Queen of Spades

A massive wagon train, 190 people strong, inched its way into the booming metropolis of Deadwood, South Dakota. The dusty, white canvas tops of the slow moving vehicles could be seen for miles by anyone who might have glanced into the near distance. Most residents weren’t that interested in newcomers to the congested Gold Rush camp. Business owners along the main thoroughfare might have felt differently, but many viewed the presence of more settlers as competition for the gold in the Black Hills. The procession of Conestoga wagons would hardly of been noticed if not for the two figures escorting the caravan. The normally preoccupied citizens who caught a glimpse of the buckskin clad riders took time out of their usual routine of prospecting, purchasing supplies and visiting various saloons to watch the train lumber along. Richard Hughes, a reporter for the Black Hills Daily Times was the first to recognize the outriders as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. “The two were dressed in buckskin with sufficient fringe to make a buckskin rope,” Hughes later wrote. “They were both wearing white Stetsons and clean boots. Jane was an Amazonian woman of the frontier, clad in complete male habiliments and riding astride. Yelling and whooping, she waved her fancy Stetson at all the men jammed into the crooked, narrow street.” Calamity Jane’s entrance into Deadwood Gulch in June of 1876 was an appropriate beginning for the eventful life she would lead during her time there. In addition to her nonconforming manner of dress, she was exceptionally skilled in areas traditionally reserved for men. She drove heavy freight wagons over rough Western terrain, cracking a bullwhip with expert precision. She could ride, rope, drink, curse, gamble with the best of the male population and if provoked would even fist fight with the opposite sex. If curious miners missed the commotion surrounding her first arrival into the area they need not have been disappointed, another public display would not be far behind. Calamity Jane began acting out against what the world thought a girl should be like when she was a youngster. Ornery cousins who pelted her with corncobs in hopes that their action would make her cry, were surprised when she stood up to them, hurling expletives their way. She was born in Princeton, Missouri on May 1, 1852. Her mother, Charlotte Canary named her Martha Jane. According to historian Duncan Aikman, Calamity came by her unconventional attitude honestly. Charlotte was an original thinker as well. She wore bold colored dresses many considered gaudy and flirted openly with men who could not resist her striking good looks. Her husband, Robert Canary tried desperately to reform his wife and keep the town from talking about her shameless behavior, but was unable to do so. Robert spent long hours farming in the fields around the family home. Charlotte busied herself doing anything other than making sure her children were close by. Calamity and her siblings were generally left to their own devices. Calamity spent the balk of her time with neighboring boys, riding horses, hunting and taking swims in the watering hole. Calamity was more comfortable around rowdy boys than properly behaved little girls. In her estimation boys seemed to have more fun and weren’t afraid of getting a little dirty. By the time Robert decided to move his wife and children west of the Mississippi, Calamity was a 12 years-old rebel. A tomboy who snuck drinks of whisky and the occasional chew of tobacco, and who preferred pants to dresses and riding to cooking. Calamity’s wild, unconventional ways fit right in with the untamed frontier. As the Canarys made their way west, Calamity roamed the countryside on horseback. When she wasn’t exploring the new land she was learning how to be a teamster. She practiced with the same 30 foot bullwhip the wagon train leader used to get the livestock to hurry along. The bullwhackers taught the young girl much more than how to snap a whip. Her education included how to smoke a cigar, play poker and swear. The later was a trait she would eventually elevate to an art form. In years to come she would be named the “champion swearer of the Black Hills of Dakota.” Calamity continued to feel more at ease with men than women as she grew older. In her autobiography she noted that men “were as rough and unpredictable as the wild country she had fallen in love with.” While other preteen girls dreamed of motherhood, social status or a career on stage, Jane wanted only to pursue her exploration of the high prairie. The rowdy life surrounding the mining community of Virginia City, New Mexico, where the Canarys settled, suited Calamity. She liked the sounds emanating from the saloons and the gunfights that played out up and down the streets. Her parents were so engrossed in themselves and their own problems, both marital and financial, that they paid little or no attention to where Calamity and her brothers and sister were spending their time. In fact, days would pass when neither Charlotte or Robert would be home at all. The Canary children were forced to fend for themselves. In 1865, Calamity’s father passed away and a year later her mother died. Robert’s death is believed to have been a suicide and Charlotte was stricken with pneumonia. At 15 years of age, Jane took over the care of her siblings. It wasn’t long before the task served to be too overwhelming and she abandoned the responsibility and headed to Salt Lake City, Utah. The bawdy community was crowded with soldiers from nearby military posts Fort Steele and Fort Bridger. Calamity made several of the men’s acquaintance, picking their brains about their experiences in the service, sharing a drink or two with them and joining in on a game of poker. She wasn’t the best card player, but occasionally she got lucky enough to win a hand. Her winnings kept her in food, alcohol and cigars. At 16, Calamity took a job as a bullwhacker for a wagon train of hunters. News of a woman working in such a capacity spread from town to town. People referred to her as that “Canary girl – the one that drinks a quart of whisky and curses like your grandfather and can drive a team like mad.” Over the next 8 years, Calamity would be employed by a variety of wagon freight lines through the west. In the process she became thoroughly acquainted with the terrain and its Native inhabitants. As time went on and her reputation as a tough woman teamster grew, she boldly began to challenge saloon owners policy about serving females. In Cheyenne, Wyoming she marched into a tavern on main street and ordered herself a drink. It was the first of many saloons where she would enjoy a libation. With only one exception, she was always served promptly. When a bartender in Denver, Colorado refused to provide her with a shot she pushed the barrel of her pistol into his face and demanded he rethink his position. Calamity wouldn’t be content with only being allowed to drink in saloons, she wanted to be able to gamble publicly as well. She particularly enjoyed a hand of 5 card stud. Seldom if ever did