Life and career
Early life
Hickok was born in Homer, Illinois (what is now Troy Grove) on May 27, 1837. His birthplace is now the Wild Bill Hickok Memorial, a listed historic site under the supervision of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. While he was growing up, his father's farm was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad, and he learned his shooting skills protecting the farm with his father from slave catchers. Hickok was a good shot from a very young age and recognized locally as an outstanding marksman with a pistol.
In 1855, at the age of 18, Hickok moved to Kansas Territory following a fight with Charles Hudson, which resulted in both falling into a canal. Mistakenly thinking he had killed Hudson, Hickok fled and joined General Jim Lane's vigilante "Free State Army" (The Red Legs) where he met 12-year-old William Cody, later to be known as "Buffalo Bill," who at that time was a scout for Johnston's Army.
Because of his "sweeping nose and protruding upper lip," Hickok was nicknamed "Duck Bill." In 1861, after growing a mustache following the McCanles incident, he began calling himself Wild Bill. Despite all Hickok photographs indicating he had dark hair, all contemporary descriptions confirm he was in fact golden blonde. Reddish shades in hair appeared black in early wet and dry plate photography.
For unknown reasons, Hickok used the name William Hickok from 1858 and then William Haycock during the Civil War. Arrested as Haycock in 1865, he then resumed his real name of James Hickok. Interestingly, most newspapers continued to use the name William Haycock when referring to "Wild Bill" until 1869 despite military records after 1865 using his correct name while acknowledging he was also known as Haycock.
Constable
In 1857, Hickok claimed a 160-acre (65 ha) tract in Johnson County, Kansas (in what is now Lenexa). On March 22, 1858, he was elected as one of the first four constables of Monticello Township, Kansas. In 1859 he joined the Russell, Waddell, and Majors freight company called the Pony Express. The following year he was badly injured by a bear and sent to the Rock Creek Station in Nebraska (which the company had recently purchased from David McCanles) to work as a stable hand while he recovered. In 1861 he was involved in a deadly shootout with the McCanles Gang at the Rock Creek Station after 40-year-old David McCanles, his 12-year-old son (William) Monroe McCanles, and two farmhands, James Woods and James Gordon, called at the station's office to demand payment of an overdue second installment on the property, an event that is still the subject of much debate. David McCanles "called out" Wild Bill from the Station House. Wild Bill emerged onto the street, immediately drew one of his .36 caliber SA Navy revolvers, and, at a 75-yard stand-off distance, fired a single shot into McCanles's chest, killing him instantly (ref. Am. Handgunner). Hickok and his accomplices, the station manager Horace Wellman, his wife, and an employee, J.W. Brink, were tried but judged to have acted in self-defense. According to Joseph G. Rosa, a Hickok biographer, the shot that felled the elder McCanles came from inside the house, a tale Wild Bill's friends invented to keep the "heat" of both the law and McCanles' extended family off Wild Bill (extended generational member). It remains unknown who actually fired it. Rosa conjectures that Wellman had far more of a motive to kill McCanles, a belief supported by McCanles's son's own account. There were also women in the house, conceivably armed with shotguns. McCanles was the first man Hickok was reputed to have killed in a fight. On several later occasions, Hickok was to confront and kill several men while fighting alone.
Civil War and scouting
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Hickok signed on as a teamster for the Union Army in Sedalia, Missouri, and by the end of the year he was a wagonmaster. In September 1862 he was discharged for an undisclosed reason and there are no records of his whereabouts until late 1863, when he was employed by the Provost Marshal of South-West Missouri as a member of the Springfield detective police. It has been speculated that during the "missing year", Hickok may have been operating as a spy in Southern territory.
Hickok's duties as a police detective were mostly mundane and included counting the number of troops in uniform drinking while on duty, checking hotel liquor licenses and tracking down individuals in debt to the Union to facilitate repayment. In 1864 Hickok and the other detectives had not been paid for some time, and Hickok either resigned or was reassigned as he was hired as a scout by General John B. Sanborn at five dollars a day plus a horse and equipment. In June 1865, Hickok was mustered out and spent his time in and around Springfield gambling.
