Hey Thoughty 2 here. When you think of the
coolest people who ever lived, it’s hard to beat the cowboys of the old
West. Pretty much everything about them is utterly iconic.
Imagine spending your days crossing epic vistas and going on the hunt for Curly’s
gold before hitting the local saloon to cheat at cards and get into gun fights, all before
tipping your ten-gallon hat to the nearest prostitute and clip clopping away into another
perfect sunset. It certainly beats a stressful commute followed by 8 hours of Microsoft Excel.
The quintessential Wild West period started at the end of the American Civil War in 1865
and ended with the official closing of the Frontier by the US Census Bureau in 1895,
though some scholars believe the Wild Wild West was briefly reopened by Will Smith in 1999.
During the late 19th century, thousands of settlers were crossing the US in search of
fortune and glory on the new frontier. It’s during this period that we first
hear many of the names that still live on in infamy one-hundred and fifty years later; like
the hunter and impresario Buffalo Bill, legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, and sharpshooter Calamity Jane.
But of all the famed folked and felons of the Old West, there was not a fellow more fearsome
than James Butler Hickok, a man who so epitomised the Wild West that he was nicknamed ‘Wild’ Bill.
Born in 1837, into a household where guns were as normal as milk and potatoes, Bill became an
excellent marksman at an early age.. He lived with his family on a farm in rural Illinois a
few hours from Chicago. The area was rife with gangs of outlaws, collectively known as Prairie
Bandits, and being good with a six-shooter was an important life skill no matter how old you were.
But while an early exposure to guns and ammo was par for the course, the fact that his father
William was an active abolitionist was rather more unusual. The family home was a station on
the so-called Underground Railroad, a network of routes and safe houses used by slaves to escape
to states where slavery was illegal. Bill’s father was tragically killed because of his
stance on abolition when Bill was just fifteen, and it had a big impact on the young man’s life.
Both Bill’s parents were devout Baptists and although it seems their religious views didn’t rub
off on their pistol-toting infant, their activism around slavery certainly did. At eighteen he moved
to what was then called the Kansas Territory to join an anti-slavery vigilante group known as
the Jayhawkers. It was there that he met a cocky 12-year old scout by the name of William Cody,
though you probably know him as Buffalo Bill, one of the most famous figures from the Old West.
Their paths would cross again soon, but not before both had become living legends.
The next job on Bill Hickok’s Wild West resume was working for a stagecoach company.
At the time, driving a horse drawn coach cross-country was fraught with all kinds
of dangers… as Bill would soon discover. In 1860 he was driving from Missouri to New
Mexico when he was attacked not by bandits, but a bear. As occupational hazards go it
wasn’t the kind of thing that would typically be covered in the company handbook and for most
of us it would have meant a grizzly end, but not for Bill. Against all odds he managed to
take on two tonnes of ursine aggression and come out on top, killing the bear with his
bare hands. (Okay, he had a knife too, but the inaccuracy was worth it for the pun)
After his unofficial audition for the Revenant, Bill was left badly injured,
his chest, shoulder and arm severely crushed. It took him months in bed convalescing before
he was well enough to work again and when he was, he was sent by his employers to a
stagecoach station in Rock Creek, Nebraska. It was there that he sealed his reputation as
a man who you most certainly did not want to fuck with.
Local landowner David McCanles took a disliking to Bill, giving him the nickname ‘Duck Bill’ on
account of his long nose. I can only assume McCanles didn’t know that the
man he was mocking had recently kicked seven shades of shit out of a bear.
McCanles and two of his buddies - plus McCanles’ 12-year-old son - ambushed Bill Hickok while he
was working, and things escalated quickly. Exactly what happened next varies depending
on which source you read, but the end result is the same in all of them - a gunfight leaves
three men dead, and Bill very much alive. (I should probably point out that the 12-year-old
child was physically unharmed in the melee. Deeply traumatised, but physically unharmed).
Bill was acquitted of the murders as it was believed he’d acted in self-defence
and it's at this point that the legend of Wild Bill really starts to take shape.
