Legends of the Old West - WILD BILL HICKOK Ep. 1 | “Go West, Young Man”

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

James Butler Hickok has a restless spirit. He leaves his family home in Illinois and lands in Kansas during the lawless years of Bleeding Kansas. He becomes a freighter, a bodyguard, a scout, and a soldier. He survives shootouts and war, and earns a legendary nickname. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Lego Fortnite. Lego Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of Lego play and

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Let me at once describe the personal appearance of the famous scout of the plains, William Hickok, called Wild Bill, who now advanced toward me, fixing his clear gray eyes on mine in a quick, interrogative way, as if to take my measure. Bill stood six feet and an inch in his bright yellow moccasins. A deerskin shirt, or frock it might be called, hung jauntily over his shoulders and revealed a chest whose breadth and depth was remarkable. These lungs had grown in some 20 years of free air of the Rocky Mountains. His small, round waist was girthed with a belt that held two of Colt's Navy revolvers. His legs sloped gradually from the compact thigh to the feet, which were small, and turned inward as he walked.

The head which crowned it was now covered by a large sombrero, underneath which there shone out a quiet, manly face. The lips thin and sensitive, the jaw not too square, the cheekbones slightly prominent, a mass of fine dark hair falls below the neck to the shoulders. The eyes, now that you are in a friendly intercourse, are gentle as a woman's. In truth, the woman nature seems prominent throughout, and you would not believe that you were looking into the eyes that have pointed the way to death to hundreds of men. Yes, Wild Bill, with his own hands, has killed hundreds of men. Of that I have no doubt.

He shoots to kill, as they say on the border. Whenever I had met an officer or soldier who had served in the Southwest, I heard of Wild Bill and his exploits until these stories became so frequent and of such an extraordinary character as to quite outstrip personal knowledge of adventure by camp and field. And the hero of these strange tales took shape in my mind as did Jack the Giant Killer or Sinbad the Sailor in childhood days. As then, I had now the most implicit faith in the existence of the individual, but how one man could accomplish such prodigies of strength and feats of daring was a continued wonder. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Thank you. Wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers.

Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of legendary

lawman and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok. This is Episode 1, Go West Young Man. James Butler Hickok went out into the world in the summer of 1856, right after he turned 19 years old. Whether he fully realized it or not, he landed in the most dangerous place in America. At that time, there was no deadlier region than eastern Kansas, and in June of 1856, Hickok stepped off a steamboat in Leavenworth, just north of Kansas City. The events that were collectively called Bleeding Kansas had been raging for two years. Thirty-five years earlier, the U.S. Congress

agreed to a compromise. It would admit Missouri Territory to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and it would admit Maine as a state that did not. The compromise preserved the balance of slave states and free states. Then in 1854, a new piece of legislation organized two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska. Instead of admitting one as a slave state and the other as a free state, Congress allowed the people of the new territories to choose whether or not they wanted slavery. And since Kansas is right next to Missouri, pro-slavery people from Missouri flooded into Kansas to influence the vote. The result was years of escalating violence, mostly in eastern Kansas, where Hickok was a new resident. new resident. On the night of May 24th, zealous abolitionist John Brown and five of his sons and two more associates killed five pro-slavery men along the banks of Pottawatomie Creek,

about 50 miles south of Kansas City. John Brown shot one of the victims in the head with a pistol, and his sons hacked the others to death with broadswords. It was one of the bloodiest weeks in the era of Bleeding Kansas. John Brown's attacks were in response to a violent raid on Lawrence, Kansas, three days earlier. Lawrence was one of two headquarters for anti-slavery supporters, and on May 21st, a pro-slavery mob ransacked the town and destroyed several buildings, including the offices of two anti-slavery newspapers. The next day, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner

railed against the ongoing violence in Kansas. As he talked, South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks walked up to him and beat him severely with a cane. Sumner nearly died, and Brooks was celebrated by many in the South. And after the sack of Lawrence and the attempted murder of Sumner, John Brown wanted to strike back against pro-slavery forces. He took his aggression out on the closest targets, whether they were ardent pro-slavery activists or not. And a couple weeks later, Wild Bill Hickok arrived in Kansas. By that point, the man who had been born, James Butler Hickok, was already known as Bill,

but it would take a few more years before Wild was added to his name. In a kind of odd nickname tradition, James and his older brother Lorenzo occasionally called each other Bill. The pair of brothers had set off together from the family home in Homer, Illinois, a couple weeks earlier, and journeyed to St. Louis. Bill had just turned 19 years old and he had a restless spirit. His older brother agreed to head west with him, but when they arrived in St. Louis, they learned that their mother Polly was sick.

