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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806148717 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2015 |
| Pages: | 276 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Calamity Jane
A Reader's Guide
By Richard W. Etulain
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 University of Oklahoma PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5262-2
CHAPTER 1
A LIFE IN BRIEF
THE NEW YORK TIMES reporter was puzzled. How was he to write the obituary of that mysterious Wild Woman of the West, Calamity Jane, when he knew so little about her? Even though Calamity may have been the most written-about woman of the pioneer West, the facts of her life seemed but a molehill beside the mountainous legends already stacked around her. Facing this dilemma, the journalist chose to play on the legends rather than investigate the facts. Like so many stories about Calamity, the narrative he produced was as distant from the truth as he was from faraway Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
In writing his obituary of Calamity the New York journalist was whistling in the dark. Appearing one day after her death on 1 August 1903 in Terry, South Dakota, the brief story relied heavily on hearsay and Calamity's own suspect, undependable autobiography of 1896. The subhead of the obituary foreshadowed its truckload of errors. The writer declared that Calamity was a "Woman Who Became Famous as an Indian Fighter" and that "thousands of tourists went miles out of their way to see her." Generally, the obituary was off to the races in repeating Calamity's falsehoods about scouting, serving with General Custer, and capturing Jack McCall (Wild Bill Hickok's assassin) with a threatening cleaver. He also repeated exaggerations from frontier magazines and newspapers that had labeled Calamity as "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone" and as a young woman who laid "around with a lot of road agents on the prairies."
The Times obituary, a harbinger of the future, exuded tall tales and did little to illuminate Calamity's actual life. At its center, the New York story reiterated the most popular legend about Calamity: she was a Wild Woman of the Old West who spent her life prancing around the frontier fighting Indians, marching with the military, taking on the bad guys, and helping a roaring frontier pass through its final stages.
But the newspaper obituary overlooked two other legends that congealed around Calamity in the last twenty-five years of her life, from roughly 1876 to 1903. The better-known of these two stories portrayed Calamity as a veritable Angel of Mercy, courageously helping smallpox victims no one else would aid and giving freely to down-and-outers. Less widely touted but nonetheless in circulation by the end of Calamity's life was her desire to be a Pioneer Woman who married, bore children, and had a steady, safe home.
In the days and weeks immediately after Calamity's demise, numerous newspapers across the country cobbled together obituaries and retrospectives of her life no more dependable than that in the New York Times. Building on wild journalistic stories and sensational dime novels, the obituary writers continued the legends that had grown up about her since the 1870s. It would be several decades before careful, diligent biographers and historians dug out the obscure details of Martha Canary and her deification as Calamity Jane. Indeed, a full century transpired after Calamity's death before the definitive biography of her appeared.
Two especially useful approaches to Calamity's life and legends lie before a writer. One could illuminate her story through gender analysis, clarifying how her roles as an unusual woman in the West illuminate and expand meanings of frontier history. Or, one could deal with Calamity's biography and career in light of shifting climates of opinion during her lifetime and in the following century. The following pages primarily rely on the second approach, without overlooking insights gained from gender analysis.
* * *
Martha Canary's rather traditional early life carried no hints of what she would become after her teenage years. She was born in 1856, perhaps on 1 May, near the town of Princeton, in north-central Missouri. Her parents, Robert and Charlotte, were a farm family, as Robert's parents had been. As U.S. census records revealed, Martha's paternal grandparents, James and Sarah Wilson (or Willson) Canary, began life in Virginia, moved to Ohio early in their marriage, parenting a large family of five boys and four girls, and continued to farm in eastern Ohio until 1852. (Robert was the youngest of the children, born in 1825.) On their way west, the Canary family stopped briefly in Iowa, before James (without Sarah, who may have died) arrived in Mercer County, Missouri, in the mid- to late 1850s. Perhaps James was looking for more-available, less-expensive land for each of his sons and sons-in-law, about half of whom followed him west. On 14 June 1855, in Polk County, Iowa, son Robert married fifteen-year-old Charlotte Burge. Robert and Charlotte arrived in Mercer County within the next year with father James; brother James Thornton Canary and his wife, Delilah; two sisters, Lana and husband James Kilgore, and Mary and her husband, Robert Southers. They all congregated not far from one another in northern Missouri.
The census of 1860, too often overlooked, provides the most revealing evidence about the Canarys before dramatic changes invaded the family. Robert and Charlotte were by then the parents of three children, all born in Missouri: Martha (the future Calamity Jane), in 1856; Cilas (Silas?), in 1857; and Lana (or Lena), one year old. Robert was literate, Charlotte was not; their land was worth $1,500, and their personal estate $400.
More than sixty years later, biographer/journalist Duncan Aikman traveled to Princeton, hoping to mine the memories of Mercer County residents who recalled the Canary family. Robert, they remembered, was at best a phlegmatic, unenthusiastic farmer, preschool Martha a lively tomboyish girl. But it was mother Charlotte who remained fresh and controversial in the neighbors' minds. Repeatedly Charlotte bruised the social expectations of neighborhood wives. Her brightly colored and eye-catching clothing, her cigar smoking, her public flirtatiousness and swearing, and her drinking (sometimes to drunkenness) branded her in contrast to the upstanding mothers who were innocent of all these untoward actions.
