THE STORY OF CALAMITY JANE

Many may remember the story of Calamity Jane from a movie of the same name starring Doris Day. But again, truth is even stranger than fiction, and a whole lot more entertaining!

A lot of the stories about Calamity Jane may be tall tales—it’s hard to tell. During that time, many high-profile “characters” living in the Olde West worked hard to be featured (and get paid for their stories) in “dime novels” sold back east, and did freely embellish the stories of their lives. Calamity Jane was no different, and may have had a real gift for bending/stretching the truth. Calamity Jane was a featured character in one of these dime novels called, “Deadwood Dick”, and she was probably mighty pleased. By the late 1870s Calamity Jane had captured the imagination of several magazine-feature writers who covered the colorful early days of Deadwood. One dime novel dubbed her "The White Devil of the Yellowstone."

Then, too, in a different time, people of the era were probably more credulous and eager to believe the fantastic tales spun by the characters that populated the Olde West—and who was to prove them wrong. A big reputation was real important in the Olde West, and sold lots of newspapers and “dime novels” back East!

And so, with an eye out for tall tales, we’ll tell the story of “Calamity Jane”.

Martha Jane Cannary was born on May 1, 1852 in Princeton, Missouri, the oldest of six children, having two brothers and three sisters. Her mother died in 1866 of "washtub pneumonia", and her father died in 1867 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She lived for a time in Virginia City, Montana.

In 1868, “Marthy” (as she was called) took on the role as head of her household at age 16 and moved her family to Fort Bridger, Wyoming. She then moved them to Piedmont, Wyoming. She settled her siblings into life there and strove to find a home that would welcome them in.

Accounts from this period described Cannary as being attractive, with light blue eyes. She received little to no formal education but was literate. Having settled the family, Cannary decided she wanted more excitement, and she moved on to a rougher, mostly outdoor adventurous life on the Great Plains.

In 1870, Cannary signed on as a scout in the U.S. Army. Back in the day, many adventurers (and scoundrels) did exactly that. Cannary adopted the uniform of a soldier; but it is not clear whether she was actually enlisted in the United States Army at the time. There are no records to support her enlistment, but they may have been lost to time. From then on she pretty much lost touch with her siblings, preferring to live a more wild and unsettled life. This is the time she became known as "Calamity Jane", and her very colorful life as a wild woman, who dressed as a man, cussed like a man, and partied like a man would begin. But, as historians have have since discovered, she was prone to exaggerations and outright lies about her exploits.

Cannary often claimed associations or friendships with notable famous American Old West figures, but almost always after they were dead. For example, years after the death of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer (of Little Big Horn “fame”), she claimed that she served under him during her initial enlistment at Fort Russell, and that she also served under him during the Indian Campaigns in Arizona. But no records exist that show that Cannary was assigned to Fort Russell, and further, she had no active part in the Arizona Indian Campaigns as she was tasked with subjugating the Plains Indians. It is more likely that she served under General George Crook at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming.

Cannary did serve in one campaign in which Lt. Colonel Custer was involved, following the spring of 1872. Lt. Colonel Custer and Generals Miles Terry and Crook were dispatched with their forces to handle Indian uprisings near present day Sheridan, Wyoming, which would be come to be called the "Mussel Shell Indian Outbreak", and is also referred to as the "Nursey Pursey Indian Outbreak". We’re thinking that “Nursey Pursey” is some kind of slang for the group of Native American tribes referred to as, “Nez Perce”, (which was not what these Native Americans called themselves, but the name that French explorers gave them reportedly because of the tribe’s custom of piercing their noses.) Anyway, this is the only confirmed opportunity Calamity had to meet Custer, although it is unlikely that she did. Following that campaign, in 1874, her detachment was ordered to Fort Custer, where they remained until the following spring. During this campaign (and others involving Custer and Crook together), she was not attached to Custer's command.

Cannary was involved in several campaigns in the long-running military conflicts with Native Americans. One story (told by her) has her acquiring the nickname "Calamity Jane" in 1872 by rescuing her superior, Captain Egan, from an ambush near Sheridan, Wyoming, in an area known then as Goose Creek. However, even back then not everyone accepted her version; and in another story it is said that she acquired it as a result of her warnings to men that to offend her was to "court calamity". We’re thinking that sounds more like her; however, she most probably did perform a feat of daring-do to rescue Eagan. As Calamity told the story, it happened at Goose Creek, Wyoming , where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the Post and the troops were ordered out to quell an Indian uprising. After a couple of days, when the soldiers were heading back to camp, they were ambushed by a large group of Indians. Captain Egan was the first to be shot and fell from his horse. Calamity Jane was riding in advance, but upon hearing gunfire, she turned in her saddle and saw the Captain fall. Galloping back, she lifted him onto her horse and got him safely back to the Fort. Captain Egan on recovering, laughingly said, "I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.''

