. Kate was a surrogate aunt and took her responsibility for the child seriously. The reformation included giving up operating saloons and bordellos and playing cards. She attended church regularly and raised funds for various charitable endeavors. Rowdy Kate died in 1928 in San Angelo, Texas. She was estimated to have been seventy-three years old.
Martha Jane Canary
The Black Hills Calamity
“I was considered the most reckless and daring rider and one of the best shots in the western country.”
Calamity Jane, 1896
A massive wagon train, 190 people strong, inched its way into the booming metropolis of Deadwood, South Dakota. The dusty, white canvas tops of the slow-moving vehicles could be seen for miles by anyone who might have glanced into the near distance. Most residents weren’t that interested in newcomers to the congested gold rush camp. Business owners along the main thoroughfare might have felt differently, but many viewed the presence of more settlers as competition for the gold in the Black Hills.
The procession of Conestoga wagons would hardly have been noticed if not for the two figures escorting the caravan. The normally preoccupied citizens who caught a glimpse of the buckskin-clad riders took time out of their usual routine of prospecting, purchasing supplies, and visiting various saloons to watch the train lumber along. Richard Hughes, a reporter for the Black Hills Daily Times, was the first to recognize the outriders as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
“The two were dressed in buckskin with sufficient fringe to make a buckskin rope,” Hughes later wrote. “They were both wearing white Stetsons and clean boots. Jane was an Amazonian woman of the frontier, clad in complete male habiliments and riding astride. Yelling and whooping, she waved her fancy Stetson at all the men jammed into the crooked, narrow street.”
Calamity Jane’s entrance into Deadwood Gulch in June 1876 was an appropriate beginning for the eventful life she would lead during her time there. In addition to her nonconforming manner of dress, she was exceptionally skilled in areas traditionally reserved for men. She drove heavy freight wagons over rough western terrain, cracking a bullwhip with expert precision. She could ride, rope, drink, curse, and gamble with the best of the male population and if provoked would even fistfight with the opposite sex.
If curious miners missed the commotion surrounding her first arrival into the area, they need not have been disappointed; another public display would not be far behind.
Calamity Jane began acting out against what the world thought a girl should be like when she was a youngster. Ornery cousins who pelted her with corncobs in hopes that their action would make her cry were surprised when she stood up to them, hurling expletives their way.
She was born in Princeton, Missouri, on May 1, 1852. Her mother, Charlotte Canary, named her Martha Jane. According to historian Duncan Aikman, Calamity came by her unconventional attitude honestly. Charlotte was an original thinker as well. She wore bold colored dresses many considered gaudy and flirted openly with men who could not resist her striking good looks. Her husband, Robert Canary, tried desperately to reform his wife and keep the town from talking about her shameless behavior, but was unable to do so.
Robert spent long hours farming in the fields around the family home. Charlotte busied herself doing anything other than making sure her children were close by. Calamity and her siblings were generally left to their own devices. Calamity spent the bulk of her time with neighboring boys, riding horses, hunting, and swimming in the watering hole. Calamity was more comfortable around rowdy boys than properly behaved little girls. In her estimation boys seemed to have more fun and weren’t afraid of getting a little dirty. By the time Robert decided to move his wife and children west of the Mississippi, Calamity was a twelve-year-old rebel. A tomboy who snuck drinks of whiskey and the occasional chew of tobacco, she preferred pants to dresses and riding to cooking.
Calamity Jane was a true western legend. She lived an unconventional life for a woman of her time.
Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Rose 2130
Calamity’s wild, unconventional ways fit right in with the untamed frontier. As the Canarys made their way west, Calamity roamed the countryside on horseback. When she wasn’t exploring the new land she was learning how to be a teamster. She practiced with the same thirty-foot bullwhip the wagon train leader used to get the livestock to hurry along. The bullwhackers taught the young girl much more than how to snap a whip. Her education included how to smoke a cigar, play poker, and swear. The latter was a trait she would eventually elevate to an art for
m. In years to come she would be named the “champion swearer of the Black Hills of Dakota.”
