Bill Hickok

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Wild Bill Hickok Wild Bill Hickock signature.svg
Draw Poker was the preferred variant of poker in the Wild West . Because Bill Hickok held a hand of aces and eights when he was murdered, this hand has been called Dead Man's Hand ever since .

James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (born May 27, 1837 in Troy Grove , Illinois , † August 2, 1876 in Deadwood , South Dakota ) was an American western or gunslinger , soldier and law enforcement officer. The Gunslinger killed seven people in six recorded shootings .

Life

Wild Bill Hickok was born the fourth of six children to farmer William Alonzo Hickok and his wife Pamelia "Polly" Butler in Troy Grove (then Homer), Illinois . His father, an abolitionist , is said to have made the local farm available as a shelter for the underground railroad network, which consists of opponents of slavery . Even as a teenager, Wild Bill was the best shooter in Northern Illinois, and he was not averse to fights. In 1854, Hickok was employed in Utica as a carter for the Illinois & Michigan Canal Company , where he threw his employer Charles Hudson into the cool waters of the canal when he had beaten Hickok's draft horses. In 1855, the 18-year-old to put Kansas on, where he the Jayhawkers joined, one by General James "The Grim Chief of Kansas" Lane commanded guerrilla unit of the Union to be involved in skirmishes with slavery companions: groupings but without. During his time in the militia, he met the then 12-year-old William Cody , later better known as Buffalo Bill .

In 1858, Hickok was a farm worker in Johnson County . In the local administrative district of Monticello he was elected its constable . After a short tenure, Wild Bill drove as a stagecoach on the Santa Fe Trail . In 1860 he became wagon master for large freight trains to the West at Russel, Majors & Waddell , the umbrella organization of the Pony Express . That he was attacked by a bear and seriously injured in one of these convoys on Raton Pass and killed the bear with his revolvers and a knife is just a legend written by his future biographer John W. Buel. In the summer of 1861, Hickok was sent to Rock Creek Station on the Oregon Trail . There there was a legendary shootout between Hickok and David McCanles on July 12, 1861. Hickok shot the unsuspecting McCanles standing behind a curtain with a rifle shot in the heart, another McCanles man named James Woods was wounded by Hickok's revolver. A third named James Gordon, who was injured and dragged himself to Rock Creek, was probably shot there by the Pony Express rider James W. "Doc" Brink.

In the Civil War , Hickok joined the northern states as a supply officer . He was used by General Curtis as a spy, among other things. This is where he got his famous nickname “Wild Bill”: A woman yelled “Good for you, Wild Bill” when Hickok barely escaped a lynch mob. In 1862, Wild Bill presumably took part in the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas .

After the war, Hickok initially got by as a player. In Springfield , Missouri , on July 21, 1865, he killed Dave Tutt in a duel on the street with a shot from about 75 meters away. Tutt had won a gold watch that had been very important to Bill playing poker the day before and, despite Bill's request not to wear it in public, had put it on in public to humiliate Hickok. This exchange of fire, in which the two opponents faced each other on the street and at the same time drew their weapons, was one of the few historically documented quick-draw duels in the Wild West. Hickok was then arrested and charged with manslaughter . He was released on $ 2,000 bail and was later acquitted by the jury . He later even ran for the local police chief, but lost.

He was reactivated to the Army on March 11 at Fort Riley , Kansas, and his main job was to retrieve stolen Army horses and mules. On January 1, 1867, Wild Bill became a scout with General George Armstrong Custer . But he did not stay long and was defeated in the same year in the election to sheriff of Ellsworth County , Kansas. Eventually, Hickok became US Deputy Marshal . In March 1868 he and " Buffalo Bill " brought eleven prisoners to Topeka .

In a skirmish with Cheyennes in February 1869, he was slightly injured. Shortly thereafter, Hickok was elected Sheriff of Ellis County , Kansas. In Hays , the county seat and one of the wildest cities in the west, Wild Bill killed two men in three months, John Mulvey (or Melvin) with two shots in the throat and lungs and Samuel Strawhun (or Strangham) with one shot in the head . In November he was defeated by his deputy Peter "Rattlesnake Pete" Laniham and had to resign from his position as sheriff. On July 17, 1870, Hickok shot down two cavalrymen named John Kile and Jerry Lonergan who had been fighting with him in a saloon in Hays. Kile died of his wounding the next day in Fort Hays.

In April 1871, Hickok was named City Marshal of Abilene , Kansas. There he shot the player Philip Houston "Phil" Coe and accidentally also his friend, the Special Deputy Marshal Mike Williams, who had come to his aid and mistook the Wild Bill for another attacker, on October 5, 1871 in front of the Alamo Saloon . After that, Hickok, who was also removed from office in Abilene, never shot a person again.

