Calamity Jane’s Deadwood, South Dakota - circa 1880’s.
Martha Jane Canary got her handle, Calamity Jane, because lot of folks said, “You get crossways of Martha Jane, you’re courtin’ calamity” Maybe that story is true, maybe it’s not, but it sounds believable. She acted like a man, shot like a cowboy, drank like a fish, and traded lies with the best. Some say she had a love affair with Wild Bill Hickok. Others say the romance was just a common prostitute’s daydream. Calamity Jane may occasionally have been a prostitute.
She surely couldn’t have been a common one - nothing she did was common.
Her life was a contradictory carnival of fact & fable.
Many of the wild stories are true. Many more
might be.
In 1865 Martha Jane, along with her Mother, Father,
two brothers, and three sisters left Mercer County, Missouri via wagon train, bound for Virginia City, Montana. Her Mother died along the way. Never intending to stay in Virginia City, they left the wagon train and continued on to Salt Lake City, Utah, where her father farmed forty acres and died within the year. Martha Jane was eldest, that left her in charge of her brothers and sisters.
At age fourteen, she had suddenly become an adult.
She loaded family onto the wagon, once more. This time to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, where she supported them by washing dishes at the Fort. Later, she worked her way on the Union Pacific Railroad to Piedmont, Wyoming,
During her years at Piedmont, she worked at whatever work she could find, including wildly diverse jobs like, cook, nurse, and ox-team driver. Nursing doesn’t seem to fit very well with ox-team driver. But Martha Jane was willing to work at any sort of work she could find.
She was described as a kind and attentive nurse.
Years later, as Calamity Jane, she famously nursed eight Deadwood gold-miners stricken with smallpox. One of them described her as, “a perfect angel”. Another said she, “She dropped all her vices for day-and-night nursing”. She also commandeered groceries from the general store, settling one disputed bill at gunpoint. Despite a certain roughness in her bedside manner, five of the eight miners survived.
This impressed the town doctor, L. E. Babcock, who said, “Oh, she’d swear to beat hell at ‘em, but it was a tender kind
of cussin’ “.
After some stay of uncertain length at Piedmont, her brothers and sisters apparently went their own ways. Now, free of family responsibilities, Martha Jane moved on to the rough, mannish, outdoor life she likely always wanted. It was at this time she started dressing like a man, complete with sombrero, spurs, and a six-shooter strapped ‘round her waist.
Already an expert rider she was ready to wrangle with whatever adventure came her way.
By her own account she had a lot of adventures. Beginning with being hired-on as a Scout in 1874, at Fort Russel, and later yet, as a Scout for General Armstrong Custer - where she occasionally fought in deadly military skirmishes with Lakota Sioux - and barroom skirmishes with drunken soldiers - all augmented by part-time prostitution.
The tales of her escapades are both confirmed and denied by contending sources.
She had a lot of adventures all across the West, from the Dakotas to California, from Texas to Montana. Except for being
a woman, she was a typical frontiersman of the era - hard ridin’, hard drinkin’, prone to shootin’ first, and thinkin’ later.
For all the tales of Indian fighting, heroic rescues, and shootouts with desperados, there were even more tales of out-of-control drunken brawls ending with bloodied combatants and busted furniture - a good deal of the latter attested to by courtroom records.
Martha Jane was now, Calamity Jane – rough rider, gunfighter, teamster, saloon brawer, whore, and frontier legend. Her rowdy reputation preceded her into Deadwood, South Dakota.
Her coziness with Wild Bill Hickok capped the legend.
Some of the legend was true, how much and what, is impossible to pin down. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Winston Churchill said of King Arthur, “It’s all true, or it ought to be, and more and better besides”. Calamity Jane is a story too good to write-off as fable.
In her last years, Calamity Jane performed her legend in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and also in the 1901 Pan American Exposition. She was frequently fired for drunkenness, then rehired anyway. It’s hard to keep a living legend in a show-biz corral.
When her life of adventure was completely played-out, her body was sent back to Deadwood and buried next to Wild Bill.
She was born: May 1, 1852 as Martha Jane Canary in Princeton, Missouri, and buried: August 1, 1903 as Calamity Jane in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Deadwood South Dakota.
The Presiding Minister was Charles Badger Clark, Sr. - father of famous Cowboy Poet, Charles Badger Clark, Jr.- better known as just Badger Clark.
Tough, brash, butch, and enigmatic to the end.
A mystery of her own devising.
THANKS: to my cousin, Mina Powers Hickman for her help in researching Princeton, Missouri’s memories of Martha Jane Canary. Mina still lives in Mt. Moriah Missouri, my hometown, which is only a few miles west of Princeton. The town council of Princeton has published a memorial booklet honoring Martha/Calamity Jane.
There are curious claims in the booklet that don’t fit
with other records of Calamity’s history. They tell of a Princeton woman, Ida Zimmerman - who married, Jim “Matt” Burke –
who had previously been married to Martha Jane Canary.
The marriage produced a daughter, Leona Burk, who is buried next to her Father, Matt Burk, in Fairview Cemetery, just outside Princeton.
Mmm? Martha Jane Canary left Princeton at the age of fourteen. She never returned. Calamity Jane supposedly did marry a man named, Burke - Edward or possibly Clinton – but this out West and many years later.
Cousin Mina went to Fairview Cemetery and reported, “No stone, that I could find”.
Mysteries abound, legends grow.
Calamity Jane / 1852-1903