Wild Bill Hickok T[13 Contemporary Portrait of a Ci vil War Hero EDWARD 'NI GHT 'L N NEW HAMPS HIRE 1 959 THE HILLS IDE PRES S , FRAN I . , ORIGINS OF A LEGEND REC OLLEC TIONS O F AN ARMY SC OUT THE V AGUEST THOUGHT IS LIGHTNING FAST AN APPOINTMENT IN ABILENE HOW TO PLAY A DEAD MAN ’ S HAND BIBLIOGRAPHY ORIGINS OF A LEGEND ' Journalists have occasionally given life to a r tall sto y that has defied all scholarly correction . This appears to have been the case in what “ ” Wil liam M acL eod Raine has called the myth of Wild Bill Hickok . In Guns of the F rontier Raine takes a fairly dim ill View of the character of Wild B . According to him this Civil War hero , army scout and frontier marshal , was a liar, a braggart and , on at least one - A occasion , a cold blooded murderer . large part of this indictment was based upon an account of a gun -fight at Rock Creek Ranch in the Nebraska Territory . The story was supposed to have been told to Colonel George W . Nichols by Wild Bill himself . It was published with other material on ’ ’ Hi ckok s Civil War experiences in Harper s New ’ Monthl Ma azine 1867 . Ni chols y g for February, In version of the Rock Creek fight , Hickok appeared to be a liar on a number of counts . Raine referred “ ” to this particular tissue of falsehoods as being Neb a His tor Ma azine 1 exploded in the r ska y g in 927 . But for one important detail , it would seem that the legend of Wild Bill had been neatly disposed 19 7 . of at Beatrice , Nebraska , in 2 Whether or not 9 WI LD BI LL HICKOK ’ there were errors of fact in Hi ckok s story W OUL v ' . u certainly depend upon his ha ing told it Curio s . this was denied by Wild Bill himself in 1867 ’ ’ When he read Nichols article in Harper s Maga 'ine he immediately repudiated the Colonel ’ account of the fight at Rock Creek and said tha he had not told Nichols that story . Colonel Nichols stated that there were ten me'n killed at Rock Creek Ranch . This statistic, as we exc1t1n n as other g details of the encounter, seem r have been drawn from legendary sources . Cou a ' records turned up at Beatrice , Nebraska , n me t three dead men . The defendants in the case wer Hickok , his employer Wellman , who looked afte the 1nterests of the Overland Stage Company a a hostl e r . al Rock Creek , and named Brink They referred to the deceased as the M cC anl es gang The M cC anles faction maintained that McC anle was a respected citizen and that he and his men w erc i unarmed when they were k lled . Wellman ant Hickok held that M cC anl es was a horse-thief run a a ning off mounts for the Confeder tes . There w the counter claim that M cC anles a native 0 Georgia was a strong Union sympathizer . Practically everything about this mortal quarre seems to be apocryphal except the aging cour nt record of the acquittal of Hickok, Wellman a Brink . The three varieties of lies classified by Marl “ ’ as Twain plain lies , damned lies and statistics 1 0 ORIGINS OF A LEGEN D played a prominent part in the growth of the legend of Wild Bill . One of the most durable of the damn ed lies has been the frequently exp ressed opinion that James Butler Hickok was a typical frontier kill of x er , jealous his reputation and willing to e ploit it ” a r occasionally on the side of the law . Actu lly the e is very little evidence that Hickok was ever o nthe wrong side of the law . This was the opinion of General Custer who had reason to be prejudiced . In 1870when Hickok Was marshal of Hays City ’ he not only arrested Custer s brother but was fo rc ed to exchange shots with fourteen troopers of the ’ Seventh Cavalry in Paddy Welsh s Saloon . General Sheridan ordered out a detachment of cavalry to take Wild Bill dead or alive and Hickok discreetly ’ retired from the area . Wild Bill s indiscriminate administration of the law in Hays City made him the most unpopular man on the frontier as far as the army was concerned . In spite of this General Custer spoke highly of Wild Bill . Five years later in My L ife on the Plains Custe r -wrote Whether on foot or on horseback , he was one of the most perfect types of physical manhood I ever saw .' Of his courage there could be no ques tion ; it