The shooting of the three men in Rock Creek soon became legend,
and as legendary tales often are, over the years this one was embellished for dramatic effect.
By the time the story appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, it sounded like something out of a
Sylvester Stalone film. And not one of the modern ones with acting and emotions, one of those ‘80s
films where he just machine guns everybody he meets for an hour and a half straight.
In this fluffed-up fable, now known as ‘The McCanles Massacre,’ Bill took down ten
blood-thirsty desperados with just a revolver and a knife, sustaining eleven bullet wounds
and thirteen knife wounds in the process. Shortly after the American Civil War broke
out in April 1861, Bill joined the Union Army of the North, and it was there that
he earned the name by which people would refer to him for generations to come.
So, what exactly do you have to do to become known as ‘wild’ during what was indisputably
one of history’s craziest periods? Well, in one famous incident Bill is said to have dispersed an
angry mob intent on hanging a bartender by firing into the air and then basically just staring
everyone down until they went away. No doubt that took some balls, but I suppose when
you’ve wrestled an actual real-life bear, a few disgruntled humans hardly register. However the
name of Wild Bill came about, it stuck, which I’m sure Bill prefered to being compared to a duck.
After leaving the army in June 1865, Bill made his way to Springfield Missouri,
and within a month he got involved in another shoot-out which would further burnish his
growing reputation. And this one turned out to be a stone-cold Old West classic.
His opponent was Davis Tutt, and the two men had fallen out over a dispute about a loan. To cut a
long story short, Bill owed Tutt money, and when Bill failed to pay, Tutt took his prized gold
pocket watch instead. Bill’s pride was already wounded by the incident, and when Tutt started
flaunting the watch all over town he quickly learned that you can’t humiliate a bear-killing,
sharpshooting, war veteran whose first name is ‘Wild’ and expect to get away with it.
The two men came upon one-another in the town square, and both adopted the classic quick draw
stance so familiar to us today from Westerns. At this point I like to think a tumbleweed
blew across the square, a frightened saloon owner pulled the shutters closed,
and an old prospector dropped his bottle of moonshine and got the hell out of there.
Both men drew at a distance of 75 yards, and when the dust had settled, Davis Tutt was dead. Whether
or not Bill did that thing where you spin the gun on your finger before putting it back the holster
we don’t know, but let’s say that he almost definitely did. This quickdraw shootout, now so
familiar to us thanks to Hollywood, is rumoured to have been the first of its kind in history.
Two days later Bill was arrested for murder, reduced to manslaughter before
his trial began. It should have been an open and shut case, but only four
witnesses had actually seen the fight and they couldn’t agree on exactly what had happened.
In the end Bill was acquitted once again, much to the horror of many, and he left the court a free
man. Several weeks later he was interviewed by journalist George Nichols, the man credited with
spreading the Wild Bill legend after he wrote an article about the gunfight for Harper’s magazine.
Nichols was basically the 19th century version of Kim Jong-Uns spindoctor.
In the article he claimed Bill had killed ‘hundreds of men’ and was such a deadeye
shot that he could put six bullets into a target no bigger than a human heart from fifty yards.
Bill would spend the next few years as an army scout, including working for General Custer,
who achieved Old West infamy himself by leading a spectacularly unsuccessful
offensive at the Battle of Little Bighorn, commonly known as Custer’s Last Stand
Despite his shall-we-say volatile personality, it was always Bill’s
ambition to be on the right side of the law, and in 1869 he was elected
Marshall of the city of Hays and Sheriff of Ellis County, both of which are in Kansas.
With a badge on his chest Bill was soon back doing what he did best;
making caps pop and bodies drop. In only his first month as Sheriff he really hit the ground
running by killing two men in cold blood, and a year later he was involved in another gunfight,
wounding one man and killing another after they pinned him to the floor in a saloon brawl.
In 1871 Bill moved to Abilene, becoming Marshall once again, but it was to be his
last posting as a lawman after a dispute that began with a bull’s erection ended in tragedy.
