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Born near Niagara Falls in New York in 1838,
Charlie
Utter spent his childhood in
Illinois.
When he grew up he moved west and in the 1860s he was earning a living as
a trapper and a prospector in
Colorado.
Gaining a thorough knowledge of the area he often acted as a guide for
others through the Rocky Mountains.
A small man in stature, at five and a half feet tall,
Charlie made up for it in his
dandified appearance. He was extremely neat with blond hair, long
and flowing and a perfectly groomed moustache. He was known to have
worn hand tailored fringed buckskins, fine linen shirts, beaded moccasins,
a big silver belt buckle, and a pair of revolvers mounted in gold, silver
and pearl.
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Charlie Utter and his brother
Steve at the grave of
Wild Bill
Hickok, August, 1876. Photo courtesy Adams
Museum.
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He slept in a tent surrounded by fine
California
blankets and always kept in his possession a mirror, combs, razors and
whisk brooms. Obsessed with cleanliness, he bathed every single
morning, an oddity in the mining camps and settlements of the
Old
West. Allowing absolutely no one, not even
Wild Bill Hickok, into his
tent, it was a deadly point with him, threatening to shoot anyone who
entered.
By the 1860s,
Charlie
and his brother, Steve, had moved to
Colorado
where his reputation as a trapper, prospector, and guide, earned
him the nickname of "Colorado Charlie." While there, he met a 15
year-old girl by the name of Tilly Nash. The daughter of a baker from
Empire,
Colorado, was obviously impressed by his boyishly handsome face
and his charisma and in 1866, the two were married.
Charlie
continued his work in
Colorado
until he began to get word of the gold find in the Black Hills. Sure
that the area would be a smashing success, he described it as "a
real
lallapaloozer," and the brothers soon made plans to head to Deadwood.
In the spring of 1876, he and Steve organized a wagon
train in Georgetown,
Colorado and headed for
South Dakota. When the
wagon train passed through Cheyenne,
Wyoming he ran into his old
friend
Wild Bill Hickok who joined
the caravan along with more than 100 others including prospectors,
gamblers, and a troop of “working girls.” Later, in Fort
Laramie,
Calamity Jane also joined the
wagon train.
The circumstances of how
Charlie
Utter and
Wild Bill Hickok
met are not specifically known, they more than likely met in
Kansas
sometime in the mid 1850's and kept in contact throughout their
travels through
Colorado.
By the time
Charlie and the rest of the
caravan arrived in
Deadwood
in mid July,
Charlie and
Bill had partnered in the
Wagon train. One of
Utter's self-imposed duties
was to look after
Wild Bill, protecting him
from his worst enemy – himself. Having known
Hickok for a long time,
Utter was aware of how
Hickok's habits of excessive
drinking and gambling could get him in trouble. Monitoring,
Bill he often tried to
protect him from his habits, though it rarely worked.
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Upon their arrival in camp,
Utter began a mail express
service between
Deadwood
and Cheyenne, where he and his other riders carried letters for 25 cents a
piece. Crossing hostile plains and mountains, the riders often
carried more than 2,000 letters at a time. When the fateful day of
Hickok's murder arrived, August
2, 1876,
Utter was tending to his business
affairs. However, as soon as he heard,
Charlie rushed back and claimed
the body at the
saloon.
He
soon placed the following notice in the Black Hills Pioneer:
“Died in
Deadwood,
Black Hills,
August 2, 1876, from the effects of a pistol shot,
J. B. Hickok
[sic] (Wild
Bill) formerly of Cheyenne,
Wyoming. Funeral services will be held at
Charlie Utter's Camp, on Thursday
afternoon, August 3, 1876, at 3 o'clock, P. M. All are respectfully
invited to attend.”
Bill was laid out in a coffin and
people filed by all day long to pay their last respects. Before Hickok was
buried, Utter took a lock of his hair which he later sent to his widow,
Agnes
Lake.
The following day, his funeral was held and
Charlie made him a marker that
read:
“Wild
Bill,
J. B. Hickok [sic] killed by the
assassin
Jack McCall in
Deadwood,
Black Hills,
August 2d, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting ground to
part no more. Good bye,
Colorado
Charlie, C.
H. Utter.”
Ironically, as
Hickok was being buried in the
plot that
Utter paid for,
Jack McCall's murder trial was
taking place at McDaniel’s Theatre. In the farce of the trial,
McCall was found not guilty and
allowed to be let go. However, it was later found that the trial was
illegal as the
Deadwood
camp had no authority.
McCall was soon picked up by U.S.
Marshals, was retried and hanged in Yankton,
South Dakota on March 1, 1877.
That same year,
Charlie returned to
Colorado, but returned to
Deadwood
in 1879 to oversee the relocation of
Hickok's body to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery. In February, 1879
Utter purchased the Eaves
Saloon in nearby Gayville,
South Dakota. But just a month later he
ran into trouble for selling liquor without a license. He was found
guilty of maintaining a nuisance dance hall in June. He soon
returned to
Deadwood
and lost all of his possessions in the the tragic fire that destroyed much
of the mining camp on September 26, 1879.
After the
Deadwood
fire, many miners of the
Black Hills
began to leave
Deadwood
for richer gold deposits in
Colorado,
Idaho,
New Mexico,
Texas, and South America.
By February, 1880,
Utter was in
Leadville,
Colorado exploring the many
mining camps up and down the valley. That same year, he and Tilly
separated and
Charlie
moved on to Durango,
Colorado area. He then headed to Socorro,
New Mexico
where he operated a
saloon and
gambling den. While there, he was said to have fell in love with
a beautiful faro dealer
named Minnie Fowler.
Beyond
New Mexico,
Charlie's trail began to be lost
in in history. However, records tells us that a Mr. C.H.
Utter traveled to Panama, acting
as a doctor. This tale was supported by a friend of
Utter's, named
Upton Lorentz, who
maintained that
Charlie
settled in
Panama
sometime around 1888. While there he was said to have
operated a pharmacy,
practiced medicine among the local Indians and even delivered babies.
Lorentz would also say that he last saw
Utter,
blind and grizzled, sitting in a rocking chair in front of his pharmacy in
1910.
Was this
Colorado
Charlie?
The details of
Utter's
final days are unknown.
©Kathy
Weiser/Legends of America,
Updated July, 2006
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