Short Stuff: Calamity Jane

Published Aug 4, 2021, 9:00 AM

Calamity Jane is group with the legends of the Wild West. Who was she really? A tough woman who made her way in a tough world from the age of 12.

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Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Dave and this is short stuff. So getty up, partner, or else Calamity James gonna shoot you in the foot. Did you watch Deadwood? No? I tried to, and I was like, I don't have the emotional investment for this. Okay. Uh. Calamity Jane was one of the great characters on the TV show Deadwood, great character of the Old West. And this is a tough one to research because when you're researching some of these people from this era of the Old West, you start to realize, and historians admit as much that it's hard to get to the real truth because nobody really knows. A lot of the information we have on these characters from back then are very much written by people who wrote their bios for the Wild West shows they did, which were obviously going to be changed and pumped up, and it's just hard to get the real story. Um. But Calamity Jane is worth talking about in so far as how much we know about her. Yeah, and she actually wrote an autobiography which apparently was even more pumped up and full of it than in the dime store novels that were written about her. But the point of that is that she was a legend in her own time, quite quite honestly, in actuality. I'm not going to use the L word. Um, but she was born Mary Jane Canary, which is a great name in and of itself, but she does have one of the all time great nicknames, Calamity Jane or Calamity Jane, depending on where you come from. Uh. And I'll go ahead and spoil this is interesting. You said the L word because that was a showtime show I believe about gay women, and it is very possible that Calamity Jane was a gay women at a time where you could not live as such. Uh. There is speculation about that, and we'll kind of get to that here and there through the thing. But I read a few articles that said, yeah, Calamity Jane was we gay, and then the nineteen sixties she became a bit of a gay icon in some circles. Uh. And very yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's very interesting. So yeah, born uh Martha Jane Canary in Princeton, Missouri, and her family went to I mean back in the Old West, people traveled around a lot, So we're not going to mention every time she moved this article, does it? Does? It felt like the whole article was just like, didn't you moved here? Did she moved there? Here? But they moved around a lot, as people did back then. Her family was very poor. Um she had two younger brothers and three younger sisters and then um, you know, pretty early on when she was a kid, she learned how to shoot by hunting with a gentleman on these caravans and was really good at it. And in that caravan and white one wagon train in particular, where her family moved from Missouri to Virginia City, Montana, she lost her mom, which was the first um step in a turn for the worst for an already hard childhood. She had UM and by the time they got to um Montana, I think her and her her mother died. Her father was like, let's just keep going on to Utah. And again, we're not gonna say where she moved every time. But the point of it is her father died within a couple of years of her mom. So she loses her mom and she's maybe nine or ten, and then her dad dies when she's twelve or thirteen, and all of a sudden, she's the oldest of five siblings. Um or maybe she I think she actually had five additional siblings. So she's the oldest of six children, and she's in charge now. She's at age thirteen, now charged with keeping her younger siblings alive and clothed and fed, and is basically cast into the Old West in this role. And this wasn't a place where you could, you know, go to social services or the local church or something like that and and get help. She had to figure all this out herself, and as far as figure hearing it out, she definitely did. And also she developed a pretty pretty pronounced taste for whiskey starting around that time too. From what I understand, Yeah, like throw out what you think about Deadwood and these great old stories, like it really needed to hit home that this is a twelve or thirteen year old young girl who is literally on her own with five younger siblings in her care. And she didn't just blow them off and leave like she was. She had to figure this out and worked as a nurse, and worked as a dishwasher by all accounts, worked as a sex worker when she needed to. And this whole time. Like you said, she started to drink a little bit. Uh, she was sort of rough housing with the older men in the in the towns where she lived, shooting up things, and like we said earlier, it was a really good shot. And like her legend kind of started to grow. So she started taking on additional jobs, especially with the military as a career as a writer. As a scout UM, I guess got a lot of work with them, including working with UM with General Custer Um. But it wasn't until she started to she So she first moved to Deadwood as an orphan thirteen year old in charge of her siblings, and then moved away, and then she moved back about a decade later. In that time, she became friendly with wild Bill Hickock, and from what I understand, it was about there that her her status as a legend really kind of was born just by association with him, or standing in the same spotlight as him. She deserved the spotlight herself, but it was his spotlight that she was initially introduced to the world of like dime store novels. Back East. Correct and let's take a break, it's a perfect place to start, right As her legend is growing. So, uh, we're back, and let's see calamity. Jane meets while Bill Hickock. They fall in love and settle down and have a family and live happily ever after, I believe, And that was it. No, but they were really really close. Everything I read really stressed the importance of their