D. J. Herda - Calamity Jane: The Life and Legend of Martha Jane Cannary

Calamity Jane

Calamity Jane

The Life and Legend of Martha Jane Cannary

D. J. Herda

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Copyright 2018 D. J. Herda

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Herda, D. J., 1948- author.

Title: Calamity Jane : the life and legend of Martha Jane Cannary / D. J. Herda.

Other titles: Life and legend of Martha Jane Cannary

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : TwoDot, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017057179| ISBN 9781493031948 (pap : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781493031955 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Calamity Jane, 1856-1903. | Women pioneersWest (U.S.)Biography. | PioneersWest (U.S.)Biography. | West (U.S.)Biography.

Classification: LCC F594.C2 H47 2018 | DDC 978/.02092 [B] dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057179

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

They say the truth shall set you free. But, in the case of a woman named Calamity, theyre wrong. Its true that she recorded the details of her own life, a rare gift left behind for biographers over which to salivate. But biographers do not salivate over this subject. Instead, they scratch their heads and tell us that her own words are an aberration of the truth. The words are little more than so much publicity feeding into the persona of someone who called herself Calamity Janesomeone who never really existed. Not as she had documented. Her words were more Legend than Truth.

But what is truth and what is legend and how does each contribute to the historical accuracy of a biographical figure taken from the pages of time?

Its true: Calamitys legend, it would appear, precedes her. But not the reality.

Or does it?

A legend springs up around a body; its not a lifeless cosmic entity created by it. And certainly Calamity Jane had seen her share of legends spring up around her. From books written about her. Newspaper articles. Magazine stories. Wild West shows. Gossipy neighbors. Tall tales passed from one generation to the next.

Some of them are undeniably true. Some are false. When looking through the life and times of Calamity Jane, nothing is as it appears. Was she born in 1852, as she claimed, or 1856? In Princeton, Missouri, as she said, or the hinterlands of Ohio? Did she ride with Generals Crook, Miles, and Custer? Was she on the Newton-Jenney Expedition into the Badlands of South Dakota to confirm rumors of massive deposits of precious gold? Did she know Wild Bill Hickok intimately, casually, or not at all? Was she the gilt-edged Florence Nightingale of the American Plains or the devil incarnate?

Her biographers agree to disagree. They present proof that disputes her own written accounts of her lifes events. But even that evidence is subject to human error and misinterpretation.

So, in the end, we are left with Martha Janes own words of her lifes history. And with the legends. And that can be both good and bad.

Legends can be misleading. But they are a necessary part of nation-building. They are the primary means we have of preserving the seeds of reality that sprout into something larger than life and grow under the weight of their own dominion. Legends must contain truth to flourish, or else they will wither and die before ever having had a chance to take root. As they grow, they become permanently affixed in our minds. Like Pocahontas saving the life of Jamestowns John Smith or the Chesapeake & Ohios John Henry, that steel-drivin man, who went toe-to-toe with a steam-powered hammer and won.

As far as Calamity Jane goes, who would have recalled without the aid of legend that she ever even knew Wild Bill Hickok? Who would have remembered that she slept with him, fought alongside him, loved him, nurtured him through the pipe, married him, bore him a child, set him free so that he could marry another, wept for him at his gravesite, and vowed to bring his murdering assassin Jack McCall to justice? Which of us, in factbut for the legends surrounding herwould know any of her lifes story, the true and the false, the good and the bad? Would you have recalled that she at least knew Wild Bill and loved him even if none of the other legends swirling around her relationship to him had come to pass?

Probably not.

Legends are stories we build within our minds. Like highways, they carry travelers from one spot to another. In that sense, legends are reality on steroids. Although they may be exaggerations of the truth, they help us to understand the reality a little more clearly through our own historical perspectives. If legends enable us to do that, how bad can they be?

In the end, legends are created by storytellers who, in weaving their craft, expose themselves as gossipers and lie mongers and prevaricators and feasting jackals via their tales. If Calamity were alive today, she would agree that she was a damn first-rate storyteller on her own... and be proud of it.

Of course, she was no gilded lily. Far from it. Calamity herself would have admitted there had been some reporters who referred to her over the years as a drunk and a whore and an outright liar and a blasphemer and a gambler and a common thief. To those people, she would have said, Guilty as charged! After all, she recognized early in life that a gal has to build a reputation for herself if shes going to remain in demand and survive in a hostile world dominated by hostile men. And Calamity Jane remained in demand and survived for more than half a century.

Over the course of these past hundred-plus years since her passing, the restless spirit of Calamity Jane has walked the sagging boards and dusty trails of life, waiting for her story to be told. Her own lifes story from the recollections of the woman herselfCalamity Jane. It is the truth as Calamity knew itor at least believed itto be true. It is the truth varnished with the tint of legend that created from her earliest recollections the Woman-Child she eventually turned out to be. Taller than real life and yet smaller than death.

Whether accurate or exaggerated, this is the story of Martha Jane Cannarys life, as she lived it, saw it, and hoped it to be remembered. Only a select few people had the opportunity to write down her words and actions and feelings and thoughts as they unfolded. And maybe to fill in a little between the cracks for those parts of the legend Calamity may have overlooked.

But only one of those people was named Calamity Jane. Only one of them left a roadmap of the life she led as a notorious plainswoman. Only one of them wrote her autobiography and stepped back to dare others following in her footsteps to claim it untrue or exaggeratedwhich, of course, many biographers have done.