Soon after Grandpa James died in 1862, Robert and Charlotte fell out with other members of the Canary family and left Mercer County. When an administrator for the James Canary estate attempted to regain money, livestock, and farm implements from Robert and Charlotte and return them to the rightful heirs in James's estate, they refused to deliver the goods. Vague rumors of Charlotte's pro-Southern sympathies (she was called a "Secesh," or secessionist) and of Robert's antipathy for farming may have been reasons for the Canarys' exiting Missouri, but the most likely explanation lies buried in the Mercer County Court records. When Robert and Charlotte refused to return the requested goods to James's estate, other members of the family sued them. The probate and county courts hailed Robert into court several times between 1862 and 1864, but the proceedings indicated that Robert "comes not." In late 1862 Robert and Charlotte sold their farm and hustled off to a less threatening place. Perhaps they were drawn to a West rumored to be mineral rich. Whether they headed directly west or went north, stopping off for a few months in Iowa before striking out for the Montana goldfields, is not clear.
The next decade of Martha Canary's life is a virtual tabula rasa of dependable documentation. In her ghostwritten autobiography, Calamity Jane played up the adventure and dangers of the long trip west. She also claimed she became "a remarkable good shot and fearless rider for a girl of my age."
The Canary family disappears from the scene in these years save for one important newspaper document in Montana. The Canarys were evidently drawn to the new strike in Alder Gulch in the early 1860s. Robert, Charlotte, and their children most likely arrived in 1864, and by the end of the year, they were in deep trouble. Jammed in among the five thousand or more who crowded into the Virginia City, Montana, area, the Canarys lost their way in the chaos and costs of the boomtown. A brief story in the 31 December 1864 issue of the Montana Post, headlined "Provision for the Destitute Poor," highlighted the difficulties of "three little girls, who state their names to be Canary." Then the angry reporter turned on the parents: "The father, it seems, is a gambler in Nevada [City]. The mother is a woman of the lowest grade." The writer concluded this was "a most flagrant and wanton instance of unnatural conduct on the part of parents to their children."
Things quickly got worse. Charlotte died in Blackfoot City, Montana, probably in 1866. Robert, hoping to get help in raising his brood, headed south to be among the Mormons, or perhaps he may have been heading back home to Missouri. A year later he too was gone, rumored to have died in the Salt Lake City area.
Now, Martha, not yet a teenager, was an orphan and responsible for her siblings. What could she do? She had no family in the far-off West, no community of support, or any other kind of help on which to rely. She would make do. Rumors suggest that Martha's younger sister Lena and brother Elijah (Lige) were farmed out to Mormon families in Utah. Martha was on her own, very young but a survivor.
The period from 1868 to early 1875 is a challenge for biographers because scarcely more than a handful of sources disclose Martha Canary's whereabouts and activities. Much later, Calamity said that after the death of her parents, she "went to Fort Bridger during 1868, then to Piedmont, Wyoming, with the U. P. Railroad." In 1869 the census taker caught up with Martha in Piedmont, where she claimed to be fifteen (but was actually thirteen) and evidently was helping in a boardinghouse and babysitting. Martha's controversial actions got her in trouble. The woman with whom she was staying, Emma Andrews Alton, "blew up and fired" Martha. In the next few years, strong rumors place her in the Wyoming mining boomtowns of Miner's Delight and South Pass City, where again her antisocial activities impelled her out the door and back to the "hell-on-wheels" railroad towns stretching across Wyoming. Martha was reported in Cheyenne in the early 1870s, and about this time reconnected with her sister, Lena, who relocated to western Wyoming, married German immigrant John Borner, and gave birth to a large family before her early death in 1888, at age twenty-nine. Martha's brother Lige also came to western Wyoming, but his footloose, roughneck activities kept him running from place to place. Later, Calamity claimed to have been with General Custer and other military commanders during the early 1870s, but there is no proof of such activities, save on expeditions with General George Crook in 1876.
The best evidence places Martha in Cheyenne and other sites to the north, such as Fort Laramie, in 1874–75. One trader along the Cheyenne-to-Deadwood stagecoach route claimed Martha was in a "hog ranch" (house of prostitution) selling sex by the mid-1870s. In 1875 she clandestinely joined the Newton-Jenney Expedition sent north by the U.S. government to check out the rumors of gold in the Black Hills. Younger brother Lige may have been with her. It was Martha's first trip to the Hills, perhaps as a surreptitious teamster after she was tossed out trying to dress up as a soldier and march with the troops. During this trip north Martha became Calamity Jane. "Mac," a reporter for the Chicago Inter-Ocean; Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, the expedition's topographer and engineer; and Harry "Sam" Young, a teamster and later Deadwood bartender; all spoke of her traveling with the expedition. Dr. McGillycuddy described her as "crazy for adventure," and Mac reported her to be a more "unctuous coiner of English, and not the Queen's pure either, than any (other) man in the command." In other words, Martha, now being called Calamity Jane, was already a prolific, unrepentant swearer of world-class caliber.
