The saga of Wild Bill Hickock becomes the end of the saga of the savage Bill Springfield Shootout generation legend

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/HOWSTUFFWORKS

Sixty years after vice president Aaron Burr and the first U.S. treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, fought a life-and-death duel, and 16 years before several sheriffs engaged in a fierce gunfight between a dusty spot near O.K. Corral, Arizona, and a criminal gang called the Cowboys, a man named Davis Tutt), a former Allied soldier, a gambler, is preparing to settle an old account. He stepped into the city square of Springfield, Missouri, and became history.

It was July 21, 1865, and on the other side of the square there was a 6-foot-1-inch tall fellow with russet hair curled over his shoulders, a peculiarly long beard under the hooked nose of an eagle, and most importantly wearing a worn-out Mexican broad-brimmed hat. James Butler Hickok is essentially and professionally a former Union soldier and a gambler. At the same time, his marksmanship is also very good.

At about 6 p.m. that afternoon, the two men, armed with gold watches, gambling debts, and perhaps a woman's affection and affirmative pride, became the stars of wild West's first gun-drawn duel.

That afternoon was not going well for the young Mr. Tut. As for J.B. Hickok, many people know his nickname Savage Bill, who became a legend in that shootout in Springfield.

"When approaching each other, it is so inevitable that when they see another person they can attack him ... Then it's up to you to see who pulls out the pistol first. It's also an alternative kind of improvisation," Tom Clavin said. "Savage Bill: The True Story of America's First Border Gunner." But the story spread like a fire on the prairie. It set the stage for gunfights to take place in the decades that followed.

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Born in Illinois in 1837, Hickock headed west as a young man. He served as a Free State soldier in Kansas and as a driver for the Kansas Stagecoach Company. In 1861, at the age of 24, Hickok was in big trouble with the law for the first time, accused of shooting David McCanles during a dispute at Rock Creek Station in Kansas.

Like much of Hickock's life and saga, more than 150 years later, it's hard to say exactly what prompted him to shoot McCalines. But most people agree that McCanleth may have been the first person Wild Bill killed.

In 1968, George W. Hansen wrote in Nebraska History magazine: "From all the killings in which Hickock later participated, I cannot find a single real example of him fighting a fair fight." "No human life is sacred to him. He was a cold-blooded killer with no heart or conscience. ”

Hickock was acquitted in the McCanles murder and later served as a scout, pony, coach captain, emcee, and a joint spy during the Civil War. Along the way, he gambled a lot, with another Wild West legend, William Frederick." Buffalo Bill", Cody became friends, took the nickname "Savage Bill", and impressed a number of women, including the wife of the famous George Armstrong Custer.

Elizabeth" Libby", Bacon Custer," had a completely different view of wild Bill than his critics. Excerpt from her Story of Following Gidon:

I don't remember anything more perfect than Wild Bill's body, who shook lightly from his saddle and walked toward our tent with graceful, swinging steps, straight shoulders, and a standing head. Sure, he was dressed in a strange costume, but everything seemed to be in tune with the time and place.

By the mid-1860s, Wild Bill's fame had spread widely, even if it wasn't fully agreed or particularly convincing. Mrs. Custer tells a second-hand story in her book, once when five men with ill intentions broke into Hickock's room while he was asleep.

She wrote: "Someone heard the noise and then suddenly opened the door, only to find four attackers dead on the floor, while Wild Bill lay drowsy on the body of the fifth assassin. She also wrote that Hickock was chased to a town by three Assassins, who grabbed a Colt pistol from his belt with only one hand and killed one of the attackers without firing back behind him. According to Mrs. Custer, because of these murders, Wild Bill had to leave town.

Inevitably, trouble arises.

Wild Bill was in Springfield in the summer of 1865 and did his favorite thing: gambling. He lost the gold watch to Tut, or Tut simply took it, and in many of the bills of the day, Wild Bill warned Tut not to carry the watch publicly. Tut had regarded Wild Bill as a friend, but he wore the watch defiantly that day.

< H1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Springfield Shootout</h1>

Finally, the two squinted at each other at a distance of about 75 yards (69 meters) from Springfield Square, then drew their pistols. It's not the same as the images in thousands of movies and TV shows — a pistol pulled out of a holster in the middle of the street at midnight — and certainly not a Duel like Burr Hamilton's. Now, the Springfield shootout is thought to have been the first time two people have confronted each other in public in the United States to resolve the dispute through a pistol.