had been brought to the test on too many occasions to permit of a doubt . His skill in the use of the rifle and pistol was unerring while his deport ment was exactly the opposite of what might be expected from a man of his surroundings . It was entirely free from all bluster or 1 1 WILD BILL HICKOK Wild Bill is anything but a quarrelsome man yet nobody bu t himself can enumerate the many con'icts in which he has been engaged and which have almost invariably resulted in the death of his a adversary . I have a personal knowledge of at le st a half dozen men he has killed including one of my “In all the affairs of this sort in which Wild Bill has performed a part and which have come to d not my knowle ge , there is a single instance in which the verdict of twelve fair-minded men would ” not be pronounced in his favor . ’ Custer s respect for a man like Wild Bill is not o difficult to understand . He had known Hick k as an army scout and Civil War soldier and saw ’ nothing morally wrong in the man s extraordinary ability to defend himself . Immediately after the Civil War , a thoroughly democratic revision of the dueling code seems to - have taken place . Bush whacking and open assassi nation were added to the aristocratic forms of mayhem with more formal conventions for those ’ who could afford them . Hickok was among those a a who could and he bec me a frontier m rshal . a a Superficially men like Sam B ss , Wy tt Earp , L a uke Short , Clay Allison , Bat M sterson , Wild had Bill , Doc Holliday and Ben Thompson , much in common . Many of them were veterans of the Civil War and some of them had been buffalo hunters . They were all quick on the draw and 1 2 ORIGINS OF A LEGEND deadly accurate marksmen . According to some authorities all of the ranking gun-fighters of the - old west had blue or grey blue eyes . At this point their common characteristics and backgrounds give way to marked differences in character . ' Sam Bass very nearly made train-robbe ry ares pe cted profession in the southwest . He gave inter n x views to the press when he was i Denton , Te as and Owen P . White supposed that he was popular at enough , the time , to have run for governor . Whimsy could lead a man to sudden death under r the guns of Clay Allison . Hickok and Wyatt Ea p were marshals when being the law in a frontier town required considerable courage , a degree of fatalism , or both . The career of Bat Masterson illustrates how the ranks of the frontier gun-fighters included some of best as well as the worst of men . For the last nine teen years of his life M asterson wrote a column a for a New York paper . He c me by the name Bat “ “ when he was a law officer in D o dg e City . He - carried a gold headed cane , given to him by his admirers , which he used much more frequently a than a gun gainst armed men . His score of twenty three men , not counting Mexicans and Indians , was a legend of his own invention . When the west was no longer old and had no further need to respect the men who had helped to fro ntl er make the habitable , Masterson was ordered out of Denver at the point of a gun . He is probably 1 3 WILD BILL HICKOK the only man who was ever given five ho leave Denver and wound up by dining White House . Although Bat Masterson and Wild Bill live re re fought on the same frontier, they were p tiv es of first and last things in the story of the fighters of the Old West . Cunningham gives to 1900 as the approximate dates for this uni violent period of our history . James Butler Hickok was born in L 1 Disr a 7 83 . e County, Illinois on May 2 , 7 g the astrological verities , we might add that L the Kid , Wes Hardin , Bill ongley and k Thompson , were born under the same dar . 18 59 William H Bonney was born in , 1853 L 18 Wesley Hardin in , Bill ongley in 5 - Ben Thompson in 184 3. These redoul champions were all small boys when Wild Bil ' driving a stage on the Santa Fe Trail . Wil was a frontiersman who became a g u nfig hte marshal in the rapidly changing world of his He was a legendary contemporary of those could , and sometimes did , regard him as a In his autobiography Wes Hardin claimed th Perha got the drop on Hickok at Abilene .