Lawman and gunfighter notoriety
Hickok 1869. Because a knife would not have been worn unsheathed, it is likely a photographer's prop. Although buckskins are often seen in movies depicting earlier periods, Hickok was one of the first to wear them.
On July 21, 1865, in the town square of Springfield, Missouri, Hickok killed Davis Tutt, Jr. in a "quick draw" duel. Fiction later typified this kind of gunfight, but Hickok's is in fact the first one on record that fits the portrayal.
Hickok first met former Confederate Army soldier Davis Tutt in early 1865, while both were gambling in Springfield, Missouri. Hickok often borrowed money from Tutt. They were originally good friends, but they eventually fell out over a woman, and it was rumored that Hickok once had an affair with Tutt's sister, perhaps fathering a child. This was likely exacerbated by the fact that there was a long-standing dispute over Hickok's girlfriend, Susannah Moore. Hickok refused to play cards with Tutt, who retaliated by financing other players in an attempt to bankrupt him.
According to the accepted account, the dispute came to a head when Tutt was coaching an opponent of Hickok's during a card game. Hickok was on a winning streak and Tutt, frustrated, requested that he repay a loan, which Hickok did. Tutt then demanded another owed from a previous card game. Hickok refused, as he had an "a memorandum" proving it to be for . Tutt then took Hickok's watch, which was lying on the table, as collateral for the , at which point Hickok warned him not to wear it or he, Hickok, would shoot him. The next day, Tutt appeared in the square wearing the watch prominently, and Hickok tried to negotiate the watch's return. Tutt stated that he would now accept no less than , but both agreed that they would not fight over it and went for a drink together. Tutt left the saloon but returned to the square at 6 p.m., while Hickok arrived on the other side and warned him not to approach him while wearing the watch. Both men faced each other sideways in the dueling position and both fired almost simultaneously. Tutt's shot missed, but Hickok's didn't, piercing Tutt through the side from about 75 yards away. Tutt called out, "Boys, I'm killed" and ran onto the porch of the local courthouse and then back to the street, where he collapsed and died.
Hickok was arrested for murder two days later; however, the charge was later reduced to manslaughter. He was released on ,000 bail and stood trial on August 3, 1865. At the end of the trial, Judge Sempronius Boyd gave the jury two contradictory instructions. He first instructed the jury that a conviction was its only option under the law. He then instructed them that they could apply the unwritten law of the "fair fight" and acquit. The jury voted for acquittal, a verdict that was not popular at the time.
Several weeks later, Hickok was interviewed by Colonel George Ward Nichols, and the interview was published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Using the name "Wild Bill Hitchcock" (sic), the article recounted the hundreds of men whom Hickok supposedly personally killed and other exaggerated exploits. The article was controversial wherever Hickok was known, and it led to several frontier newspapers' writing rebuttals. As can be seen in this account, not counting Indians, Hickok killed five men (one by accident), was an accessory in the deaths of three more, and wounded one. Hickok was reported to be an inveterate hater of Indians, but it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. Witnesses confirm that while scouting from Fort Harker Kansas on May 11, 1867, Hickok was attacked by a large group of Indians, who fled after Hickok shot and killed two. In July, Hickok told a newspaper reporter he had led several soldiers in pursuit of Indians who had killed four men near the fort on 2 July. He reported returning with five prisoners after killing ten. Witnesses confirm the story was true in part: The party did set out to find those who had killed the four men, but the group returned to the fort without nary a dead Indian, neither even seeing a live one.
In September 1865, Hickok came in second in the election for City Marshal of Springfield. Leaving Springfield, he was recommended for the position of Deputy United States Marshal at Fort Riley Kansas. This was at the time of the Indian Wars that counted the Great Plains as a battleground, and Hickok sometimes served as a scout for George A. Custer's 7th Cavalry.
In 1867, Hickok took a break from the west and moved to Niagara Falls, where he tried his hand at acting in a stage