Calamity continued to feel more at ease with men than women as she grew older. In her autobiography she noted that men “were as rough and unpredictable as the wild country she had fallen in love with.” While other preteen girls dreamed of motherhood, social status, or a career on stage, Jane wanted only to pursue her exploration of the high prairie.
The rowdy life surrounding the mining community of Virginia City, New Mexico, where the Canarys settled, suited Calamity. She liked the sounds emanating from the saloons and the gunfights that played out up and down the streets. Her parents were so engrossed in themselves and their own problems, both marital and financial, that they paid little or no attention to where Calamity and her brothers and sister were spending their time. In fact, days would pass when neither Charlotte nor Robert would be home at all. The Canary children were forced to fend for themselves.
In 1865 Calamity’s father passed away, and a year later her mother died. Robert’s death is believed to have been a suicide and Charlotte was stricken with pneumonia. At fifteen years of age, Jane took over the care of her siblings. It wasn’t long before the task proved to be too overwhelming and she abandoned the responsibility and headed to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The bawdy community was crowded with soldiers from nearby military posts Fort Steele and Fort Bridger. Calamity made several of the men’s acquaintance, picking their brains about their experiences in the service, sharing a drink or two with them, and joining in on a game of poker. She wasn’t the best card player, but occasionally she got lucky enough to win a hand. Her winnings kept her in food, alcohol, and cigars.
At sixteen Calamity took a job as a bullwhacker for a wagon train of hunters. News of a woman working in such a capacity spread from town to town. People referred to her as that “Canary girl—the one that drinks a quart of whiskey and curses like your grandfather and can drive a team like mad.”
Over the next eight years, Calamity would be employed by a variety of wagon freight lines throughout the West. In the process she became thoroughly acquainted with the terrain and its native inhabitants. As time went on and her reputation as a tough woman teamster grew, she boldly began to challenge saloon owners’ policies about serving females. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, she marched into a tavern on Main Street and ordered herself a drink. It was the first of many saloons where she would enjoy a libation. With only one exception, she was always served promptly. When a bartender in Denver, Colorado, refused to provide her with a shot, she pushed the barrel of her pistol into his face and demanded he rethink his position.
Calamity was not content with only being allowed to drink in saloons; she wanted to be able to gamble publicly as well. She particularly enjoyed a hand of five-card stud. Seldom if ever did she spend any time at the faro tables. She believed that “chance always favored the house” in that game.
It was while drinking and playing cards that Calamity found the best audience for her many tales. They served to further enhance her already inflated reputation with the westward pioneers. In early 1877, while gambling at a Rapid City saloon, an inebriated Jane told the men in the game with her about her time scouting for General George Custer. The cowhands turned their attention away from their cards and focused solely on Calamity. Custer had met his end in July the previous year at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and interest in his Seventh Cavalry troops and in the boy general himself was high. In her autobiography she told the story this way:
“In the spring of 1876, we were ordered north with General Crook to join General Miles, Terry and Custer at Big Horn River. During this march I swam the Platte River at Fort Fetterman as I was the bearer of important dispatches. I had a 90 mile ride to make, being wet and cold, I contracted a severe illness and was sent back in General Crook’s ambulance to Fort Fetterman where I laid in the hospital for 14 days.”
Historians doubt her story to be entirely true. In an article that appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in 1906, writer George Hoshier, who knew Calamity, scoffed at her claim. “She did come into the hills with General Crook and wore men’s clothing at that time, but she was no more a scout than I was.”
True or not, Calamity’s story achieved the desired twofold effect. The more she talked, the more drinks the men she was playing poker with bought her. Their concentration on the cards was shaken to the point that they lost the majority of hands to the legendary character.
Calamity Jane’s adventures as a stage driver, bullwhacker, and part-time nurse were captured in several dime novels. Released in the 1870s, the publications further blurred the line between truth and fabrication. They did, however, make for good reading and transform the rugged woman, who had actually known a string of jobs from laundress to prostitution, into a celebrity. The notoriety prompted gamblers across the West to invite Jane to sit in on a hand and was worth countless rounds of drinks.