Tut missed it. But Wild Bill stabilized his gun by placing it on his forearm, aimed and hit his target, and killed his opponent in a fit of rage. In February 1867, the showdown was commemorated in an article in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in which author George Ward Nichols quoted a bystander (through the American legend):

Both Tut and Bill opened fire, but the gunshots rang out almost simultaneously, and it's hard to say who started first. Tut was famous for a shot, but this time he missed it; the bullet crossed Bill's head. At the same moment Bill also fired, and before the bullet could hit Tut, he immediately turned around and aimed his pistol at Tut's friends, who had already taken the weapon.

"Sir, are you not satisfied?" Bill yelled, as cool as a crocodile. "Lay down your arms or more people will die." They had to obediently lay down their weapons.

Harper's New Monthly article has been widely criticized by many historians. (In it, Nichols said Bill killed "hundreds" of men, almost certainly.) Still, that article, along with the novel in the Dime Shop at the time, gave many people their first glimpse of Bill's legendary life.

Craven said: "It's not just the nature of the shootout, but Hickock's calmness and his accuracy under pressure. At a time when people weren't so good at using pistols, he killed a person with one shot. "That's just the beginning."

<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the growth path of a generation of legends</h1>

Savage Bill searched for more during the Indian War, took part in more gun battles in two towns in Kansas (Hayes and Abilene), and killed more people (including his deputy, Abilene, who was inadvertently shot in a shootout).

He used his celebrities as much as possible to perform with his friend Buffalo Bill at a stage show at Niblo Gardens in New York City, a spectacle called "Detective Plains" before Broadway. But he also knew that his notoriety came at a price. Craven said Savage Bill was always armed with his foal and often walked in the middle of the streets of town, where it was difficult for people to ambush him through dark doorways.

Savage Bill met Martha Jane Cannary somewhere during her trip, and people are usually more familiar with her other nickname, Caramette Jane, and the two are reportedly in a romantic relationship. But, according to Craven, this never happened. Barbaric Bill married an elderly woman named Agnes Lake, circus owner, in Chyenne, Wyoming, in March 1876.

Craven told The News earlier this year: "No one knows of her existence and she is the only one among Mrs Hickock. "Caramiti Jane is a fascinating character, but Bill can't stand her."

After spending his honeymoon in Cincinnati, Bill leaves again for the Wild West. That was where he was in the summer of 1876.

< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the ending of the legend</h1>

11 years after the tutt shootout, shortly after a wedding to Lake, Bill traveled to The Deadwood, a raucous gold rush town in Dakota Territory, where he intended to make money — gambling, of course — and take it home to his wife. On August 1, 1876, he clashed there with a drunken Kentuckian nicknamed Jack McCall.

Again, the record is not clear what happened or why it happened. But in a salon in the center of town, McCaw fired a shot in the back of Bill's head while he was playing cards. The wound is fatal.

Wild Bill died at the age of 39.

"The gunners in the American West, the lone gunners, the people who go their own way and have the confidence to do things right, we have this archetype in history," Craven said. "Hickock is basically that prototype. He was the first gunner after the Civil War. ”

Throughout Bill's life, he was almost mythologized, and his story has been circulating for more than a century after his death. He is the subject of many biographies, notably the work of the British writer Joseph G. Rosa, "They Call him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickock", and is the first major work on this man.

"Wild Bill" was also the subject of the 1950s TELEVISION series ("The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickory"). In the film, he was featured by Gary Cooper (1936, in Cecil Cooper). B. DeMille (Cecil B. DeMille's "Plainsman"), Roy Rogers (1940, "Young Bill Hickock"), Charles Bronson (1977, White Buffalo), and Jeff Bridges. 1995, Wild Bill) and Luke Hemsworth (2017, Hick). Keith Carradine played an older version of Wild Bill in the HBO series "Deadwood."

For a man who has done a lot in his own short life, Bill is probably best known for his skills, which he first publicly demonstrated in Springfield Square in 1865. But for Clavin, Bill wasn't like that.

"If he's going to describe himself, it's going to be a gambler because he spends more time doing it than anything else." He loved it. He loves to play cards. He loves the environment in which a sedan lives. Men who haven't washed, cigars, whiskey, girls. He really enjoyed this life. "On the other hand, he also spent a lot of time as a scout on the plains, on the prairie. Therefore, he is like two people in one. He could spend weeks on the prairie at once, himself... But when he was in town, he enjoyed it, he wore the Prince Albert dress, he really dressed up like a playboy.

"I thought, maybe a little reluctantly, that he was also a gunman, because that's what he was. But he's not a man who wants to hurt others. He likes others, and others like him. But... He was a gunner. ”

Author/JOHN DONOVAN

Translator/Lancelot

Original/history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/wild-bill-hickok.htm

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