Lorenzo didn't have the wandering nature of his younger brother and he wanted to make sure their mother was okay, so he returned to Illinois. Bill was now on his own for the first time in his life. He was already a great shot with a rifle, after he'd spent countless hours practicing and hunting in the woods near his family's house. He'd received a sporadic education that taught him to read and write, although his spelling was notoriously bad. And from this point forward, the world would know him as Bill Hickok. As he and Lorenzo had traveled to St. Louis, people overheard Lorenzo call his brother Bill. Soon, people stopped calling him James and just

used Bill full-time. For the rest of his life, the only people who called him James or Jim were his family members in Illinois. When Bill arrived in Kansas a couple weeks after the Pottawatomie Massacre, he almost certainly learned of the infamous killings. But he probably didn't know that he had some things in common with the killer. John Brown was obviously against slavery, and Bill was too, so he could have known that part. Brown inherited his hatred of slavery from his father, and so did Bill. Brown's father turned their home into a stop on the Underground Railroad, a secret trail that smuggled slaves north to freedom.

Bill's father, William Hickok, did the same thing. William used his barn and a custom cellar to hide slaves who escaped to the north. Sadly for the Hickok family, William died in 1852, four years before his youngest son set off for the West. Young Bill Hickok's supposed purpose for heading West was to find a new homestead for the family. Instead, he ended up as a bodyguard for the man who ran the Free State Army in Kansas. Later in the summer of 1856, Bill did some occasional scouting for the Free State Army, which was an anti-slavery militia in Kansas that was organized by James Lane. Lane's group fought back against pro-slavery forces that invaded Kansas from Missouri, forces that were usually

called Border Ruffians. As 1856 moved toward 1857, Bill met a man named John Owen, and by the end of the year, John and Bill were bodyguards for James Lane. In just a few months, Bill had gone from a new arrival to an occasional scout to the protector of the man in charge. The role of protector was one Bill took seriously, as another youngster named Bill learned in the summer of 1857. When Bill wasn't protecting James Lane or scouting for the Free State Army, he was driving wagons of supplies across the West. In the summer of 1857, he was part of a wagon train that was headed for Utah.

One evening, he helped a boy who became his lifelong friend and one of the most famous people in American history, William F. Cody, who would eventually be known as Buffalo Bill. That summer, Bill Cody was 11 years old. Hickok had just turned 20 when he found himself in a position to help the feisty youngster. Cody was on this trip, even at such a young age, because he was now the man of the house. His father had recently died, which left Cody as the oldest male in the family, and the responsibility of trying to help his mother,

the oldest male in the family, and the responsibility of trying to help his mother, his four sisters, and his younger brother, who was only two years old. Cody's older brother Samuel had been killed in a riding accident four years earlier, the year before their father had been stabbed after giving an anti-slavery speech. Most of the Cody kids were born in Iowa, but the family moved to Kansas in 1854. Cody's father wasn't a rabid anti-slavery man in the beginning, but he grew into one. The constant attacks by pro-slavery ruffians, including his own stabbing, pushed the man solidly into the camp of anti-slavery. The stabbing had lingering effects and probably led to the death of Cody's

father in 1857. So young Bill Cody joined up with the wagon train to make money for his family. One night during the trip to Utah, he angered a Teamster who was twice his size. The man knocked him down with an easy swat. But Cody jumped up and threw a pot of steaming hot coffee into the Teamster's face. As the Teamster screamed in rage and pain, he prepared to beat the hell out of Bill Cody. Hickok stepped in and knocked the Teamster to the ground. Hickok reportedly said, if you ever again lay a hand on that boy, I'll give you such a pounding, you won't get over it for a month of Sundays. After that, Bill Cody counted himself as one of the few true friends of Bill Hickok. After the trip, it looked like Hickok made a real attempt to set up the homestead

