Today In Western History: Abilene Hires A New Marshal

June 04, 1870

Abilene, Kanasas, was a burgeoning Cowtown. The county itself, Dickinson County, had only come into existence in 1857.  A stage coach stop was built by Timothy Hershey that same year, and was Mud Creek began as a stage stop that same year and due to the landscape, it was given the unlikely name of Mud Creek.  In 1860, it was renamed Abilene, and the name was taken from a passage in the Bible (Luke 3:1), meaning “city of the plains”.

In 1867, Joseph G. McCoy purchased 250 acres of land north and east of Abilene, on which he built a hotel that he called the Drover’s 

Joseph G. McCoy, he built Abilene into a destination for the trail herds
Joseph G. McCoy, he built Abilene into a destination for the trail herds

Cottage.  He also put together a set of stockyards equipped for 2,000 head of cattle, and a stable for their horses. Why did he invest here?  Because he was a smart man.  In that same year the Kansas Pacific Railway (Union Pacific) had pushed westward through to Abilene. The Kansas Pacific put in a side-track switch at Abilene that enabled the cattle cars to be loaded and sent on to their destinations. The first twenty carloads left September 5, 1867, on their way to Chicago, Illinois, where McCoy was quite familiar with the market. The town grew quickly and became the very first “cow town” of the west.

McCoy encouraged Texas cattlemen to drive their herds to his stockyards.  From 1867 to 1871, the Chisholm Trail, a trail used by many cowmen to herd their cattle to market, ended in Abilene, and this convenient location brought in many travelers and very quickly turned Abilene one of the wildest towns in the west.   According to records, 35,000 head were sent on their way east in 1867 and this allowed Abilene to become the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, Kansas.  Another reliable resource declared that 440,200 head of cattle were shipped out of Abilene from 1867 to 1871. How-ever, in just four years, this total jumped to between 600,000 and 700,000 cows coming in to Abilene and other Kansas railheads, a 35-40% increase in traffic.   

This represented a tremendous boom in Abilene’s economy, but it came at a price. These cows didn’t come on their own, and that mean men were needed to move them.  After four to six months on the trail, with no liquor or women, when the men arrived and were paid off, they wanted to howl at the moon.  This allowed for a lot of opportunities for gamblers, pickpockets, saloons and painted ladies to make a killing as well.  And to prevent the other kind of killings, a strong and effective lawman was needed.

Town marshal Tom “Bear River” Smith was initially successful policing Abilene, often using only his bare hands. He survived two assassination 

Marshal Tom "Bear RIver" Smith. he tamed towns with his hands.
Marshal Tom “Bear River” Smith. he tamed towns with his hands.

attempts during his tenure. However, he was murdered and decapitated on November 2, 1870. Smith wounded one of his two attackers during the shootout preceding his death, and both suspects were given life in prison for the offense.  He was replaced by a man whose fierce reputation, as well as his unyielding style of law enforcement, was guaranteed to keep peace in town.  On June 4, 1870, the town father hired  James Butler Hickok, known far and wide as Wild Bill Hickok to be the new marshal.  Hickok’s time in the job was short.  One night while he was

James Butler "WIld Bill" Hickok, legendary lawman, shootist and gambler
James Butler “WIld Bill” Hickok, legendary lawman, shootist and gambler

 was standing off a crowd during a street brawl, a gambler named Phil Coe took two shots at Hickok, who returned fire, killing Coe.  

Phillip Houston Coe, gambler, gunfighter, and partner with Ben Thompson. He tried to shoot it out with Wild Bill Hickok and lost.
Phillip Houston Coe, gambler, gunfighter, and partner with Ben Thompson. He tried to shoot it out with Wild Bill Hickok and lost.

There had been bad blood between them for some time.   But Hickok then accidentally shot his friend and deputy, Mike Williams, who had come running up from behind in a desire to help his friend.  Running up be-hind Hickok was a smart move at any time, as Hickok was known to shoot to kill.  Hickok lost his job two months later in December.  It was the beginning of the end for Wild Bill, as his eyesight was already beginning to fail, possibly from an STD.  He never drew his pistol on another man for the rest of his life, which was only five years and four months.

It is reported that Hickok had a premonition that Deadwood would be his last camp, and expressed this belief to his friend Charlie Utter (also known as Colorado Charlie) and the others who were

Steve and Charley Utter (l to r) at the grave of Wild Bill Hickok
Steve and Charley Utter (l to r) at the grave of Wild Bill Hickok

traveling with them at the time. On August 2, 1876, Hickok was playing poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. Hickok usually sat with his back to a wall. The only seat available when he joined the poker game that afternoon was a chair that put his back to a door. Twice he asked another player, Charles Rich, to change seats with him, and on both occasions Rich refused.  A former buffalo hunter, Jack McCall (better known as “Crooked Nose” or “Broken Nose” Jack), entered the saloon unnoticed by Hickok.

