Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter

276 Pages·2019·19.95 MB·English

by  Tom Clavin

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About the Author
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T B C
O RENDAN LAVIN
Author’s Note
After finishing Dodge City, about the lawmen and cowboys and outlaws who
made it the wildest of Wild West cow towns in the 1870s, and especially after it
became a national bestseller, a natural question was “What’s next?” Well, “next”
turned out not to be going forward in time but to step back a few years. Before
the heyday of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and other iconic figures
who continue to populate our books and screens, there was arguably the most
iconic of all: James Butler Hickok.
Some people may think we know his story, the gallant plainsman and
gunslinger who helped dozens of villains to meet their maker and who romanced
perhaps the most notorious female figure of the Wild West, Calamity Jane.
Those are indeed elements of the “Wild Bill” story, but, thankfully, the true and
still to some degree untold—accurately—tale of the man known as Wild Bill is
pretty surprising. Once again, as with Dodge City, it was a delight to discover
that the truth—as far as we can know it—is at least as exciting and fascinating, if
not more so, than the legends that have been attributed to Wild Bill Hickok.
The legends can’t be ignored, however. For the most part, they are why we
know (or think we know) Wild Bill today. He was indeed the first gunfighter on
the expanding American frontier, and he was the first post–Civil War celebrity
of the West. There had been legendary figures before Hickok, especially Daniel
Boone and Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. But Wild Bill became bigger than all
of them in the mind of a gullible and impressionable public, especially those on
the east side of the Missouri River. He was an American legend by the time he
was thirty years old, and by the end of the nineteenth century, only his good
friend Buffalo Bill Cody, who transformed from army scout and hunter to
shameless showman, and outlived Hickok by four decades, came close to Wild
Bill’s legendary status in the public imagination.
That Hickok was famous while still young was something of a curse. To me,
one of the most important aspects of the life of James Butler Hickok is his story
would have fit snugly in a portfolio of Shakespeare’s tragedies. (Remarkably,
and suitably, there was a connection between the Hickok family and the Bard of
Avon.) From humble origins, Hickok ascended to a great height, and then, from
a combination of his own flaws and the cruelties of fate, he fell. There was one
final opportunity for redemption and lasting love, and then suddenly his life was
snatched away. Still, the fame he left behind has continued for 150 years with
Wild Bill Hickok being depicted in countless books and movies and television
shows.
Today, Wyatt Earp, perhaps, equals Hickok as an icon of the American West.
But Wild Bill’s adventures and exploits, his triumphs and tragedies, came first.
And during the finest years of his all-too-brief life, which ended at thirty-nine,
there wasn’t a man alive who could beat him. Looking at the landscape, I really
had no choice but to answer the question “What’s next?” with Wild Bill Hickok.
A quick note about sources and the “true story”: A good amount of material
has been published about Hickok, beginning with the so-called dime-store
novels that began appearing while he was still alive. Even more serious attempts,
such as The Plainsman, Wild Bill Hickok by Frank J. Wilstach and Wild Bill and
His Era by William Connelley, liberally included fictions as well as a generous
sprinkling of embellishments and exaggerations. The Englishman Joseph G.
Rosa found a career in writing about Hickok, and one has to admire his
relentless, decades-long efforts to track down every tidbit of information, though
the result of his 1964 biography was a somewhat mind-numbing saga of facts
and disclaimers and rebuttals ricocheting off each other.
As with Dodge City, I sifted through every source I could get my hands on,
and at the end of each day, a little more gold had been collected in the pan.
These nuggets added up to a book that once more demonstrates that the truth can
be at least as dramatic and potent as the fabrications. What is no exaggeration is
that the man we know as Wild Bill Hickok was one of the most intriguing
figures in American history.
PROLOGUE
The gunfight between Davis Tutt and Wild Bill Hickok on July 21, 1865, was to
be recorded as the first quick-draw duel on the American frontier. While this has
not been disputed, there was another very significant aspect to the duel: Hickok
emerged as the most famous gunfighter—often, the term “shootist” was used—
on the frontier. When the duel was detailed in an article published eighteen
months later in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Hickok, not yet thirty years
old, was catapulted from local folk hero to national legend … and thereby, he
became a marked man. During the ensuing decade, many men with six-shooters
on their hips would measure themselves against the Hickok legend, and a few
would ponder the value to their own reputations by gunning him down.
The duel took place in Springfield, Missouri. From the perspective of today,
this town would not be considered part of the American West, but in the 1860s,
Missouri and Kansas and Nebraska comprised much of the mid-American
frontier. In July 1865, Springfield was one of the jumping-off points for people
heading west, to Kansas next door or beyond to what had been known before the
Civil War as the Great American Desert.
The participants in the “High Noon”–like shoot-out had once been friends.
Davis Tutt had been born in Yellville, Arkansas, in 1836, and thus was or close
to twenty-nine years old on that fateful July day. The Tutts were well known in
Arkansas politics until the Tutt-Everett War. Also known as the Marion County
War, it began when two prominent families took opposite sides in the
presidential election of 1844 involving Henry Clay and the winner, James Polk.
There were escalating confrontations—a scenario to be repeated decades later by
the Hatfield and McCoy families—until 1850, when Hansford “Hamp” Tutt,
Davis’s father, was ambushed and shot. On his deathbed, he requested that there
be no revenge and no more fighting over politics, and the war ended.
The younger Tutt enlisted in the Twenty-Seventh Arkansas Infantry Regiment
in 1862 and fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War, seeing action
in Mississippi and elsewhere. At the war’s conclusion in April 1865, Tutt was
sent home, but by then, Arkansas had lost its allure. Like thousands of other
postwar young men, he turned his attention west. First, though, he ambled north,
into Missouri, stopping for a spell in Springfield. Soon afterward, Hickok hit
town, another postwar drifter killing time at the city’s gaming tables.
The major difference between Hickok and Tutt was they had served on
opposite sides during the Civil War. By that July, though, what mattered more
was a mutual love of gambling. For a time, they were fast friends, enjoying the
same card games. But a couple of issues involving women began to spill over
onto the gaming tables, and worse, Hickok went on a cold streak and accepted
loans from Tutt rather than be broke and idle. In the third week of a typically
steamy July, he was already in a foul mood and needed no further
provocation … but then there was a card game at the Lyon House Hotel.
As will be detailed later in these pages, the outcome of that card game was
that Hickok and Tutt completed the journey from friends to enemies … and Tutt
had taken Hickok’s gold watch. It was only because Tutt was surrounded by
friends at the hotel that Wild Bill did not confront him with guns drawn.
But it was a different story the next day. On the morning of July 21, there was
Davis Tutt, strolling through the town square, sunlight glinting off the gold
watch. By this point in his life, Hickok was no stranger to gunplay and people
dying from it, yet when word reached him about Tutt’s performance, he did not
go for his gun. He did approach Tutt, but to negotiate getting the watch back. He
was rebuffed.
The day wasn’t over, though. Late that afternoon, Tutt was back in the
Springfield town square, brandishing the pocket watch. Witnesses noted that a
few minutes before six o’clock, Hickok was observed entering the town square
from the south. In his right hand was one of his Colt Navy pistols. By the time
he had drawn to within a hundred feet of Tutt, the latter was alone in one corner
of the square, as townsfolk had rushed for cover in surrounding buildings.
Dozens of pairs of eyes watched the scene unfold.
“Dave, here I am,” Hickok said. In one last attempt to avoid a fight, he
holstered the pistol and advised, “Don’t you come across here with that watch.”
Did Tutt underestimate Hickok, or, with all those witnesses, he could not
possibly hand over the watch? He may have been debating his options as his