Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed from behind while playing poker in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on August 2, 1876. The gunman, a drifter named Jack McCall, walked up behind the legendary frontiersman, shouted “Damn you, take that,” and fired a single bullet into the back of his head at point-blank range. The assassination marked the violent end of one of the most famous figures of the American Old West, a man whose real exploits were often overshadowed by the exaggerated tales he told about himself. James Butler Hickok was born on May 27, 1837, in Homer, Illinois, now known as Troy Grove, the fourth of six children.
His father, William Alonzo Hickok, was a farmer and abolitionist who reportedly used the family home as a station on the Underground Railroad. The elder Hickok died when James was 15. At 18, Hickok fled Illinois after a fight with a man named Charles Hudson in which both fell into a canal, each believing he had killed the other. He settled in the Kansas Territory and joined Jim Lane’s Free State Army, an anti-slavery vigilante group active during the Bleeding Kansas era.
It was there he met 12-year-old William Cody, who would later become famous as Buffalo Bill. Hickok used the name William Hickok from 1858 and later went by William Haycock during the Civil War, a name most newspapers used when referring to him until 1869. He was elected one of Monticello Township’s first constables in 1858 and later worked for the Russell, Majors and Waddell freight company. In 1860, while driving a freight team from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hickok was severely injured in a confrontation with a cinnamon bear.
According to his account, the bear crushed him after his first shot ricocheted off its skull, but he managed to kill it with his knife. He was bedridden for four months before being sent to Rock Creek Station in Nebraska to recover. On July 12, 1861, a man named David McCanles arrived at the station with his 12-year-old son, his cousin, and another employee, demanding payment. Several versions of what happened exist, but McCanles and two other men ended up dead, with only the boy escaping.
Hickok and two others were charged with murder but were found to have acted in self-defense. Before 1861, Hickok was known among the Jayhawkers as “Shanghai Bill” because of his height and slim build. He grew a mustache following the McCanles incident and began calling himself “Wild Bill. ”
During the Civil War, Hickok worked as a teamster for the Union Army and later served as a scout.
After the war, he went on a gambling spree in Springfield, Missouri, where a dispute with another gambler named Davis Tutt escalated into one of the most famous gunfights in Western history. The disagreement reportedly began over women. According to reports, Hickok fathered an illegitimate child with Tutt’s sister, while Tutt paid close attention to Hickok’s paramour, Susanna Moore. Hickok allegedly refused to play in any card game that included Tutt, and Tutt retaliated by lending money and coaching other players on how to beat Hickok.
During one game, Hickok had won about $200 of what was essentially Tutt’s money. Frustrated, Tutt reminded Hickok of a $40 debt from a previous horse trade, which Hickok paid. Tutt then claimed Hickok owed him an additional $35 from a past poker game and grabbed Hickok’s prized Waltham repeater gold pocket watch off the table, announcing he would keep it as collateral. Hickok was enraged but outnumbered and outgunned, so he quietly demanded the watch back.
Tutt reportedly grinned and left with it. For several days, Tutt’s friends mocked Hickok, baiting him with talk of the watch, hoping he would draw his gun so they could shoot him down. Hickok allegedly warned that Tutt “shouldn’t come across that square unless dead men can walk. ” The next day, at a few minutes before 6 p.
m. , both men faced each other in the town square. They fired a single shot at roughly the same time. Tutt was hit in the left side between the fifth and seventh ribs, cried out “Boys, I’m killed,” and collapsed on the street, dying moments later.
Hickok was arrested two days later for murder, but the charge was reduced to manslaughter. At trial, the judge instructed the jury they could not find self-defense if Hickok could have reasonably avoided the fight, but if the threat was real and imminent, they should apply “the unwritten law of the fair fight” and acquit. The jury acquitted Hickok, sparking public outrage. Hickok later served as a scout for General George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry and rose to the rank of Deputy U.
S. Marshal. In March 1868, he apprehended 11 Union Army deserters accused of stealing government property and transported them to Topeka for trial. In August 1869, he was elected city marshal of Hays, Kansas, and sheriff of Ellis County.
His first month in office saw him kill two men: Bill Mulvey, who went on a drunken rampage shooting out mirrors and whiskey bottles, and a cowboy named Samuel Strawhun, who was causing a commotion in a saloon at 1 a. m. On July 17, 1870, Hickok was attacked in a saloon by two Seventh Cavalry troopers, Jeremiah Lonergan and John Kyle. He shot Lonergan in the knee and killed Kyle with two shots.
He later lost his re-election bid to his own deputy. Hickok was appointed marshal of Abilene, Kansas, on April 15, 1871, replacing Tom “Bear River” Smith, who had been killed while serving an arrest warrant. Early that year, the notorious gunfighter John Wesley Hardin arrived in Abilene. Hardin later claimed in his autobiography that he and Hickok were friends, but Hardin was known to exaggerate.
In August 1871, Hickok sought to arrest Hardin for killing a man who snored too loudly in a hotel, but Hardin fled town before he could be apprehended. On October 5, 1871, during a street brawl, a saloon owner named Phil Coe fired two shots. Hickok ordered his arrest for firing a pistol within city limits. Coe claimed he was shooting at a stray dog, then turned his gun on Hickok, who shot first and killed him.
After shooting Coe, Hickok saw someone approaching and fired two more shots, accidentally killing Abilene’s special deputy marshal, Mike Williams, who was rushing to his aid. It was the last gunfight Hickok was ever involved in. The accidental death of Deputy Williams haunted him for the rest of his life. He was relieved of his duties as marshal less than two months later, amid a string of questionable shootings and allegations of misconduct.
In 1873, Buffalo Bill Cody invited Hickok to join his acting troupe. Hickok disliked acting and frequently hid behind scenery. In one show, he shot the spotlight when it was focused on him. After a few months, he was released.
By 1876, Hickok’s health was failing. He was diagnosed with glaucoma and ophthalmia, and at just 39 years old, his eyesight and marksmanship were deteriorating. He had also been arrested several times for vagrancy. On March 5, 1876, he married Agnes Thatcher Lake, a 50-year-old circus proprietor, in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, but abandoned her a few months later to seek his fortune in the South Dakota gold fields.
On August 1, 1876, Hickok was playing poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood when Jack McCall sat down to play. McCall suffered heavy losses, and Hickok encouraged him to stop playing until he could cover his losses, even offering to pay for his breakfast. McCall accepted the money but was apparently insulted.
The next day, Hickok returned to the poker table. He normally sat with his back to a wall so he could see the entrance, but the only seat available was one facing away from the door. McCall walked up behind him, drew his revolver, and shot him in the back of the head. Hickok reportedly died holding a pair of aces and eights, a hand that became forever known as the “dead man’s hand.
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