One verified story about "Calamity Jane" is that in 1875 her detachment was ordered to the Big Horn River, under General Crook. Bearing important dispatches, she swam the Platte River and traveled 90 miles (145 km) at top speed while wet and cold to deliver them. Afterwards, she became ill. After recuperating for a few weeks, she rode to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and later, in July 1876, she joined a wagon train headed north, which is where she first met Bill Hickok, contrary to her later claims.

In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. She worked, on occasion, as a prostitute for Madam Dora DuFran, and later worked as a cook and in the laundry, also for DuFran. She became friendly with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, having travelled with them to Deadwood in Utter's wagon train. Jane greatly admired and was in some ways very enamored of Hickok (to the point of infatuation), and she was obsessed with his personality and life. She may have seen herself in him. The pair have many times been romantically linked, but there is little evidence to support that.

Hickok was killed during a poker game on August 2, 1876. Wild Bill Hickok was sitting at a gambling table in the Nuttall & Mann's 66 Saloon, in Deadwood, when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall. Hickok was holding a pair of eights and a pair of aces when he was killed, which would forever be known as a "dead man's hand." After his murder, Calamity Jane claimed to have been married to Hickok. She further asserted that Hickok was the father of her child (Jane), whom she said was born on September 25, 1873, and whom she later put up for adoption by Jim O'Neil and his wife. No records are known to exist which prove the birth of a child, and the romantic slant to the relationship might have been a fabrication. During the period that the alleged child was born, she was working as a scout for the Army. At the time of his death, Hickok was newly married to Agnes Lake Thatcher, formerly of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

However, on September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare did grant old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick (name of her 3rd husband), who claimed to be the legal offspring of Martha Jane Cannary and James Butler Hickok, after being presented with evidence that Calamity Jane and Wild Bill had married at Benson's Landing, Montana Territory, on September 25, 1873, documentation being written in a Bible and presumably signed by two reverends and numerous witnesses. The claim of Jean Hickok McCormick was later proved to be spurious by the Hickok family.

Jane also claimed that following Hickok's death, she went after Jack McCall, his murderer, with a meat cleaver, having left her guns at her residence in the excitement of the moment. However, she never confronted McCall. Following McCall's eventual hanging for the offense, Jane continued living in the Deadwood area for some time, and at one point she did help save several passengers of an overland stagecoach by diverting several Plains Indians who were in pursuit of the stage. The stagecoach driver, John Slaughter, was killed during the pursuit, and Jane took over the reins and drove the stage on to its destination at Deadwood. Also in late 1876, Jane nursed the victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area. When the smallpox plague struck Deadwood, she reportedly nursed many people back to health, with little more than a thank you. Even old Doc Babcock had to admit there was a little angel of some sort in the hardboiled woman. While tending to the children, the doctor said of her, "oh, she'd swear to beat hell at them, but it was a tender kind of cussin'."

In 1881, she bought a farm close to Yellowstone Park where she kept an inn. After marrying the Texan Clinton Burke and moving to Boulder, she again tried her luck in this business. In 1887, she had a daughter, Jane, who was given to foster parents.

They left Texas in 1889 and went to Boulder, Colorado, where they tried their hands at running a hotel until 1893. During the next three years, the “Calamity Jane” and her family family traveled through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and South Dakota. For the next few years, Calamity tried to sell her life story to anyone who would listen.

! With the reputation for being able to handle a horse better than most men and shoot like a cowboy, her impressively rowdy skills took her into Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1895 where she performed sharp shooting astride her horse. She toured Minneapolis, then Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, bringing to the stage the rip-roarin' Olde West as she had lived it. But, she always managed to get drunk and get fired without ceremony.

In 1900 Calamity was found by a newspaper editor in a bawdy house (brothel) and was nursed back to health. In 1901 she was hired by the Pan American Exposition at a good job with fine pay in Buffalo, New York. But again she got liquored up, shot out the bar glass, made Irish policemen dance the jig to her blazing guns, and then stumbled down the street cursing the whole town. She was run out of town.

However, by August, Calamity Jane was dying. After a lifetime of hard living, she was dying in a sad little room in the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, South Dakota. Her last request was to please tell her the date - August 2, 1903 - and then she requested that she be buried next to the great American gunfighter, Wild Bill Hickok, on Mt. Moriah overlooking the town of Deadwood. She was 51.

Her wish was granted. The funeral was the largest to be held in Deadwood for a woman, and Calamity's coffin was closed by a man who, as a boy, she had nursed back to health when the smallpox epidemic took so many lives in Deadwood.
And so, many of the stories Calamity told of her early life may have been second only to Wild Bill’s ability to spin yarns about himself—but her legend as a hard drinking woman, wearing men's clothing, and living a rough and raucous life in the Olde West continues, to this day, to be enthralling and unforgettable.