Calamity acquired her handle in the early 1870s, and there are almost as many explanations as to how she got the name as there are old-timers. Among the most popular explanations is the one from Aikman, who writes that “Calamity was associated with her because she carried guns ostentatiously, suffered through several buggy accidents and was generally considered unlucky.” Other historians note that the name was given to her by an army lieutenant she nursed back to health after he had suffered through a bout with smallpox. He called her “an angel in calamity.”
After getting to know James Butler Hickok in 1872 through her friend Buffalo Bill Cody, Jane hoped her days of being in the center of one adversity after another had finally ended. Since she and the dashing lawman/gunfighter had first met, she had been taken with him. Hickok was fascinated with Calamity’s bravado and amused by her wild antics. The pair was destined to become friends. She wanted there to be more, but Hickok was not interested in her in that way. When she rode into Deadwood with him in 1876, she had a fleeting hope that he might change his mind about her.
Calamity Jane followed Wild Bill in and out of the gambling dens like a smitten fan. She sat beside him and played poker, smoked, and chewed tobacco. He laughed in amusement at her remarks to the curious townspeople always at their heels.
“Hello, you sons of mavericks,” she would call out. “When are you going to buy the drinks?” The crowd was always quick and eager to oblige.
The delight Jane felt whenever she was in the vicinity of Hickok was short lived. Within three weeks of their arrival in Deadwood, a gunman shot and killed Bill while he was playing poker. Calamity was heartbroken. After changing out of her buckskins and putting on a dress, she purchased a bottle of whiskey and went to the undertaker’s office where Hickok was lying in state. She proceeded to get drunk, and she howled and cried over his body.
Under the rough, coarse exterior the brave icon preferred to display was a gentle, nurturing side that came out in times of extreme crisis. When an outbreak of smallpox threatened to decimate the Black Hills population in 1878, Calamity helped nurse the sick. She was one of the few women willing to venture into the quarantined area and care for the suffering. One of her friends bragged that Jane was “the last person to hold the head and administer consolation to the troubled gambler or erstwhile bad man who was about to depart into the new country.”
Once the emergency had ended, Calamity returned to the saloons and her two favorite vices, drinking and poker.
When Deadwood became respectable and civilized, Jane moved on. It would be fifteen years before she returned to the town to visit the grave of her dearly departed Wild Bill again. During the time of her absence from the town, she claimed to have appeared briefly with Buffalo Bill in his Wild West show, met and married a man in El Paso, Texas, and had a child. Some historians doubt the validity of any of these claims.
It is a fact that in 1896 her autobiography was printed and that she subsequently embarked on a brief lecture career, touring the East Coas
t and sharing stories about her time on the frontier. She didn’t enjoy the refinements of cities like New York and Chicago, however, and longed to be back in the West. She eventually returned to the Black Hills, taking up where she left off. She drank to excess and gambled away all of her earnings.
By 1902 Jane was broke and seriously ill. Well-meaning citizens helped pay her fare to Deadwood, where she begged to be sent. Old friends there, who remembered her kindness during the smallpox epidemic, took Calamity into their care. Her health would never fully be restored. She began having episodes of delirium and would stand in the middle of the street shouting about her time with Hickok and the daughter she believed she had.
On August 1, 1903, Calamity Jane passed away. It was almost twenty-seven years to the day Wild Bill Hickok had been shot. Although the cause of death was listed as inflammation of the bowels and pneumonia, those close to Calamity believed alcohol was the real culprit.
Deadwood residents were given the chance to pay their last respects to the frontier woman at her funeral. Many paraded past her body lying in a casket at the undertaker’s parlor. A protective wire fence had to be placed over her head to stop souvenir hunters from cutting off pieces of her hair. Fifty-one-year-old Calamity Jane’s last request was that she be buried next to the only man she ever loved, Bill Hickok.
Calamity Jane is nationally and internationally known. Her memory has been kept alive in numerous books and movies about her life and times. She has even been memorialized in the game of poker she loved so much: The queen of spades is often referred to as a Calamity Jane.