that he'd discussed with his family. In March of 1858, two months before Bill turned 21, he was elected constable of a small community in Kansas. It was his first job as a lawman, though it didn't last long. Bill's fellow bodyguard, John Owen, was elected town supervisor, and Bill and John grew closer than ever. And as a result, Bill grew closer to John's daughter, Mary Jane. It looked like Bill intended to get married. He built a small farm with a cabin, but he quickly experienced two major setbacks. Pro-slavery antagonists burned his house and most of his crops. And Mary Jane was half Native American. Her mother was a Shawnee, and that didn't sit well with Bill's mother.

Bill's older brother Lorenzo traveled to Kansas to tell Bill that their mother would never approve of the marriage. Between that and the attack on his farm, Bill decided to move on. He left his first love and went to Leavenworth with Lorenzo. They took jobs with the Overland Stage Company. The job turned into a career for Lorenzo, but it was only temporary for Bill, though it did give him the chance to meet one of his boyhood heroes, Kit Carson. It happened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, probably in 1859. Bill made one of his frequent trips to Santa Fe for the stage company, and he ended up spending an evening gambling and hanging

out with a man who had been in that second generation of legendary frontiersmen. The first was Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. The second was Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. The third would probably end up being Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody. But neither man had the nickname or the reputation at the moment. That night in Santa Fe, Carson gave Hickok a Colt Dragoon pistol that became one of Hickok's most prized possessions. He kept it for the rest of his life, which turned out to be only a little longer than that of his hero. Late in 1859, Bill Hickok spent a few weeks at Bill Cody's house,

and it was their next adventures that added to the legends of both young men. They were separate, but in the same realm. On April 3rd, 1860, the fabled Pony Express mail delivery system started in St. Joseph, Missouri. The goal was to deliver mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento, California, 2,000 miles away, and vice versa. On April 3rd, one rider left St. Joseph and another left Sacramento. The mail was passed from rider to rider along the trail, and both sets of mail arrived at their destinations just 10 days later. Bill Cody joined the Pony Express as a rider when he was 15 years old. Contrary to popular belief, Bill Hickok was not a Pony Express rider, though he worked for a similar service in the

Overland Stage Company. In the space of a year and a half, while Cody was galloping across the western territories, Bill Hickok stole horses from Lakota war chief Red Cloud, survived a bear attack, and killed his first man. Plants Station was in Wyoming territory, in the heart of the land that belonged to the Lakota and northern Cheyenne. That was the territory of Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, American Horse, Spotted Tail, and the many others you've heard about in the stories of Red Cloud's War and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This short story happened six years before Red Cloud's War. A Lakota raiding party attacked the small outpost and stole all the horses and mules. The party raced toward the Powder River in northern

Wyoming. Back at the station, Bill Hickok organized a posse to recover the stolen animals. The posse tracked the thieves until it found the camp. Hickok and the other men waited until dark and then attacked. They fired their guns and screamed like banshees and escaped with all their stolen animals, plus 100 Lakota ponies. The posse rushed down to another outpost called Sweetwater Bridge Station and celebrated its victory. There's no way to know definitively, but there's a really good chance that Hickok and the posse stole horses from Red Cloud's camp. If so, that would make them some of the very few white men who could claim that distinction. Maybe the only ones.

But the year 1860 had a more perilous adventure in store for Bill before it was done, as if stealing horses from the Lakota wasn't dangerous enough. Apparently, Bill fought and killed a bear. Bill's account of the event is disputed, but it's the best we have. According to Bill, he was driving wagons from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. That was a trip he did often, which was how he met Kit Carson the previous year. which was how he met Kit Carson the previous year. But on this trip, at some point along the way, he found a cinnamon bear and her two cubs blocking the road. Bill climbed down from his wagon and tried to kill the mama bear. He fired a shot at the bear's head, but it didn't do much damage.