In the summer of 1873, Hickok joined Colonel Sidney "Sid" Barnett's Wild West show in Niagara Falls , New York , as the spokesperson and announcer . Once, Hickok, who preferred to stay in the background, appeared on the show. He was supposed to catch an adult bison with his lasso while riding a horse. But the animal was able to free itself and the great western hero Wild Bill fell off his horse into the dirt. The show turned out to be a financial disaster for its operator and was soon disbanded. In August 1873 he joined the theater group of his old companion Buffalo Bill Cody as an actor in New York, but he left again in March 1874 in Rochester , New York. Hickok went back to the west, to Cheyenne , Wyoming , where an arrest warrant was issued for vagrancy because Hickok had no regular income as a player at the time. However, this warrant was never carried out and with Hickok's death it was finally put aside. In Cheyenne he married the circus owner Agnes Lake Thatcher on March 5, 1874 , whom he had already met in Abilene in 1871, but had not wanted to commit himself at that time. After only two weeks he left his wife again to look for gold in the Dakota Territory . Agnes Lake Thatcher survived him by 31 years: she died on August 21, 1907 at the age of 81 in Jersey City , New Jersey .

Sign at Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, South Dakota

In the summer of 1876 he reached the improvised gold rush settlement Deadwood in the Black Hills of Dakota and got there again as a player. There Wild Bill Hickok was hit by John "Broken Nose" Jack McCall on August 2, 1876 while playing poker in Mann's Saloon No. 10 murdered with a revolver bullet in the back of the head. He died with a queen, an ace of spades and an ace of clubs as well as an eight of spades and an eight of clubs (according to other tradition two jacks and two eights) in his hand, a hand that has since been called Dead Man's hand . McCall was acquitted the next day in an ad hoc court trial, but arrested again on August 29, sentenced to death in a trial in December 1876 and January 1877 for murder and on March 1, 1877 at 10:15 am Clock publicly hung in Yankton , Dakota Territory.

Wild Bill Hickok's grave in Deadwood Cemetery, South Dakota

Bill Hickok was first buried in Ingleside cemetery, in 1879 Deadwood's cemetery was moved to Mount Moriah , where Hickok's grave is still next to that of Calamity Jane , who was buried next to Hickok in 1903. The romance mentioned by Calamity Jane in her letters and the allegedly common daughter is not further documented.

Interesting facts and legends

Wild Bill Hickok Memorial in Troy Grove, Illinois
  • According to his own statement, Bill wore long wavy hair to provoke the Indians to rob scalp .
  • The Saloon No. 10, in which Bill was shot, burned down in 1879. There is a replica elsewhere in Deadwood showing a Wild Bill Show .
  • To this day it is not clear why McCall shot Bill Hickok. The only thing that is certain is that it had nothing to do with the current game of poker, but more with a previous game or personal differences.
  • Legend has it that when he was shot, Hickok, contrary to his normal practice and maxim, was not sitting with his back to the wall, which was his undoing that day.
  • His birthplace Troy Grove has made a monument to him.

literature

  • Dietmar Kuegler: You died in your boots. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-87943-415-8 .
  • Bill O'Neal: Gunfighter. An encyclopedia of all the gunslingers of the Wild West . Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-8289-0415-7
  • Pete Dexter: Deadwood . Roman, Verlag Liebeskind, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-935890-82-3
  • Rainer Eisfeld: Wild Bill Hickok: Western myth and reality . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-19575-5
  • Michael Franzen: Wild Bill Hickok - player and gunslinger . Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-7450-5353-1

Movies

Films that refer to or interpret the life of Wild Bill Hickok from the perspective of Hollywood :

Web links

Commons : Wild Bill Hickok  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Joseph J. Di Certo: Hickok. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved January 10, 2019 .
  2. ↑ James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok . blackhillsvisitor.com, accessed January 10, 2019
  3. ↑ Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill . centerofthewest.org; accessed on January 10, 2019
  4. ↑ a b Wild Bill Hickok . historynet.com; accessed on January 10, 2019
  5. ↑ a b c d Wild Bill's Shootout . springfieldmo.gov, accessed January 10, 2019
  6. ↑ Wild Bill Hickok . blackhawkmuseum.org, accessed January 10, 2019
  7. ^ Special Deputy Marshal Mike Williams . odmp.org; accessed on January 10, 2019
  8. ↑ a b c Chronology on Life of James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickock . kansasheritage.org, accessed January 10, 2019
  9. ↑ a b c d e On the Trail of Wild Bill Hickok . truewestmagazine.com; accessed on January 10, 2019
  10. ↑ Jack McCall legendsofamerica.com
  11. ↑ Wild Bill Hickok's Grave . deadwood.com, accessed January 10, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Hickok, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hickok, James Butler; Wild Bill (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American western hero
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Troy Grove , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1876
Place of death Deadwood , South Dakota