Wild Bill

The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter

By Tom Clavin

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.

(Clavin 2019, XII)

James booked passage on a steamer traveling up the Missouri River. During the trip, he began to be called Bill Hickok. For whatever reason – possibly because he had been named for a brother who died – within the family, Lorenzo had often been addressed as “Bill ” Several passengers on the steamer had heard James do the same to his brother when they parted on the dock, and now they called their new acquaintance Bill. Hickok apparently did not mind, and he adopted the name as his own, with only immediate family continuing to call him James or Jim. As the years went on, “Wild Bill” was considered to be William B. Hickok, even though he always signed official documents using his true initials and name, J.B. Hickok.

In the unpublished manuscript titled The Hickok Legend, his nephew Howard wrote that the young pioneer would soon also be referred to as “Shanghai Bill on account of his slim and supple form.” His uncle is further described as “much over six feet in height, strong and self confident, still attuned to a code of quiet gentle speech and manner; trained to a skill seldom attained in the use of firearms; skilled in woodcraft; taught to champion the weak, but encouraged never to let himself be put upon. ‘ He was taught to believe in the freedom and equality of men.” Perhaps a few grains of salt are needed here for an account written decades later with “Legend” in the title, but the physical portrait is consistent with ones in subsequent years.

(Clavin 2019, 17-18)

The coming of the railroad was still years away, but Abilene became a stop on the Overland Stage route from Leavenworth to Denver. Inside his corral, Timothy Hersey kept horses and a few mules for the stagecoaches, and his wife took care of feeding the dust-caked travelers. Hersey would later claim that the phrase “a square meal” originated at his outpost. The food that he and his wife provided was, he contended, the last and best of its kind for hundreds of miles, and he advertised that at his outpost, travelers would have the “last square meal east of Denver.” That meal typically consisted of bacon and eggs, some beef when available, hot biscuits, coffee, dried peaches and apples, and Elizabeth’s pies. The entrepreneur also contracted with the Overland Stage to supply it with hay and feed for the company’s animals, some of which were kept in his own corral.

(Clavin 2019, 88-89)

And there were the guns. Unlike most men of the time who wore pistols, Hickok did not use a single-action Army Colt .45; he now carried double-action Colt .44s with the catch filed down for hair trigger quickness. (Some gun historians do contend that Hickok continued to use .36 Navy Colts.) In his side pockets, he carried 41-caliber derringers, and in his belt was a bowie knife.

Later, as a lawman, he also carried a shotgun or repeating rifle. A decade later, another lawman, Wyatt Earp, would extoll the effectiveness of shooting deliberately over shooting first and furiously. Though this had worked well enough in his gunfight with Davis Tutt in July 1865, by early 1867, Hickok’s approach was if forced to draw, he would do it faster than his opponent and pump out several bullets while his victim was still thinking about squeezing the trigger.

(Clavin 2019, 91)

It is interesting to note that some people who encountered Hickok saw almost a feminine quality to him. Part of this had to do with his physique and perhaps also because of his dress and an unusual practice at that time on the frontier.

As Joseph Rosa explained, “Hickok’s passion for taking a bath every day, at first frowned upon by the wild men of Hays, soon started a tradition, and many of them made regular trips to the bathhouse.” (In more ways than one, Wild Bill cleaned up the city.) When he dressed for the day, the lawman left buckskins behind and stepped out wearing a Prince Albert coat.

(Clavin 2019, 148-149)