It did, however, enrage the bear, as you'd imagine. The bear attacked. Bill shot the bear in one of her paws, but the attack continued. She grabbed Bill's left arm in her mouth and bit down hard. As she threatened to crush his arm, he pulled his bowie knife and stabbed and slashed until he'd killed the bear. He was out on the trail, so he had no choice but to haul himself back up onto the wagon and drive to the next town to get treatment. He obviously survived the encounter, and the bear didn't do any permanent damage. It's impossible to tell exactly what happened, but regardless of the specifics, Bill was definitely injured, because the new year of 1861 found him on light duty for the company. While he recovered from his injuries, he was in no shape to drive wagons across the frontier.

So the Overland Stage Company sent him to the Rock Creek Station in Nebraska. His official title was Assistant Stock Tender, which just meant he took care of the horses. And unfortunately for Bill, he was stationed at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe more accurately, it was unfortunate for the three men who engaged Hickok in a gunfight. Bill was 24 years old. It was his first gunfight, and it was where the legend really began. David McCandless didn't originate the outpost that became Rock Creek Station, but he turned it into a desirable location for the Overland Stage Company.

The previous owner found a spot just west of the tiny town of Fairbury, Nebraska, on the Oregon Trail. He built a cabin, a barn, and a small supply store. McCandless came along in 1859 and saw the value of the position. He bought the property and quickly built a bridge over nearby Rock Creek. Then he built another cabin on the other side of the creek. So now he had the original buildings on the west side, which became known as West Ranch, and the new buildings on the east side, which became known as East Ranch, and he charged a fee to use his new bridge. The next year, the Overland Stage Company leased the buildings of East Ranch as a way station on the trail. A year after that, the company agreed to buy East Ranch. In April 1861, as Civil War exploded in the East, the Overland Stage Company put a down payment on

the East Ranch of Rock Creek Station. But the company didn't make any more payments, and David McCandless came looking for his money. The company agreed to pay McCandless the rest of his money within four months of the down payment. As July of 1861 drew closer, and the company had not paid McCandless any more money, McCandless started asking for it, and then demanding it. Horace Wellman was the station supervisor, and Bill Hickok was the assistant stock tender.

All Wellman could do was keep telling McCandless that the money was on its way. Wellman contacted the company repeatedly, but the money never arrived. Wellman contacted the company repeatedly, but the money never arrived. The company was failing financially, and the odds of completing the transaction looked bad. Wellman was in a difficult spot. Overland didn't own the station yet, so McCandless threatened to shut it down. In just two years as the owner of the property, he'd earned a reputation as a bully with a hot temper. He'd also done some shady business deals with his land that allowed him to make money as if he was going to sell the property while ultimately keeping his ownership. So as the weeks passed,

and no further payments arrived from Overland, and McCandless grew angrier, a confrontation loomed. from Overland and McCandless grew angrier, a confrontation loomed. It happened on July 12, 1861. McCandless and his 12-year-old son and two of his friends went to East Ranch to confront Horace Wellman. McCandless was armed with a shotgun, and he and his son marched up to the front door of the ranch house. His two friends stayed in the yard with their pistols ready. At the house, Wellman met McCandless in the doorway. McCandless launched into a tirade about the Overland Stage Company and Wellman and the whole deal. He waved the shotgun in a menacing fashion, and Wellman retreated back into the house. Wellman's wife rushed in and gave McCandless a piece of her mind, but that only enraged McCandless further. As she retreated back

into the house, Bill Hickok appeared in the doorway. McCandless told the young man to get out of the way and mind his own business. Hickok replied that he was making it his business. mind his own business. Hickok replied that he was making it his business. Hickok turned and went into the house, and McCandless and his son followed. McCandless continued berating Wellman, and then McCandless made his fatal mistake. He gestured too forcefully with his shotgun. In a flash, Bill pulled one of his Navy Colts and fired. The bullet hit McCandless in the heart. He crashed to the ground and died in moments, right in front of his 12-year-old son. In the yard outside, the two friends heard the gunshot and ran toward the house. As the first one stepped inside, Bill fired. He hit the man, and the man stumbled back outside.