she spend any time at the faro tables. She believed that “chance always favored the house” in that game. It was while drinking and playing cards that Calamity found the best audience for her many tales. They served to further enhance her already inflated reputation with the westward pioneers. In early 1877, while gambling at a Rapid City saloon, an inebriated Jane told the men in the game with her about her time scouting for General George Custer. The cowhands turned their attention away from their cards and focused solely on Calamity. Custer had met his end in July the previous year at the Battle of Little Big Horn and interest in his 7th Cavalry troops and in the boy general himself was high. According to her autobiography, she told the story this way: “In the spring of 1876, we were ordered north with General Crook to join General Miles, Terry and Custer at Big Horn River. During this march I swam the Platte River at Fort Fetterman as I was the bearer of important dispatches. I had a 90 mile ride to make, being wet and cold, I contracted a severe illness and was sent back in General Crook’s ambulance to Fort Fetterman where I laid in the hospital for 14 days.” Historians doubt her story to be entirely true. In an article that appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in 1906, writer George Hoshier, who knew Calamity, scoffed at her claim. “She did come into the hills with General Crook and wore men’s clothing at that time, but she was no more a scout than I was.” True or not, Calamity’s story achieved the desired two-fold effect. The more she talked the more drinks the men she was playing poker with bought her. The concentration on their cards was shaken to the point that they lost the majority of hands to the legendary character. Calamity Jane’s adventures as a stage driver, bull whacker and part-time nurse were captured in several dime novels. Released in the 1870s, the publications further blurred the line between truth and fabrication. It did, however make for good reading and it transformed the rugged woman, who had actually known a string of jobs from laundress to prostitution, into a celebrity. The notoriety prompted gamblers across the west to invite Jane to sit in on a hand and was worth countless rounds of drinks. Calamity acquired her handle in the early 1870s and there are almost as many explanations as to how she got the name as there are old timers. Among the most popular explanations come from historian Duncan Aikman who wrote that “Calamity was associated with her because she carried guns ostentatiously, suffered through several buggy accidents and was generally considered unlucky.” Other historians note that the name was given to her by an army lieutenant she nursed back to health after suffering through a bought with smallpox. He called her “an angel in calamity.” After getting to know James Butler Hickok in 1872, through her friend Buffalo Bill Cody, Jane had hoped her days of being in the center of one adversity after another had finally ended. Since she and the dashing lawmen gunfighter had first met she had been taken with him. Hickok was fascinated with Calamity’s bravado and amused by her wild antics. The pair were destined to become friends. She wanted there to be more, but Hickok was not interested in her in that way. When she rode into Deadwood with him in 1876, she had a fleeting hope that he might change his mind about her. Calamity Jane followed Wild Bill Hickok in and out of the gambling dens like a smitten fan. She sat beside him and played poker, smoked and chewed tobacco. He laughed in amusement at her remarks to the curious townspeople always at their heels. “Hello, you sons of mavericks,” she would call out. “When are you going to buy the drinks?” The crowd was always quick and eager to oblige. The delight Jane felt whenever she was in the vicinity of Hickok was short lived. Within three weeks of their arrival in Deadwood, a gunman shot and killed Bill while he was playing poker. Calamity was heartbroken. After changing out of her buckskins and putting on a dress, she purchased a bottle of whisky and went to the undertaker’s office where Hickok was lying in state. She proceeded to get drunk and she howled and cried over his body. Under the rough, coarse exterior the brave icon preferred to display, was a gentle, nurturing side that came out in times of extreme crisis. When an outbreak of smallpox threatened to decimate the Black Hills population in 1878, Calamity helped nurse the sick. She was one of the few women willing to venture into the quarantined area and care for the suffering. One of her friends bragged that she was “the last person to hold the head and administer consolation to the troubled gambler or erstwhile bad man who was about to depart into the new country.” Once the emergency had ended, Calamity returned to the saloons and her two favorite vices, drinking and poker. When Deadwood became respectable and civilized Jane moved on. It would be 15 years before she would return to the town to visit the grave of her dearly departed Wild Bill again. During the time of her absence from the town, she claimed to have appeared briefly with Buffalo Bill in his Wild West show, met and married a man in El Paso, Texas and had a child. Some historians doubt the validity of any of these claims. It is a fact that in 1896 her autobiography was printed and that she subsequently embarked on a brief lecture career, touring the East Coast and sharing stories about her time on the frontier. She didn’t enjoy the refinements of cities like New York and Chicago, however and longed to be back in the West. She eventually returned to the Black Hills taking up where she left off. She drank to excess and gambled away all of her earnings. By 1902, Jane was broke and seriously ill. Well meaning citizens helped pay her fare to Deadwood where she begged to be sent. Old friends there who remembered her kindness during the smallpox epidemic, took Calamity into their care. Her health would never fully be restored. She began having episodes of delirium and would stand in the middle of the street shouting about her time with Hickok and the daughter she believed she had. On August 1, 1903, Calamity Jane passed away. It was almost 27 years to the day Wild Bill Hickok had been shot. Although the cause of death is listed as inflammation of the bowels and pneumonia, those close to Calamity believed alcohol was the real culprit. Deadwood residents were given the chance to pay their last respects to the frontier woman at her funeral. Many paraded past her body lying in a casket at the undertaker’s parlor. A protective wire fence had to be placed over her head to stop souvenir hunters from cutting off pieces of her hair. Fifty-three year-old Calamity Jane’s last request was that she be buried next to the only man she ever loved, Bill Hickok. Calamity Jane is nationally and internationally known. Her memory has been kept alive in numerous books and movies about her life and times. She has even been memorialized in the game of poker she loved so much. The Queen of Spade is often referred to as a Calamity Jane.