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Quick Facts
- NAME: Wild Bill Hickok
- OCCUPATION: Police Officer, Folk Hero
- BIRTH DATE: May 27, 1837
- DEATH DATE: August 02, 1876
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Homer, Illinois
- PLACE OF DEATH: Deadwood, South Dakota
- Originally: James Butler Hickok
Best Known For
Will Bill Hickok was an American frontiersman, army scout and lawman who helped bring order to the frontier West.
Wild Bill Hickok. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 02:37, Feb 08, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262
Wild Bill Hickok [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262, February 08
" Wild Bill Hickok." 2012. Biography.com 08 Feb 2012, 02:37 http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262
' Wild Bill Hickok', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262 [accessed Feb 08, 2012]
" Wild Bill Hickok," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262 (accessed Feb 08, 2012).
Wild Bill Hickok [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 08]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262.
Wild Bill Hickok, http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Wild Bill Hickok, http://www.biography.com/people/wild-bill-hickok-40262 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Synopsis
Profile
(born May 27, 1837, Homer [now Troy Grove], Illinois, U.S.—died August 2, 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota, U.S.]) American frontiersman, army scout, and lawman, who helped bring order to the frontier West. His reputation as a marksman gave rise to legends and tales about his life.As a child in Illinois, Hickok worked on neighbouring farms and helped his father in assisting escaped slaves. He left home in 1856 to farm in Kansas and there became involved in the Free State (antislavery) movement. He later served as a village constable in Monticello, Kansas. While working as a teamster in 1861, he killed Dave McCanles at Rock Creek (Nebraska Territory), and legends about him probably began in the exaggerated tales of his role in this gunfight.
During the American Civil War Hickok worked for the Union as a teamster, scout, and spy. After the war he was appointed deputy U.S. marshal, and he later became a scout for the army. Hickok is remembered particularly for his services in Kansas as sheriff of Hays City and marshal of Abilene, where his ironhanded rule helped to tame two of the most lawless towns on the frontier. In 1872 Hickok emceed an unsuccessful Wild West show, and in 1873–74 he performed with Buffalo Bill's theatrical troupe.
In 1876 Hickok married a widow, Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher, née Mersman, but he soon left her (in Cincinnati) to visit the goldfields of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory. It was there, at a poker table in Nuttall & Mann's No. 10 saloon in Deadwood, that Hickok was shot dead by a drunken stranger, Jack McCall. The cards Hickok was holding—a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights plus an unknown fifth card—became known as the dead man's hand. McCall's motive was never learned; he was tried, convicted of murder, and hanged on March 1, 1877.
Copyright © 1994-2011 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com
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