Wild Bill Hickok from SD State Historical Society

James Butler Hickok was born in Troy Grove, Illinois, on May 27, 1837. As a boy in rural Illinois, young James was quite interested in guns, shooting, and competition. He became recognized locally as an outstanding marksman with a pistol. His parents were God-fearing Baptists. He was not close to either of his parents, especially his father, who he considered to be a dreamer. Nevertheless, James did his chores on the family's farm – still harboring romantic notions of the wild west.

At the age of 18, he left home and migrated to Monticello, Kansas. There he landed a job driving a stagecoach on the Santa Fe and Oregon trails. In 1855, highwaymen were real threats to stagecoaches laden with relatively well-heeled travelers with cash in their pockets, and as a driver, young James had many violent encounter with robbers, putting his marksman's skills to use immediately. In his own mind it was instantly clear that he was rather good as a gunfighter, and he began to develop an attitude which quickly earned him the nickname "Wild Bill."

Scrapes with desperados, outlaws, and even bears did nothing to diminish Wild Bill's growing reputation as a very tough frontier character. He was, after all, right for such a job given that he had all the proper traits: a sharpshooter's eye, and an unwavering appreciation of his own courage and reasonably good looks. Embellishing his image, he grew his hair to an unusual length, largely, he said, as a challenge to those scalp seeking Indians he had been fighting so often -- though others offered the opinion that the hair was more a vanity than anything else.

After the fight with the bear in eastern Colorado, Hickok decided to take the position of constable in a small town in Nebraska. During the Civil War, Bill volunteered his services to the Union as a scout. After the war a correspondent said, "Mr. Hickok is endowed with extraordinary power and agility. He seems naturally suited to perform daring actions."

Hickok served for a short time as a U.S. Army scout in Colorado in 1868. Writers have surmised that Bill liked the atmosphere of the towns (wine, women, and card games) much better than a life on the open plains. An appointment as U.S. Marshal in Hays City, Kansas, returned Hickok to keeping of the peace, and pursuing other habits in the local saloons. At the same time (1867), nearby Abilene, Kansas was developing as the earliest of the great staging places for the shipment of Texas longhorn cattle east by rail. Abilene was a wide open town; and into this walked Marshal Hickok.

After a series of questionable shootings and conduct, the mayor and his council told Wild Bill that he was no longer needed, and Hickok was fired. Unemployed, Wild Bill decided that he liked being a gambler just as much, and so now he had an opportunity to follow that course. He packed up his reputation and a couple decks of cards, and headed off toward other places in which to try his hand.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was in Nebraska seeking new recruits, and a scout had been sent to inquire if Wild Bill had an interest in joining the show as a sharpshooter at the sum of $192 per month plus accommodations. Wild Bill accepted the job. This didn't last for very long either. The majority of Wild Bill's deeds were fabrications cooked up in his head, and since alcohol had taken away his sharp edge he was not performing as expected. He was fired, again.

In the downward spiral that overtook him, he tried to resume a career as a gambler, but apparently no longer possessed the skills, the reputation or the illusion. He was repeatedly arrested for vagrancy; he was seldom sober; he was 39. By late 1875 he wound up drinking and playing cards in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.

Curiously, when interviewed in September 1876, Buffalo Bill Cody who had met Wild Bill for the last time early in July at Hat Creek, Wyoming Territory, also said that when they shook hands for the last time Hickok had said they would not meet again. Bill met bullwacker Charlie Utter in Cheyenne, and the two headed north to the wide-open mining camp of Deadwood, Dakota Territory. It was on that trip up from Cheyenne on the wagon train where Bill supposedly met and befriended Martha Jane Cannary, aka Calamity Jane.

On August 2, 1876, Wild Bill was playing a game of poker at his usual table in the corner near the door at the Saloon No. 10.