Wild Bill

by Tom Clavin

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  TO BRENDAN CLAVIN

  Author’s Note

  After finishing Dodge City, about the lawmen and cowboys and outlaws who made it the wildest of Wild West cow towns in the 1870s, and especially after it became a national bestseller, a natural question was “What’s next?” Well, “next” turned out not to be going forward in time but to step back a few years. Before the heyday of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and other iconic figures who continue to populate our books and screens, there was arguably the most iconic of all: James Butler Hickok.

  Some people may think we know his story, the gallant plainsman and gunslinger who helped dozens of villains to meet their maker and who romanced perhaps the most notorious female figure of the Wild West, Calamity Jane. Those are indeed elements of the “Wild Bill” story, but, thankfully, the true and still to some degree untold—accurately—tale of the man known as Wild Bill is pretty surprising. Once again, as with Dodge City, it was a delight to discover that the truth—as far as we can know it—is at least as exciting and fascinating, if not more so, than the legends that have been attributed to Wild Bill Hickok.

  The legends can’t be ignored, however. For the most part, they are why we know (or think we know) Wild Bill today. He was indeed the first gunfighter on the expanding American frontier, and he was the first post–Civil War celebrity of the West. There had been legendary figures before Hickok, especially Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. But Wild Bill became bigger than all of them in the mind of a gullible and impressionable public, especially those on the east side of the Missouri River. He was an American legend by the time he was thirty years old, and by the end of the nineteenth century, only his good friend Buffalo Bill Cody, who transformed from army scout and hunter to shameless showman, and outlived Hickok by four decades, came close to Wild Bill’s legendary status in the public imagination.

  That Hickok was famous while still young was something of a curse. To me, one of the most important aspects of the life of James Butler Hickok is his story would have fit snugly in a portfolio of Shakespeare’s tragedies. (Remarkably, and suitably, there was a connection between the Hickok family and the Bard of Avon.) From humble origins, Hickok ascended to a great height, and then, from a combination of his own flaws and the cruelties of fate, he fell. There was one final opportunity for redemption and lasting love, and then suddenly his life was snatched away. Still, the fame he left behind has continued for 150 years with Wild Bill Hickok being depicted in countless books and movies and television shows.

  Today, Wyatt Earp, perhaps, equals Hickok as an icon of the American West. But Wild Bill’s adventures and exploits, his triumphs and tragedies, came first. And during the finest years of his all-too-brief life, which ended at thirty-nine, there wasn’t a man alive who could beat him. Looking at the landscape, I really had no choice but to answer the question “What’s next?” with Wild Bill Hickok.

  A quick note about sources and the “true story”: A good amount of material has been published about Hickok, beginning with the so-called dime-store novels that began appearing while he was still alive. Even more serious attempts, such as The Plainsman, Wild Bill Hickok by Frank J. Wilstach and Wild Bill and His Era by William Connelley, liberally included fictions as well as a generous sprinkling of embellishments and exaggerations. The Englishman Joseph G. Rosa found a career in writing about Hickok, and one has to admire his relentless, decades-long efforts to track down every tidbit of information, though the result of his 1964 biography was a somewhat mind-numbing saga of facts and disclaimers and rebuttals ricocheting off each other.

  As with Dodge City, I sifted through every source I could get my hands on, and at the end of each day, a little more gold had been collected in the pan. These nuggets added up to a book that once more demonstrates that the truth can be at least as dramatic and potent as the fabrications. What is no exaggeration is that the man we know as Wild Bill Hickok was one of the most intriguing figures in American history.

  PROLOGUE

  The gunfight between Davis Tutt and Wild Bill Hickok on July 21, 1865, was to be recorded as the first quick-draw duel on the American frontier. While this has not been disputed, there was another very significant aspect to the duel: Hickok emerged as the most famous gunfighter—often, the term “shootist” was used—on the frontier. When the duel was detailed in an article published eighteen months later in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Hickok, not yet thirty years old, was catapulted from local folk hero to national legend … and thereby, he became a marked man. During the ensuing decade, many men with six-shooters on their hips would measure themselves against the Hickok legend, and a few would ponder the value to their own reputations by gunning him down.

  The duel took place in Springfield, Missouri. From the perspective of today, this town would not be considered part of the American West, but in the 1860s, Missouri and Kansas and Nebraska comprised much of the mid-American frontier. In July 1865, Springfield was one of the jumping-off points for people heading west, to Kansas next door or beyond to what had been known before the Civil War as the Great American Desert.

  The participants in the “High Noon”–like shoot-out had once been friends. Davis Tutt had been born in Yellville, Arkansas, in 1836, and thus was or close to twenty-nine years old on that fateful July day. The Tutts were well known in Arkansas politics until the Tutt-Everett War. Also known as the Marion County War, it began when two prominent families took opposite sides in the presidential election of 1844 involving Henry Clay and the winner, James Polk. There were escalating confrontations—a scenario to be repeated decades later by the Hatfield and McCoy families—until 1850, when Hansford “Hamp” Tutt, Davis’s father, was ambushed and shot. On his deathbed, he requested that there be no revenge and no more fighting over politics, and the war ended.

