The Wild West - Wild Bill Hickok

This is another in a brief new series. Wild Bill Hickok, born James Butler Hickok in Butler, Illinois, in 1837. After a fight with a friend named Charles Hudson when he was 18 (he mistakenly thought he had killed Hudson), Hickok went West as a stagecoach driver, tried his hand as a lawman, then joined a vigilante Free State Army called "The Red Legs," where he met a young William Cody (later to be called "Buffalo Bill"). When the Civil War broke out, Hickok joined the Union Army and served in Missouri and Kansas as a scout. At the end of the war, Hickok killed a man named Davis Tutt in a true "fast draw" shootout. As sheriff and town marshal in Ellis County, Kansas, Hickok killed two men in gunfights, then killed one man and wounded another in 1870. He moved on to Abilene, Kansas, where he became marshal (and befriended John Wesley Hardin, another subject of this series). In 1871, Hickok killed a saloon owner named Phil Coe, who made the mistake of turning his gun on the lawman. In that same gun battle, he saw movement coming at him from a different direction and he turned and fired, killing his deputy marshal Mike Williams. Hickok never got over the accidental shooting. Five years later he moved to the wild and wooly town of Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he met Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary-Burke), who became infatuated with him, and later even claimed to have married him. That same year, while playing poker in a Deadwood saloon, Hickok was shot in the back of the head by a youngster named Jack McCall. Legend says he was holding two pairs, aces and eights, the "Dead Man's Hand." Music includes "The Last Gunfighter," sung by Johnny Cash, and Doris Day (as Calamity Jane) singing a portion of "The Deadwood Stage."

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• art
• gunfighters
• west
• frontier
• Deadwood
• Wild
• Bill
• Hickok
• Calamity
• Jane

[billcoe1]

Nice video...I'm actually related on my mom's side to Wild Bill. Explains my behavior I guess...lol

[bestjonbon]

Thanks, billcoe1. A direct descendant, eh? Fantastic!

[canadianhunting]

What is the name of that song?(johnny cash's)

great video

[bestjonbon]

"The Last Gunfighter," by Johnny Cash

[ilbtsfiles]

A man who legend who still lives on.

Thanks

[bestjonbon]

Yes, he's a good one.

[mrcollector61]

I acutally have a bottle form the bar that he was in before he shot david tutt on the square in springfield missouri. Not to many of them have are left around. It was called Kirbys at 222 college st

[kennova01]

i wrote a song about wild bill...

[IslandersMets10]

Screw you wild bill, you Union Lincoln loving scum.

[bestjonbon]

Wow, wish I did. I used to collect replica guns, but they were all World War II guns.

[bestjonbon]

Okay, now I'm using a new process. Check out my new Buffalo Bill, the first with editing possibilities. Not that editing is everything, of course.