Amber

Research Report on Calamity Jane

March 28, 2001

A Legend From The Beginning

 

 

            Calamity Jane was indeed a legend from the beginning.  She was always different from all of the other girls her age, and always acting like a man didn’t help her make any friends to make her fit in.  She changed history for some women the day she learned to walk and talk.  For hundreds of years men had always come first in just about everything including jobs and even the way they would talk and dress.  There is one basic thing that Calamity Jane did to change history: She decided to break all of the rules and walk, talk and even dress like a man.  In other words she basically decided to be a man. But those are just some of the ways that Calamity Jane changed history, which is why Calamity Jane was later named “The Heroine of the Plains”.

It was a warm and sunny day on May first, 1852, when Martha Jane Canary was born.  Martha Jane Canary was born in the backwoods, on a ranch in Princeton, Missouri.  Her Parents mostly liked to keep to themselves.  Most of the people in the town would of ten talk behind their backs, and they would make up stories about why they rarely came to town to buy food and supplies. Martha’s parents were in the process of buying a ranch and a house, and were hoping to have better luck with this particular ranch.  They tried to grow crops such as corn, wheat, tomatoes and other vegetables, and failed.  This was not the first ranch that they had tried to grow vegetables, crops and make payments on the house and ranch all at the same time.  Calamity Jane would later find out she would be the oldest sister to five brothers and sisters.  When Martha was a child her family called her “Marthy”, as a nickname (Faber 1-60).

            When Marthy was old enough to attend school she went only for a couple of years and then had to take care of her younger siblings while her parents were out working on the ranch and trying so very hard to make a living off the ranch.  She had 2 brothers and three sisters.  Her family wasn’t that well supported because their ranch did not bring in any crop liked they had hoped and couldn’t make any money living on that ranch.  By the age of 10, Marthy fell in love with horses and would always ride them in her spare time.  She also liked to go hunting with the men, and refused to do any work that made her stay inside all day and have to do any work that made it so she couldn’t be just one of the guys.  When she was in her teenage years she and her family had to move because they could not continue to pay the mortgage on the ranch and the house.  They decided to travel towards Montana with another group of wagons.  By then Martha wore men’s clothing and acted so much like a man that other people would often mistake her for a man.  Compared to the other wagons Martha’s family had an extremely small wagon.  There was a certain family though, and they thought that Martha was a disgrace to all of the women because of the way she acted.  These women always did everything lady like, for instance when the girls went riding horses they would ride sidesaddle, while Martha rode with one leg on each side.  These girls always wore dresses, bonnets and all of the women clothing.  Martha however did not do any of those things and would often be teased and made fun of for the things she said and did (Fisher, Holmes 229-236).

            By the age of 14, Martha Jane Canary could “cuss just as fiercely as any guy around.  She also learned to like the taste of whiskey, and became so addicted to it that her brothers said that she would grow up to be an alcoholic and she always said she would never end up like that and wake up in the jailhouse every morning.  But she would later find out that she was going to be like one of those people.  She would often sneak drinks while her father was not looking.  By the age of 15, her mother died of an illness that was unknown.  One year later her father died of heartache in Salt Lake City and Martha was left with 5 younger brothers and sisters to take care of, but she decided that she didn’t want to stick around to take care of them and waste her life.  She decided to go and explore/travel the west (Bell 54).

            By her adult years she had already had experienced jobs by the dozen.  She was said to be an “ army-scout, bull-whacker, pony-express rider, Indian-fighter, frontier Florence Nightingale, camp-follower, and mole-team driver”(Fisher, Holmes 229).

            She could never obtain a job for very long; she would often get fired for her drunken behavior and foul language.  She was rarely ever sober.  People that have met her say she was very rude, and would start a fight if you looked at her the wrong way.  There was one job that Martha did obtain for quite some time, and that job was also very interesting.  She was a scout for Custer.  While being a scout for Custer she got the nickname “Calamity Jane”.   “ One day I was out riding and I heard gunshots and I began to ride towards them.  I got there just in time to see Captain Egan fall.  When I rode by him I picked him up and lifted him onto my horse and he laughingly said ‘I name you Calamity Jane, heroine of the plains.’”  Those were the words of Calamity Jane.  He gave her that name for saving his life (Lempke 229). While being a scout for Custer Calamity Jane fell in love with a man named Wild Bill Hickok.  She traveled with him in his show that publicized her shooting ability.  She later lost that job because she would often get drunk before a show and she would end up hurting somebody and then Annie Oakley got the job that Calamity Jane once had (Faber1-60). 

            Later on she and Wild Bill had a child named Jean Hickok McCormick, born September 25, 1873 and was put up for adoption 2 weeks later.  Some say that Calamity Jane’s kid didn’t belong to Hickok, it belonged to Charley Burke and some also say that she lived with him for seven years before she actually married him.  I don’t know which is true (Bell 54).

            Some say that Calamity Jane came into the town the day Wild Bill Hickok was killed.  Calamity Jane said she had caught the guy that murdered Wild Bill Hickok.  She wrote a story about the incident. “It was a nice day, I had just finished riding around and I decided to go into the saloon to get a drink.  I saw that Wild Bill was playing cards and it looked like he had a good had then someone came in and shot him!  I quickly ran after him as he ran out the door, I chased him for what it seemed like an hour and then he finally caught him in front of a butcher shop and I grabbed a meat cleaver and held it up over my head above my head and said ‘ If you don’t go back with me I will cut your head off!’ and he came with me and I then took him to the jail house so he could wait for his trial (which he never got) and by morning he was hanged for his murder.”  There are many different stories about how he was caught. One story is where Calamity Jane wasn’t even at the crime scene and two guys caught the guy in front of the butcher shop.  But once again I am not sure which one is true because Calamity Jane was also known for her incredible ability to lie (Lempke229). 

            Calamity Jane had a death wish: to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok.  So they must have known each other some how.  Calamity Jane became ill at the age of 51 years old, with a disease that nobody has ever heard of.  When she found out she was dying she went to the nearest train station and boarded the train without a ticket to head back to her hometown in Deadwood.  The people that work on the train asked everyone to show them their tickets and when they came to Calamity Jane she said she didn’t need a ticket for the train and they said that she needed a ticket to ride this train and she said she was on her way to her death bed and almost everyone chipped in some money to make one more wish come true for Calamity Jane.  Calamity Jane died in 1903. Near her hometown, in Terry, South Dakota.  There is no exact date for when she died.  At the funeral she had an open casket funeral and people would take things from her such as: Locks of her hair, pieces of her clothes and her other belongings.  Most of the people that took things from her were people that were touring that particular town or they were people that liked to collect souvenirs and new that she was going to be a famous legend in the future.  When the tourists were done taking the stuff from her they made her close friend put chicken wire over her head for no reason at all (Faber 1-60).

            After the funeral Calamity Jane’s body was put aboard the train to Deadwood.  When her body got to Deadwood she was then buried next to Wild Bill Hickok and received her last wish (Bell 54).

            Calamity Jane was always the one to stand out in the crowd and people always said that she would amount out to nothing, but they aren’t in the history books today are they!  To all of those people that used to talk behind her back and to the people that used to make jokes about her, she proved them all wrong.  With all of Calamity Jane’s courageous and sometimes pointless adventures, she showed women today how to stand up for the things that they believe in.  Calamity Jane really does live up to her name “The Heroine of the Plains.”