  The younger Tutt enlisted in the Twenty-Seventh Arkansas Infantry Regiment in 1862 and fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War, seeing action in Mississippi and elsewhere. At the war’s conclusion in April 1865, Tutt was sent home, but by then, Arkansas had lost its allure. Like thousands of other postwar young men, he turned his attention west. First, though, he ambled north, into Missouri, stopping for a spell in Springfield. Soon afterward, Hickok hit town, another postwar drifter killing time at the city’s gaming tables.

  The major difference between Hickok and Tutt was they had served on opposite sides during the Civil War. By that July, though, what mattered more was a mutual love of gambling. For a time, they were fast friends, enjoying the same card games. But a couple of issues involving women began to spill over onto the gaming tables, and worse, Hickok went on a cold streak and accepted loans from Tutt rather than be broke and idle. In the third week of a typically steamy July, he was already in a foul mood and needed no further provocation … but then there was a card game at the Lyon House Hotel.

  As will be detailed later in these pages, the outcome of that card game
was that Hickok and Tutt completed the journey from friends to enemies … and Tutt had taken Hickok’s gold watch. It was only because Tutt was surrounded by friends at the hotel that Wild Bill did not confront him with guns drawn.

  But it was a different story the next day. On the morning of July 21, there was Davis Tutt, strolling through the town square, sunlight glinting off the gold watch. By this point in his life, Hickok was no stranger to gunplay and people dying from it, yet when word reached him about Tutt’s performance, he did not go for his gun. He did approach Tutt, but to negotiate getting the watch back. He was rebuffed.

  The day wasn’t over, though. Late that afternoon, Tutt was back in the Springfield town square, brandishing the pocket watch. Witnesses noted that a few minutes before six o’clock, Hickok was observed entering the town square from the south. In his right hand was one of his Colt Navy pistols. By the time he had drawn to within a hundred feet of Tutt, the latter was alone in one corner of the square, as townsfolk had rushed for cover in surrounding buildings. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched the scene unfold.

  “Dave, here I am,” Hickok said. In one last attempt to avoid a fight, he holstered the pistol and advised, “Don’t you come across here with that watch.”

  Did Tutt underestimate Hickok, or, with all those witnesses, he could not possibly hand over the watch? He may have been debating his options as his right hand came to rest on his holstered gun. He turned sideways, and Hickok did the same. This was a maneuver associated with a traditional duel, but this wouldn’t be the old-fashioned, Alexander Hamilton versus Aaron Burr kind of challenge, where the two men pace off and turn to each other, and each formally takes a shot, perhaps deliberately missing his opponent because just showing up and going through the motions was enough to have honor satisfied. This would be a quick-draw, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later event.

  A few seconds passed, then Tutt’s hand jerked and his pistol came with it. In a smoothly coordinated series of motions, Hickok lifted his Colt, balanced the barrel on his bent left arm, and pulled the trigger the same instant Tutt tugged his. In an abrupt and hushed silence, the gun smoke was swept away by the evening breeze. Then Tutt cried out, “Boys, I’m killed!” He began to move, staggering, toward the courthouse. He got as far as the porch, then weaved back into the sunbaked, dusty street. He fell and may have been dead before he hit the ground. The bullet had entered Tutt’s torso between the fifth and seventh ribs and struck his heart. Hickok watched the man die as he holstered his pistol.

  The story spread across the frontier like a prairie fire that there was a man named Wild Bill Hickok in Missouri who might well be the fastest gunslinger on the American frontier. For once, a story with such a swift circulation was true.

  ACT I

  One of the earliest portraits of young James Butler Hickok.

  (COURTESY OF THE KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY)

  I am a pilgrim and a stranger and I am going to wander til I am twenty-one and then I will tarry a little while.

  —JAMES HICKOK IN A LETTER TO HIS BROTHER HORACE, NOVEMBER 24, 1856

  Chapter One

  A NEW ENGLAND CLAN

  Wild Bill Hickok, who would forever be a firm fixture in the annals of the American West as a plainsman, gunfighter, and lawman, was born into a family that identified themselves as New Englanders.

  Some accounts of Hickok’s life contend his family, at least on his father’s side, originated in Ireland. William Connelley, who bent over backward to romanticize Hickok, stated unequivocally in his 1933 biography that “it is established that the Hickok family is one of the oldest and most honorable in America. It was of pure Saxon blood, and Wild Bill bore the traits and characteristics of the Ancient Saxons.” Apparently, he saw Hickok as a knight in shining armor, with a six-shooter replacing an Arthurian sword.

  A tad closer to modern times, the genealogy becomes clearer. There was a Hiccox family in Warwickshire, England, in the 1600s. Records reveal that the family farmed 107 acres owned by William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. The family remained in the area as farmers and in other humble occupations for decades. The first member to distinguish himself was John Hiccocks, son of William Hiccocs, who became a lawyer in 1690 and a judge in 1709. By the time of his death in 1726, the family had acquired a coat of arms, which offered a respectability above and beyond tilling land.