Jack "Crooked Nose", or "Broken Nose" McCall. He shot Wild Bill Hickik in the back of the head, and was later hanged for this killing.
Jack “Crooked Nose”, or “Broken Nose” McCall. He shot Wild Bill Hickik in the back of the head, and was later hanged for this killing.

McCall walked to within a few feet of Hickok, drew a pistol and shouted, “Damn you! Take that!” before firing at Hickok point blank.  McCall’s bullet hit Hickok in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The bullet emerged through Hickok’s right cheek, striking another player, Captain Massie, in the left wrist. The murder weapon was an 18 inch “Sharps Improved” revolver. 

Hickok was playing five card draw when he was shot, and was holding a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights. The final card had been discarded and its replacement had possibly yet to be dealt. The fifth card’s identity remains the subject of debate. 

 

 

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 Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

 

Today In Western History: Kit Carson Goes Under

May 23, 1868

Christopher Carson, legendary mountain man, trapper, explorer and soldier
Christopher Carson, legendary mountain man, trapper, explorer and soldier

Kit Carson dies of old age, at 58, in Fort Lyon, Colorado.

Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson was an American legend.  He lived in a time of change, when the West was opening up to exploration and development.  For most of his life he lived off the land, holding few actual paying jobs.  During his lifetime he had been a trapper, a mountain man, a wild-erness guide, Indian agent, and even an American Army officer.  As with many of the famous names of that period, their reputations were greatly enhanced by repeated embellishments of their exploits, sometimes by themselves or just normal story-telling by others to build up their own reputations, and sometimes by their biographers or people just looking to make a dollar by selling complete fiction.  Ned Buntline did this for Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Frontiersman, creator of the Rodeo
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Frontiersman, creator of the Rodeo

Christopher left home at the age of 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the vast and un-explored Western territories.  In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to what was then Mexican California and later joined fur trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains.  To improve his chances of survival and acceptance by the carious tribes, Carson lived among and even married into the  Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes.  In the 1840s, based on his growing reputation as the one who knew the mountains, he was hired as a guide by John C. Fremont, the man who would become known as the Pathfinder.  Carson achieved national fame through Fremont’s accounts of his 

John C. Fremont, The Great Pathfinder"
John C. Fremont, The Great Pathfinder”

expeditions.While serving with Fremont, Carson took an active part in the uprising in California at the beginning of what became known at the Mexican-American War. Later in the war, Carson served as a courier and a scout, and became celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, DC., to deliver news of the conflict in California to the U.S. government.  In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches.

During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly New Mexico volunteers of Hispanic heritage supporting the Union at the  Battle of Valverde in 1862. When the Confederate threat to New Mexico was eliminated, Carson turned on the native Americans he had lived with and led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, Kiowa and Comanche Indians.  For this service, Carson was breveted (a type of military commission conferred especially for outstanding service by which an officer was promoted to a higher rank without the correspond- ing pay) a Brigadier General, and given command of Fort Garland, Colorado, but after only a short time his declining health forced him to retire from military life.  Carson was married three times and had ten children.  Carson died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868. He is buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his third wife Josefa Jaramillo.

 

 

 

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 Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

 

Today In Western History: Martha Jane Cannary Is Born

May 1 —

On this day in 1852, Martha Jane Canary is born near Princeton, Missouri.  She wasn’t a pretty girl, and she was raised in very hard times.  When she was 13, her family migrated all the way up to Montana.  Four years later in 1869, at the age of 17, she moved to Wyoming, where it is believed she went to work for the railroad doing manual labor.  She worked as a dishwasher, cook, waitress, dance-hall girl, nurse, and ox team driver, and she delivered mail for the pony express.  Finally, in 1874, she found work as a scout at Fort Russell. During that time, Jane also began her on-and-off employment as a prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch. In 1875, dressed as a man, she joined a geological expedition into the Black Hills.  A year later, she claimed she was scouting for General George Crook.

General George Crook, Civil War soldier and Indian fighter
General George Crook, Civil War soldier and Indian fighter

In 1885, she married Charles Burke and had a daughter.  In 1893 she joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and she finally died in 1903 in Terry, South Dakota, which is close to Deadwood.  She was rough, hard, and fearless.  And she has been played by many leading ladies in the movies, none so realistic as by Robin Weigert, in the HBO tv series Deadwood. During her lifetime, she was a scout, a teamster, a bullwhacker, and nurse to an entire mining camp (Deadwood), Wild West performer and prostitute.  According to her own biography, which is highly suspect, on 1869 she met the love of her life, James Butler Hickok,

James Butler "WIld Bill" Hickok, legendary lawman, shootist and gambler
James Butler “WIld Bill” Hickok, legendary lawman, shootist and gambler

known forever as Wild Bill, where she claimed she married him and has his child.  There is no proof of any of this claim, other than she met him, and he never mentioned it to anyone.

 

Who is this frontier woman and legend?  None other than the famous (or, infamous) Calamity Jane.

 

To purchase a signed copy of Larry Auerbach’s novel “The Spirit Of Redd Mountain”, Click Here

Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com