And yes, you did hear that correctly. The bull in question could be found on the
sign of a saloon in Abilene called the Bull’s head, and it had been depicted, shall we say,
‘standing proudly to attention’ as a kind of 19th century marketing stunt cooked up by the
saloon’s owners - famous old West businessman Phil Coe and renowned gunslinger Ben Thompson.
Some of the townsfolk were less than happy to see this,
*ahem*, raging bull on full display in public, although I’m not sure why - every
town needs a USP, and ‘the Abilene bull’s wang’ is perfect for tempting tourists.
Still, Wild Bill asked the Saloon’s owners to tone down their bovine pornography and
when they refused, he took the bull by the horns - well, penis - and changed it anyway.
The argument came to a head on October 5th; Coe was celebrating the end of cattle
season by firing off a couple of shots from his pistol (that man really had a thing for cows).
Marshall Bill was summoned to see what all the commotion was about,
and Coe claimed he’d been shooting at a stray dog, which was not only legal in Abilene,
it was encouraged to the point that people were given 50 cents for every stray they shot.
But Bill was clearly sceptical of the story because he ordered that Coe be arrested.
Rather than come quietly, Coe the cow-lover drew his pistols.
Badge or no badge, Wild Bill was a man who met violence with violence, and in the ensuing
gunfight he shot Coe twice in the stomach. The wounds would prove fatal 3 days later.
By now Wild Bill’s wicked quick draw was renowned in every town -, but as
many of you will already know, sometimes unloading too quickly can be a bad thing.
In the confusion of the fight with Coe, Bill’s Deputy had rushed in to help. But
Bill mistook the man for an attacker, and thanks to those rapid reflexes of his,
he shot and killed his brave colleague before he even knew what he was doing.
Bill was - understandably - stripped of his position as Marshall, and he left Abilene
shortly afterwards. The act of manslaughter is said to have haunted him for the rest of his days,
and he was never involved in another gunfight for as long as he lived.
After such a tragedy, an attempted career in showbiz might seem like an unlikely next step,
but in a life as bizarre as Bill’s you shouldn’t rule anything out. In 1873 he was approached by
that plucky scout he’d met in his younger days - William Cody, who’d spent the intervening years
forging a legend of his own, and was now touring with Wild West themed shows as Buffalo Bill.
Bill (Buffalo) asked Bill (Wild) if he’d like to join him and the equally awesomely named
Texas Jack Omohundro in a production called The Scouts of the Prairie. Wild Bill agreed,
but it turned out he wasn’t really made for the limelight - and when I say ‘not made for
the limelight’ what I really mean is he used to hide behind the scenery and once responded to a
spotlight being shone on him by shooting it off the ceiling. He left after only a few months.
He drifted for a few years, plagued by deteriorating eyesight and with little
money to his name. Not that it was all doom and gloom - it was around this time he met
the woman he would eventually marry. Agnes Thatcher Lake had lived a life
every bit as exciting as Bill’s; she was a former tight-rope walker who’s
first husband had run a circus. When he’d been shot and killed while ejecting a customer from
the big top, Agnes had taken over the business. She was over a decade older than Bill and already
had a daughter, but the two must have felt like kindred spirits and they married in March of 1876,
though Bill left Agnes not long afterwards to try and make his fortune looking for gold
in South Dakota; say what you want about the man, he bloody loved an adventure.
But like all adventures, Bill’s had to come to an end sometime and it was in the aptly
named town of Deadwood that he penned his final chapter. On August 1st, 1876,
he was playing poker in Nuttal & Mann’s famous saloon when he was shot in the back of the
head by fellow gambler Jack McCall, who’d lost heavily to Bill in a poker game the day before.
Bill was shot at point blank range and the bullet passed through his skull and hit one
of the other players in the arm, proving that even in death he was a danger to others. The
hand of cards Bill held when he died was a pair of aces and a pair of eights, all black, and this
has since become known as the dead man’s hand. In the century and a half since Bill died there
have been numerous books written about him and he’s been portrayed many times over in films
and on TV. It seems no matter what else changes we still love our cowboys wild and Wild Bill was
surely the wildest of them all. Thanks for watching.