  Sometime during this period, a family member became one of the early settlers of America. In May 1635, a William Hitchcock or Hickocks strode up the gangway of the Plaine Joan, and shortly afterward the ship left London and sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean. He brought farming skills with him, and he employed them after settling in Farmington, Connecticut. He married a woman named Elizabeth, and they had two sons, Samuel and Joseph. Only ten years after arriving in America, William died. Both sons did not survive the seventeenth century; however, according to Joseph Rosa, the most dogged of Hickok researchers, the brothers’ descendants in Connecticut “were prolific and lusty, and soon spread all over New England.”

  The most direct connection to the man who would become Wild Bill Hickok was a great-grandfather, Aaron Hickok, who in 1742 was born in Woodbury, also in Connecticut. His family moved to Massachusetts—first to Lanesborough and then Pittsfield in the Berkshires. When the Revolutionary War began, Aaron and a brother named Ichabod enlisted in the Massachusetts militia, becoming Minutemen in a regiment led by a Colonel Patterson. They and their fellow Minutemen harassed British troops on April 19, 1775, during the Lexington and Concord engagements. It is believed that the brothers became members of the Continental army two years later.

  If members of the Hickok family were indeed prolific and lusty, they had nothing on Aaron. In between his nonmilitary labors as a farmer and owner of a sawmill, he sired nineteen children with two wives. His third son was Oliver, who also went off to war when the United States and Great Britain went at it again. Unlike Aaron, Oliver did not emerge unscathed. He was wounded severely in the Second Battle of Sacket’s Harbor in upstate New York in July 1813 and died from those wounds three months later. In a way, his father was a casualty, too, because a grieving Aaron died soon after.

  When Oliver died, he left behind a twelve-year-old son, William Alonzo Hickok, who was born and raised in Vermont near Lake Champlain and the border with Canada. His path was much more scholarly than military. Intending to become a Presbyterian minister, he attended Middlebury College in Vermont. While at a seminary in New York, William met Pamelia Butler, who was called Polly. Her father had been one of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, who had served under Ethan Allen in the Revolutionary War. Her nephew, Ben Butler, decades later, would find both fame and notoriety as a Union general in the Civil War (he was dubbed “Beast” Butler while in command of New Orleans), lead the effort to impeach President Andrew Johnson while in the House of Representatives, and be elected governor of Massachusetts.

  William and Polly married in June 1829. He survived typhoid fever but in such a weakened state that continuing to study for the ministry proved too taxing. His mother gave them some seed money, and the couple moved to Broome County, New York, to open a small store. William was well enough to sire Oliver, born in 1830, and then Lorenzo in 1831. Sadly for the family, Lorenzo died soon after birth. What is curious is that the following year, William Hickok moved his family to Illinois. This would be far removed from the couple’s extended family in New England and upstate New York, and the well-educated William was far from being a robust, rough-hewn pioneer. Yet off he went, to be a shopkeeper. By doing so, he put Polly and their children in harm’s way.

  They first settled in Union Center, Illinois, then moved on to Bailey Point (later renamed Tonica). There, in October 1834, Polly gave birth to their third child, a son, who was also named Lorenzo. Two years later, the family was on the move again, this time to Homer. None of these towns, though, were yet considered free of danger.

  If one were asked to name an American Indian leader who accomplished the rare feat of
pulling different tribes together to fight a common foe, names most likely to come to mind would be Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, or perhaps Quanah Parker. However, before all of them came Black Hawk, a leader of the Sauk. In 1832, he persuaded the Meskwaki and Kickapoo to join his tribe, and he led them across the Mississippi River from Iowa Indian Territory into Illinois. His intent was to return to tribal lands on that side of the river, which had been given away in the Treaty of St. Louis in 1804. This treaty was, of course, recognized only by the U.S. government, as the Sauk, like most other American tribes, had no idea that they had ceded anything until the army forced them off their land.

  The combined Indian tribes who entered Illinois numbered around five hundred warriors and were known as the British Band, as it was first believed the incursion had been encouraged by British agitators, only seventeen years after the end of the War of 1812 and the end of Great Britain’s presence in the eastern half of the United States. After a peace delegation was fired upon by Illinois militia, Black Hawk attacked, earning a victory at the Battle of Stillman’s Run. Pursued by army regulars, he and his warriors found refuge in southern Wisconsin. The actions inspired other tribes to attack settlements in western Illinois, and thus the series of conflicts became Black Hawk’s War. The most famous participants—though only in retrospect—were Winfield Scott, Jefferson Davis, and two future U.S. presidents, Zachary Taylor and Captain Abraham Lincoln.

  Colonel Henry Dodge (who would later, coincidentally, command the fort outside Dodge City) led a force that caught up to Black Hawk and the British Band and defeated them at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights. Another loss at the Battle of Bad Axe meant the end of Black Hawk’s War. The Sauk leader escaped capture for a short time, then surrendered and spent a year in prison. After his release, Black Hawk returned to Iowa, authored the first autobiography of an American Indian, published in 1833, and died five years later at the age of seventy.