friendship over the years and how he really took her under his wing. And then when I started reading articles about whether or not she was gay and in a situation where she was not allowed to live that way, and you know, speculation abounds because of things like she dressed like a man and she hung out with the men, and she never had any boyfriends. Uh, there is Uh, there are stories of her getting married later in life and having a child. But I also saw some marty calls that call that into question, saying that maybe that didn't even happen. Well, there's no certificates anywhere on record, um. But it made me wonder about while Bill Hillcock Hickock, and if he was um, maybe knew the deal and was sympathetic to what was going on. So he was her beard. Well I don't not beard because he didn't act as her boyfriend or anything. But just maybe sympathetic to her. I mean, that's what I cooked up in my head. At least I got you I had seen there. There are plenty of um articles that put the two together romantically. UM. Some say that she she yeah, she was into him and he wasn't into her. UM. And it really kind of demonstrates like just how hard it is to pin down fact from fiction in her story in particular. But the it is it is factual that she and Bill Hiccock were close friends at the very least in Deadwood, UM, and that she was there when he was murdered in August of eighteen seventy six, when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall at point blank range, while while Bill was um at a at a gambling table in a saloon in Deadwood. Yeah, which was very tough on her obviously. UM. So she left Deadwood pretty shortly after that and then again spent you know, the next Uh it seems like ten or fifteen years really traveling all over the place. She never stayed in one place for long. I think in the early eighteen eighties she bought a ranch on the Yellowstone River, but only stayed there for about a year. I went to California only stayed there about a year. Eventually went to Texas and this is where she supposedly married Clinton Burke in El Paso, and then they went back to Colorado and ran a hotel as a family. But again I saw that called into speculation. Yes, supposedly there are um corroborating accounts of witnesses seeing her with a young child in some of these places, so it is possible she did have a daughter, um. But again there's no birth certificates or anything anywhere. Apparently some woman came forward in the fifties or sixties and claimed to be wild Bill Hiccock and Calamity Jane's daughter, but was was exposed as a fraud later. Yeah, no, that was disappointing. I thought so too. Right there at the end, the legs out from under it, you know. Eventually close to nineteen hundred, Uh, she said, hey, you know what I can do really good is shoot a gun. And there's this guy out here, like she really crossed paths with all the biggies of the Old West. She hooked up with Buffalo Bill and his famous Wild West show, and she was a sharpshooter for that show, and she didn't do that for very long because that taste for whiskey she developed as a teenager. Um, I I saw more that she would go on big binges and it wasn't so much a like steady alcoholism, but she couldn't help but go into these big drinking binges that cost her these jobs time and time again over the years. Do you know how much of a drinking problem you would have to have to get fired from the Little Bill's wild West Show for drinking? Seriously? I can't imagine, because they could work that into the show for a while. Yeah, she just shoots wildly into the air, looking everybody exactly duck. Uh. Yeah, I imagine it was pretty severe, which is very sad actually. Uh you know, you can make jokes about like her being drunk at a wild West show, but it seriously disrupted her life, Yeah, for sure, because not only did she lose that job, she also was later hired on at the Pan American Exposition I think in nine o one and lost that job supposedly for the same the same things. So she was like she was definitely a hard drinking person for sure. Um. And it also kind of makes it even sider when you realize that she went and got those jobs to help support her family. Uh, if she in fact did have a family. But even if you didn't, it's still I mean, losing a job because you do you drink too much? As a little sad Yeah, for sure. Um. As far as the name Calamity Jane, there are a bunch of stories on where she got this name. I thought we may as well read her own account, even though her book is not completely to be trusted. But she was talking about a campaign she was on, and she said it was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the post and we were ordered to quell and uprising of the Indians. And we're out for several days. Ah, and I'm making the shorter What do you call that abbreviating? I'm abbreviating this Uh when it's returning to the post. We were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination. We were fired upon and Captain Egan was shot. I was writing in advance on hearing the firing and turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle and about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to aside and got there in time to catch him while he was falling. Uh, captain e and on recovering laughingly said, I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the planes. Very nice. That sounds totally made up, by the way. Yeah, yeah, that's a quite a story. But again, like a lot of other stuff in her orbit is questionable. For sure, she definitely was called Calamity Jane. It just seems to have been lost to time. And again, what we hope is not lost is this was a young girl who made her way in the West, who lived against all odds and supported herself and her her younger siblings against all odds. Yeah, which is worth celebrating in and of itself. Right. Well, that's it for Calamity Jane and everybody. That's it for short stuff. So audios. Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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