Calamity Jane made for a striking figure on the frontier. She drank like a fish, fired guns like a keen-eyed cowboy, and dressed practically to ensure it was clear that she was as hardened and capable as any man.
She was wild, and proud of it. This is her story, as best it can be told.
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Martha Canary was born on May 1st, 1852, in the town of Princeton, Missouri. The eldest of six children, early accounts refer to only as an “extremely attractive child” born to petty criminals.
The family was destitute, and in 1865 made the decision to relocate to Montana in pursuit of gold. During the five month journey, the 13 year-old Jane was often found engaging with the men in their wagon train.
“While on the way, the greater portion of my time was spent in hunting along with the men and hunters of the party; in fact, I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventures to be had. By the time we reached Virginia City, I was considered a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age,” she later recounted in an autobiographical pamphlet published to promote her 1896 tour of dime museums in the United States.
Shortly before arriving at their destination, Jane’s mother died. Then, within the year, they moved to Utah, where her father began farming before dying as well.
Suddenly, Jane was an orphan, and the leader of the family.
Faced with uncertainty as to how to support her siblings, she made the courageous decision of loading the wagon up once more and moving the children to Fort Bridger in Wyoming. There, she took on every job she could to provide for the family – a cook, a nurse, an ox-team driver and, according to some, a prostitute.
Jane wore male’s clothing in order to appear capable of what was considered ‘men’s work’ at the time. It was a simple guise, but it worked, and in combination with her crack shot, resulted in her joining General George Armstrong Custer as a scout during the so-called Indian Wars. Their job was to persuade Native Americans to migrate to reservations, but this often resulted in violent retaliation.
It was during the 1872-73 campaign at Muscle Shell River that Jane claims to have first been christened Calamity Jane.
“We were ordered out to quell an uprising of the Indians, and were out for several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded. When on returning to the Post we were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination. When fired upon Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan on recovering, laughingly said: ‘I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.’ I have borne that name up to the present time.”
Suggestions that the story was exaggerated or completely made up soon arose, with a popular theory being that the name was a result of Jane warning men who offended her that they were ‘courting calamity’. It’s also unclear whether Jane was her real middle name, or just part of the nickname.
Regardless, the name stuck, and her reputation grew. Stories of her heroic actions at Big Horn River, where she travelled 90 miles in the rain and cold – at one point even swimming the mile-wide Platte River – to deliver important dispatches, spread far and wide across the West.
Jane fell seriously ill after the journey, and upon recovery joined a wagon train where she met Wild Bill Hickok. Their shared love of drinking and sharing tall tales saw them become close acquaintances. Rumours circulated that the two were romantically involved, though there is little evidence to support this.
In June of 1876 they arrived in the illegal frontier town of Deadwood. Shortly after, the local newspaper’s headline read “Calamity Jane has arrived!”
Within a few months, Hickok was murdered by the coward Jack McCall, but Jane chose to stay in camp. Here, her kindhearted nature began to shrine through her rough facade. During the Deadwood smallpox epidemic, she risked contracting the condition by nursing sufferers back to health for no reward. “oh, she’d swear to beat hell at them, but it was a tender kind of cussin’,” said the town’s doctor, Doc Babcock.
At one point, she also saved a stagecoach from pursuing Cheyenne Indians. The driver had been injured by an arrow, so after distracting the attackers, Jane took the reigns and took the coach’s passengers to safety.
Still, she never let go of her wild streak. Disappointed by a play performed by touring artists, she spat in the face of the star while her gunslinging friend Arkansas Tom shot out all the lights, apparently to the cheers of the audience.
Jane left Deadwood after a couple of years, returning to the cavalry before trying her hand at prospecting and innkeeping on a ranch she owned until her death.
A decade later, she returned to Deadwood, and was often seen with a young girl in her presence. Whether this was her child is unknown; there are conflicting stories about her supposed marriage and the birth of a child who may or may not have been adopted out.
Her reputation prevailed through the years, and in 1895 she was signed up to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, where her horseriding and sharpshooting skills were put on display in the more ‘civilised’ cities of Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City, amongst others.
By 1900, her drinking was out of control, and she was fired. A newspaper editor, eager to tell her story, found Jane destitute, and had her nursed back to health.
It didn’t last long. In 1901, she joined the Pan American Exposition in New York, but soon got drunk, made police officers responding to her behaviour dance the jig while she shot around their feet, and was eventually chased out of town.
She returned to the Black Hills around Deadwood in 1903, where she cooked and cleaned for a brothel. On August 1st, 1903, her alcoholism killed her, but not before she could request burial beside her former friend Wild Bill.
Calamity Jane’s request was granted. A report claims “Not just old friends, but the morbidly curious and many who would not have acknowledged Calamity Jane when she was alive, overflowed the First Methodist Church for the funeral services on August 4 and followed the hearse up the steep winding road to Deadwood’s boot hill”.
Jane’s fantastic legend – primarily propagated by Jane herself – has inspired a range of popular entertainment over the last century, from films and video games to books and music. Whether the stories are real or not, her pioneering attitude as a woman who believed and proved that she was just as capable as any man is what makes her so iconic.