The year 1876 proved the turning point in Calamity's career. It began with two quick trips to the Black Hills with General George Crook and his army in the winter and spring of that year. Calamity may have served informally as a scout (so a good source claims), but primarily she was a camp-follower, hitching rides with soldiers and sneaking in among the teamsters and bullwhackers until she was discovered, chased out, and sent back south. Several travelers on these trips and other observers reported her with Crook — and not always traditionally dressed or sober. One teamster described her as "dressed in buckskin suit with two Colts six shooters on a belt." To him, she was one of the roughest persons he had ever seen. In the town of Custer, Calamity headed for the nearest saloon and "was soon made blind as a bat from looking through the bottom of a glass." In the 1880s and 1890s when Calamity began to make a name for herself as a Wild West performer, she made much of these experiences, claiming that she had been an active scout for General Crook.
Calamity's travel itinerary in the late spring and early summer of 1876 was chockablock, and more. In March she was with Crook to the north, in May back in Cheyenne, where she was arrested for stealing clothes, but was declared "Not. Guilty" [sic]. In early June she zipped back north for a second jaunt with Crook. Heading out of Cheyenne, "greatly" rejoicing "over her release from durance vile" (jail), she "borrowed" a horse and buggy. After overindulging in "frequent and liberal potations" of "bug juice," she headed for Fort Laramie, ninety miles up from Cheyenne. By mid-June, Calamity was celebrating with soldiers from Fort Laramie. The rhythm of her life, already in uncertain high gear, whirled into overdrive in the coming months.
At the end of June, an encounter took place that would forever change Calamity's story. In spring 1876, Wild Bill Hickok, newly married to circus owner Agnes Lake, and his partner Charlie (also Charley) Utter were in Cheyenne, making plans to ride north. Hickok would try his hand at mining, he promised his new wife, who stayed in Cincinnati. Charlie hoped to establish a stage line into the Black Hills. Soon after mid-June they were on their way. When the Hickok-Utter train stopped just north of Fort Laramie, the officer of the day at the fort asked them to take along several prostitutes, to keep them away from the soldiers. Calamity may have been among these prostitutes. One creditable source describes her as drunk and "near naked." Here in late June, in northeast Wyoming, Calamity met Wild Bill for the first time. They would know one another as acquaintances, and no more, for about the next five weeks. Members of the train gave Calamity a suit of buckskins for their trip into the Hills.
Contemporaries made much of the dramatic entrance of Wild Bill, Calamity, and other members of the train into Deadwood in early July, picturing them as prancing along the entire main street, greeting friends. But in the weeks to come Wild Bill and Calamity were rarely together. Then tragedy struck on 2 August, when Jack McCall, a drifting ne'er-do-well, sneaked up behind Hickok while he was playing poker and shot him in the back of the head. Those who have tried to conjure up a love affair between Hickok and Calamity, in Deadwood or in previous years, have no facts on which to base those stretchers. But the rumors have become a major, shaky legend surrounding Calamity.
From 1876 to 1881 Calamity was in and out of Deadwood. In mandeluged, female-starved Deadwood, Calamity became an in-demand worker, hostess, and dancer in the boomtown saloons and lively theaters. But a transformation was necessary. "Boys," she told the men camped with Wild Bill and Charlie Utter, "I wish you would loan me twenty dollars.... I can't do business in these old buckskins." The men dished out the money, and the redressing worked. A few days later, Calamity returned to the men's camp dressed attractively as a woman. "She pulled up her dress," one eyewitness recalled, "rolled down her stocking and took out a roll of greenbacks and gave us the twenty she had borrowed." Saloons and all-night dance halls, theaters, and the ubiquitous, undefinable "hurdy-gurdies" offered positions to the very small group of women as hostesses, entertainers, and "dance hall girls." Calamity worked in several of these establishments but mostly in the Gem, ruled over by the unsavory manager Al Swearingen, who turned the theater into a "notorious den of iniquity."
One observer claims that it was "generally well-established ... that Jane was a prostitute." Perhaps, but unproven. No irrefutable evidence exists that Calamity sold sex in Deadwood. That she worked in houses of prostitution and hog ranches, where the main occupation was selling sex, and that she had several "husbands" without benefit of clergy is established. Still, no patron of the "joy palaces" nor any madam or worker therein ever testified to Calamity's being an out-and-out prostitute. Despite this lack of substantiating evidence, one part of the Wild Woman legend that began to gather around Calamity in Deadwood, and soon thereafter, indicated she was a prostitute.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain. Copyright © 2015 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,A Life in Brief,
Legends in the Making,
Bibliographies and Reference Volumes,
Manuscript Collections and Manuscripts,
Legal Documents,
Newspaper Articles during Calamity's Lifetime,
Newspaper Articles after Calamity's Death,
Books and Pamphlets,
Essays,
Dime Novels and Commentaries,
Other Fiction, Literary Works, and Criticism,
Films and Cinematic Criticism,
Photographs,
Calamity Jane: Unfinished Business,
Index,