| For someone "devoid of vanity," James Butler Hickok must have had his picture made more than any other figure in the American West. At a time when some of the many famous men and women of the West never had even one photograph of themselves taken, Bill Hickok had his made over and over again.
Once his fame began to spread, the photos appear to get better and better as he embellishes his image by growing his hair to an unusual length and wearing "natty" clothes. Hickok said he grew his hair long as a challenge to those scalp seeking Indians he had been fighting so often. However, most others of the time were of the opinion that his long, flowing locks were grown for vanity.
Photo Gallery
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Timeline
May 27, 1837 - James Butler Hickok born in Troy Grove, Illinois.
1855 - Goes to Kansas and gets a job in Monticello driving a stage coach on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails. Here he meets Buffallo Bill Cody.
Age 18
1858 - Elected as constable in Monticello, Kansas.
Age 21
1859-60 - Driving freight wagons on the Santa Fe Trail.
Age 22-23
Spring, 1861 - Hires on as a stock tender at Rock Creek Station, Nebraska.
Age 23
July 12, 1861 - Shoot-out with David McCanles and two other men at Rock Creek Station, Nebraska, later known as the McCanles Massacre.
Age 24
1861 - Enlisted in the Union Army as a civilian scout. While in Independence, Missouri he encounters
a drunken mob with intentions of hanging a bartender. Hickok stops the mob and a grateful woman shouts, “Good for you, Wild Bill!” She may have mistaken Hickok for someone else, but the name stuck.
Age 24
July 21, 1865 - After an argument over a poker game, Hickok and Dave
Tutt shoot it out in the public square in Springfield, Missouri.
Tutt is killed.
Age 28
1869 - Hired as special marshal of Hays City, Kansas.
Age 32
August 24, 1869 - Shot and killed a man named Bill Mulrey in Hays City.
Age 32
September 27, 1869 - Gunfight with a ruffian named Samuel Strawhan in Hays City.
Age 32
April 15, 1871 - Hickok replaced Tom Smith as Marshal of Abilene, Kansas
Age 33
October 5, 1871 - Hickok kills Phil Coe in an altercation in an Abilene saloon. In the confusion, he also shoots his deputy, Mike Williams.
Age 33
1873 - Hickok joins Buffallo Bill's Wild West Show.
Age 35
March 5, 1876 - Hickok marries Agnes Lake Thatcher who he had met while in Abilene.
Age 38
July, 1876 - Colorado Charlie Utter's wagon train delivers Hickok, Calamity Jane, and a bevy of "new" prostitutes to Deadwood, South Dakota .
Age 39
August 2, 1876 - Jack McCall, bested at the table by Wild Bill Hickok the day before, enters Nuttall and Mann's No. 10 Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota and shoots
Hickok in the back of the head. Hickok dies instantly, and his scattered cards - a pair each of black aces and black eights along with a jack of diamonds - become known as the "dead man's hand."
Age 39 |
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