RBC | In a newspaper interview given to Joseph N. Neal, Ed P. Wilber is quoted as saying, “Well, I first saw Calamity Jane in 1883 Routt [county in Colorado], and then in 1885. Her an’ a fellow by the name of Billy Steers came down and lived here in Meeker for two months or better, and of course the reputation she had, whenever I would meet her or see her I would always salute her, and that is all the acquaintance I ever had with her.”
Local legend has it that she drove a freight wagon from Rawlins and occupied a dugout on the north side of the White River. These dugouts were reported as washed out in 1901 by high water.
Many tales have been told and retold of Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, and Annie Oakley. During the height of the cowboy era, East Coast readers could not get enough of dime novels set in the Wild West. The New York Weekly ran serialized Calamity Jane stories of adventure, danger and perils from savage Indians.
Some of the dime novels used the name of Calamity Jane in their fiction. The heroine rode horses in male clothing and went about rescuing just about anything worth rescuing. They were fabrications made up to suit the readership, who had never traveled west of the Mississippi.
After reading Calamity Jane’s own version of herself, I was not much closer to the facts. Even her birth year and the spelling of her real name, Martha Canary, are distorted. Since Martha was illiterate, her collaborator took poetic license to tell her tale. Probably because Martha had adjusted her narrative to fit the character.
Calamity Jane brought fame to Martha Canary along with a measure of respectability, and a lot of free drinks at saloons. Her autobiography claimed that she rode as a scout for General Custer in 1870, scouted for many Indian campaigns in Arizona in 1871, scouted for General Crook in his 1875 Black Hills expedition to protect the gold miners, rode as a Pony Express rider from Ft. Laramie to Deadwood, South Dakota, swam the Platte River as a courier, met Bill Hickock at Ft. Laramie and joined him on his trip to Deadwood, was an intimate friend of Bill and was present in Deadwood when Wild Bill Hickock was killed in 1876 and attempted to apprehend his killer, Jack McCall. She claimed to be the first white woman in the Black Hills at the time when the Sioux held the area as part of their reservation.
Hundreds of pages have been devoted to separating Calamity Jane’s legend and reality. In this short space, I am not even going to try. The plain truth would have been remarkable for any woman in her time and place, but probably would not sell books. In the later part of her short 46 years, this colorful autobiography and some lecture travels were her only income. It has been accepted that she was never a professional scout. She has been referred to as a regimental mascot. She often wore a soldier’s uniform unchallenged by the enlisted men as she was a favorite “camp follower.” Along the Union Pacific boom towns, she was often jailed for being drunk and disorderly. She also worked as a waitress and laundress, and could drink, ride and cuss better than most men. Everyone acknowledges that her extensive travels on the frontiers of Wyoming territory, Dakota territory, Montana and Idaho would have been challenging as a man, but extraordinary for a woman. She died in Terry, South Dakota, in 1903, and is buried in Deadwood next to Bill Hickock, two legends of the Old West.
By ED PECK
Sources: Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane by Herself 1896; Calamity Jane the Woman and the Legend by James D. McLaird 2005; Calamity Jane by D.J. Herda 2018; Meeker Herald interviews of Ed. P. Wilber by Joseph Neal; Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org; Wyomingnewspapers.org. Kay Bivens of the RBC Historical Society.