fired. He hit the man, and the man stumbled back outside. The second man entered, and Bill shot him too. The second man fled back outside. He was injured, but not as bad as the first man. The first man now laid in a patch of weeds in the yard. The second man ran for some brush near the creek. Suddenly, Mrs. Wellman burst from the house, saw the first man lying in the weeds, and went after him. She grabbed a garden hoe and finished the work that Bill Hickok started. As she did, Hickok and two more employees of Rock Creek Station followed the second man's blood trail down to the creek and finished him off. In a matter of seconds, Bill had fired three shots and killed or badly wounded three men. Three days later, he was arrested for murder. The trial was relatively swift. After witness testimony, it sounded like McCandless went looking for trouble,

and Hickok and the Wellmans defended themselves. The jury found Hickok not guilty. And after Hickok's first bloodletting, and with the war picking up in the east, he found it prudent to leave the Rock Creek area. Bill returned to Leavenworth, Kansas, and enlisted in the Union Army as a scout. His extensive travels in the West made him perfect for the job, and for the next four years, his theater of operation was the Kansas-Missouri region. His first action may have come at the Battle of Wilson's Creek just a couple weeks after he enlisted. It was August 10, 1861, and Bill helped scout for 5,500 men under the command of General Nathaniel Lyon. The Union force squared off against a Confederate army that featured the Missouri State Guard. The State Guard was an irregular

militia unit that included William Quantrill and Frank James, the older brother of Jesse James. It's hard to know for sure, but it seems very likely that Quantrill and Frank were at the Battle of Wilson's Creek. The Missouri State Guard was added to a larger Confederate force under the command of former Texas Ranger and now Brigadier General Ben McCullough. The Confederate Army more than doubled the Union troops, but the Federals attacked at 5 a.m. on August 10th. The battle raged a few miles west of Springfield, Missouri. It doesn't sound like Hickok participated in the fighting, since he was a civilian scout, but he wrote letters to his family where he mentioned the terrifying sounds of the artillery barrage.

During the battle, the Union commander, General Lyon, was killed. Major Samuel Sturgis assumed command of the Union force and pulled it off of the field. and pulled it off of the field. More than 16,000 soldiers participated in the battle, which made it one of, if not the, most significant engagement west of the Mississippi River in 1861. As a side note, 15 years after the battle, in the summer of 1876,

Major Sturgis would be Colonel Sturgis, and he would be in command of the 7th Cavalry. But he was stuck back here in Missouri on recruiting duty, while his second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, led the 7th against 2,000 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. One month after Wilson's Creek, Frank James fell ill and was captured by Union troops. He swore he would never fight for the Confederacy again, but before long, he and his younger brother Jesse joined up with the most fearsome guerrilla unit of the war, Quantrill's Raiders. While Frank was a prisoner of the Union Army, Bill Hickok transitioned from a scout to a wagon driver for the next six

months or so. And toward the end of that time, Hickok family legend says he earned his famous nickname. He was walking down a street in Independence, Missouri when he heard a scuffle in a bar. Apparently, the bartender made an ill-advised comment in favor of the Confederate cause. Several drunken patrons supported the union, and they started to give the bartender a severe beating. Hickok walked into the saloon and saw that the bartender was badly outmatched. Bill didn't share the man's opinion, but he hated an unfair fight. He pulled his pistols and leveled them at the brawlers. The beatings stopped, but now the men turned their full attention to Hickok.

He fired two shots over their head and warned them, I'll shoot the next man who comes at me. The drunks shuffled out of the bar without any further regression. And then it seems one of two things happened. Either a woman yelled, "'My God, ain't he wild!' Or later that night, as Bill walked past a meeting to organize a vigilance committee, a woman shouted,

"'Good for you, Wild Bill.'" Whichever way it was, from the spring of 1862 forward, James Butler Hickok was known as Wild Bill Hickok. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Bill finishes the Civil War as a sharpshooter and a spy, and becomes a scout of the plains, and participates in one of the very few genuine quick-draw gunfights in American history. Wild Bill becomes famous next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge

all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your writer, host, and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details. And join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast

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