On Drum's saloon in Hays City, Kansas. What makes this fight arguably Hickok's most important is that he killed a trooper in Custer's 7th Cavalry who had earlier been awarded the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor. The truth of the brawl and cavalrymen involved has only recently surfaced from military records in the National Archives. Biographers of Hickok injected so much fiction in recounting this brawl that the truth seemed forever lost.
July 17, 1870, Wild Bill Hickok had one whale of a brawl in Tommy James W. Buel's Heroes of the Plains (1885) produced a narrative wrong in every detail including saying the fight occurred in Paddy Welch's saloon. Buel claimed Wild Bill's widow gave him Hickok's diary and thus the brawl is straight from Hickok. It started on February 12, 1870, as a fistfight in the street with a 7th Cavalry sergeant, but as Hickok was winning, 15 soldiers joined the fracas, pummeling Hickok until Paddy handed Hickok his pistols. Hickok then killed several soldiers and was wounded seven times and escaped across the Smoky Hill River 11 miles distant.
Later biographers followed Buel with certain emendations until William Connelley changed it to a different February date and said the brawl was caused by George Custer's drunk younger brother Tom. A greater fiction could not be told. Connelley's notes on his book, housed in the Denver Public library, cite the source as a letter written in 1926 by a man who was not even born when Tom Custer was alive. Eugene Cunningham also used this story in his popular book Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters (1934) and now the mighty legend became "fact. It is all bunk.
Uncovering the Truth-Ryan's Report
Denne historien er fra July - August 2022-utgaven av True West.
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Denne historien er fra July - August 2022-utgaven av True West.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Where Did the Loot Go? - This is one of those find the money stories. And it's one that has attracted treasure hunters for more than 150 years.
Whatever happened to the $97,000 from the Reno Gang's last heist? Up to a dozen members of the Reno Gang stopped a Jeffersonville, Madison and Indianapolis train at a watering station in southern Indiana. The outlaws had prior intelligence about its main load: express car safes held about $97,000 in government bonds and notes. In the process of the job, one of the crew was killed and two others hurt. The gang made a clean getaway with the loot.
Hero of Horsepower - Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West's wildest towns with hard work and horseless carriages.
Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West's wildest towns with hard work and horseless carriages.
From the Basin to the Plains
Discover Wyoming on a road trip to Cody, Casper and Cheyenne.
COLLECTING AMERICAN OUTLAWS
Wilbur Zink has preserved the Younger Gang's history in more ways than one.
Spencer's West
After the Civil War, savvy frontiersmen chose the Spencer repeating carbine.
Firearms With a Storied Past
Rock Island gavels off high profits from historic firearms.
She Means Business!
An energetic and ambitious woman has come to Lincoln, New Mexico, to restore the town's legendary Ellis Store.
Ride that Train!
HERITAGE RAILROADS KEEP THE OLD WEST ALIVE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.
Saddle Up with a Western
Old West fiction and nonfiction are the perfect genres to fill your summer reading list.
RENEGADES OF THE RAILS
RAILROADS WERE OPEN SEASON FOR OKLAHOMA AND INDIAN TERRITORY OUTLAW GANGS.
