Wild Bill Hickok, the Dead Man's Hand, & Tobacco in the Old West
James Butler Hickok b. May 27, 1837 aka "Wild Bill" also: James B. Hickok, J.B. Hickok, Shanghai Bill, William Hickok, William Haycock, is now and has been a good important bit of Americana. A real Old West folk hero icon. In his day he was a Civil War veteran, a scout, a Sherrif (with a penchant for murdering), a gambler, showman, and gunfighter. He was, "by nature a ruffian ... a drunken, swaggering fellow, who delighted when 'on a spree' to frighten nervous men and timid women." That is if the '1883 History of Greene County, Missouri' can be believed.
&/or maybe you'd believe Calamity Jane. She claimed in her book that she and Hickok were at one point hitched. Her story states that she allowed their divorce so that Wild Bill could go off and marry his one true love, Agnes Thatcher Lake, the middle-aged owner of a Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory circus. And so they were holy matrimony'd on March 5, 1876. Almost immediately, ol' Billy ditched her for gold in what would later be named South Dakota... but did go on to write her some lovely letters. Men are pigs.
It was around then and maybe even in one of those letters that Wild Bill shared, "I have quit chewing tobacco and don't touch any lager beer, and I don't speak to the girls at all. I am getting to be a perfect hermit; my fiddle, my dog, and my gun I almost worship." Perhaps these sentiments were shared in an attempt to get on whatever good-side was left of his left-behind Agnes. However, let's give him the benefit of doubt for now, and as we do, heed his careful wording.
The man said he quit chewing tobacco, not smoking cigars. There exists a quite well-known and previous to these claims photo of Wild Bill, posing with a cigar in one hand and a pouch of chew in his other. Here. I'll plug in a reminder for you to go look that up if you're interested. [picture of Wild Bill Hickok with cigar and tobacco pouch] You can just toss what's between those brackets into a Google search. The aesthetics here don't allow for unpaid pictorial intrusions.
Anyway, he definitely was not living like a hermit on his penultimate day, August 1, 1876. It happened at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Hickok was playing poker and a seat opened at the table. A man named Jack McCall filled it. Jack had been drinking ::: very ::: much Jack, to the point of perhaps not knowing his McRaise from his McFold. Jack McCall lost big. Hickok, for whatever reason, exhibited a soft-spot for the man. He tried getting him to stop playing--gave him money for breakfast when that didn't work.
McCall took the cash but it stuck in his craw if not his wallet. Later in the next day, after conceivably having his first meal on Wild Bill, he decided to kill him. Hickok was back at the cards. Being no shade of n00b, he would typically sit with his back to a wall, ideally facing the door. Not on that second day of August, however, and he didn't like it one bit. He had already twice asked his fellow player, Charles Rich, to swap him seats. It didn't happen. What did happen was that McCall walked up on him carrying a Colt Model 1873 Single Action Army .45 caliber revolver. With which he shot Wild Bill point-blank in the back of the head.
The hand that is currently considered the Dead Man's Hand is the hand Wild Bill Hickok held as he died rather immediately. It included black-suited aces and eights. The game was either Five-card Stud or Draw. I imagine the bar was dusty, smelled bad, and was mainly meh as to the sudden outburst of murder. I can say sans doubt that it did not have a Karaoke machine. A man named Neil Christy snagged the hand from under someone's boot. He later handed it down to his son. Said son told historian Carl W. Breihan all about it who then chronicled...
"Here is an exact identity of these cards as told to me by Christy's son: the ace of diamonds with a heel mark on it; the ace of clubs; the two black eights, clubs and spades, and the queen of hearts with a small drop of Hickok's blood on it..." Terrible. Tragic. Whiskey ruin. As an aside, to correctly spell the word whiskey, with or without an "E," simply look at its country of origin. If the country has an "E" in its name, so does its firewater.
Also, whiskey pairs famously with cigars--not just with wanton escalations of violence. Which brings me to this: I don't buy that Wild Bill put down a damned thing--least of all his cigars. But what cigars? What were cigars like in the frontier of the Old & Wild West? Heck, let's put all of 'baccy back on the saloon table and put a neat little ribbon on this gift of a post. Then I'll make that gift a Sundae instead, and leave you with a cherry of a quote on-top. That's right, I might've mixed metaphors but I most definitely just called my shot.
Shot. 1876. Remember that year? BOOM splat? I mean you just read it like 4-5 paragraphs ago. The Philadelphia Exposition that took place the same year of Hickok's murder unveiled factory-made cigarettes to the world. Or, as those out west called them: sissy sticks or pimp sticks. Denizens of the Wild, Wild West called their preferred roll-your-owns "quirlys." Usually, the leaf was Bull Durham and sometimes corn shucks were used for papers; the NATIVE AMERICANS taught them that trick. btw, all of these events took place on stolen Native land.
Chew was chew and isn't a specialty of mine at least not yet but I'd be lying if I said I'm totally disinterested. Pipe tobacco was offered in plug form and traded against coffee across Blue-Grey lines. It was most likely Burley or Virginia and smoked from a cob or maybe from a clay pipe. Post-war, where we're at, was actually near a pivotal point in cigar history. It's a time when long panatelas, twisted at both ends were still being sold widely at two for a penny--and they were shit. For a penny and a half, one Cuban was yours. Then the US Government stepped in with its taxes and all cigars were suddenly a nickel.
But Ybor City was just a scant handful of years away from being founded and upping the American cigar game. Factories in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and several other cities already were seeing their cigar factory workers unionizing. It would seem Wild Bill got plucked right before he was about to experience a flood of excellent cigars come his westward way. It all just goes to show you, the best cigar is the one in your hand, and if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. Or fly the coop in search of gold; wind up dead.
"Agnes Darling, if such should be we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breathe the name of my wife--Agnes--and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other shore."
@kaplowitzmedia
::: very :::