Swearing by Swearengen: Is The Cursing In "Deadwood" Historically Accurate?

October 13, 2017

  Once and for all, did the miners and gamblers in Deadwood talk as profanely as David Milch has portrayed them in his fictional HBO series, "Deadwood"? 

Dan The Man Harshberger's humorous, done in jest, cover concept

This is a popular opinion:

"I’re read that foul language was prevalent in Deadwood, the town, but came in the form of 'tarnation' and 'gol-darn',” Milch thought these would be laughable to a modern audience, and so the f-bombs (which I also read, didn’t come into fashion until the 1920’s) were used.
—Clint Johnson, on Facebook


  I personally don't buy the "gol-darn-it" school of thought regarding "Deadwood." I believe all those soft swear words were put into use by mothers and church going people, perhaps in that time, but certainly in the time I grew up (1950s). My grandmother—Minnie Hauan Bell—liked to say, "What in the Sam Hill!" and there are a ton of these replacement swear words. I don't think any self-respecting miner, gambler or gunfighter in the Old West ever walked into a saloon and said, "What in tarnation is goin' on in here?"

   I also don't buy the notion that the so-called F-bomb was not "in fashion" until the 1920s. I read a memoir of a young, newlywed farmer's wife from the late 1880s who was supposed to go to town, but the trip got cancelled and so she decided to eat her sack lunch she had prepared for the trip, out in the shade of the barn where her husband and hired hands were working. She didn't announce her arrival, but she was soon shocked and stunned by her new husband's language which she had never heard from him before. Now, this doesn't prove he was using the F-bomb, but it does illustrate that there was a profane vocabulary used by men when there are no women present. And, by one estimate, the local museum in Deadwood touts, the men to women ratio in Deadwood at that time was 100 to one. So I have a strong hunch it was pretty profane, even by Victorian standards.

   And, by the way, the term "F-bomb" is a new phrase, coming into vogue in the last decade, or so, underscoring how fluid language is.

   At any rate, I put the question out to our contributing editors and staff and here are their thoughts on the subject:

Historians Weigh In On Swearing By Swearengen
"Did miners and soldiers curse, especially in saloons--of course they did. Did they cuss in front of women and children--never, unless they wanted to get shot by an outraged husband, brother or bystander. Is the cursing in Deadwood overdone--of course it is. Language changes over time--recall the language we regularly heard in the 1950s as opposed to the language today (a total reversal on the commonality of the F-word and the N-word). The language in Deadwood was used for shock value because it was pay-cable TV and they wanted to see what they could get away with and distance themselves from broadcast TV. Its TV, not history."
—Paul Hutton, A Distinguished Professor of History at The University of New Mexico

"I truly believe that many miners and other resident of Deadwood did, but the Deadwood series went too far. This was, after all, the Victorian era and the words damn and hell were considered offensive! So, no, the whole damned town didn’t drop the f-bomb in every sentence.
—Sherry Monahan, Contributing Editor, True West magazine

"Have no emperical data, but if I had to live in such an nasty, cutthroat, dirty town as Deadwood was then, I'd swear all the tine, too,"

—Jana Bommersbach, columnist, and contributing editor, True West magazine

"Deadwood got it right--profanity was part and parcel of normal, everyday talk in the mining camps and frontier towns.  The words most often associated with the show--the long ones dealing with carnage knowledge?  I don't think those were used, for the most part (although the "f" word was).  And even rough-hewn miners and cowboys held their tongues a tad around a lady.  Folks wanted to retain some veneer of sophistication and class."

—Mark Boardman, True West columnist and editor of The Tombstone Epitaph

And finally, for all you who think the potty mouths on "Deadwood" are innaccurate, there's this:

Youthful Depravity
The fact must come home to every observer that Deadwood's rising generation is very depraved. Go where we will our ears are greeted with profanity and obscenity from almost baby lips, while our vision is assailed by sights of the most lamentable character. These urchins are not all of that peculiar class known as "hoodlums" for whom ignorance is some excuse, as many of them receive the kindest and best instruction at home, but from too lenient parents who allow their children to wander through the city, visiting haunts of iniquity where are exerted those pernicious influences which sooner or later deaden the most acute sensibility, destroy all sense of right and morality and inspire to an emulation of the worst characters of the town.

--Black Hills Daily Pioneer-January 26, 1881

   Every generation thinks it's smarter than the last and wiser than the next. And, by extension, I think every generation thinks they more or less invented swearing. Why is this? Because nobody can remember their grandparents swearing. My grandkids have never heard me swear and if I do my job right, they never will. So these babies get to grade school and hear the inevitable swear words and they are excited and appalled ("My grandparents don't talk like this!") So they assume it's new. I think it's safe to say, this has been going on for about three to ten thousand years, and as long as there are grandparents, kids will grow up believing that swearing is a flippin' new thing.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

—Olscar Wilde

There Is No Other Charlie Utter

October 13, 2017
   Obstacles often lead to creative solutions. My production manager, Robert Ray, took a bad xerox of an old litho down to JC Printing and had them print it out on thick art stock ($4 a sheet) and then I painted over each one, which creates a pretty authentic looking art print, although each one is slightly different. 

Daily Whip Out: "Charlie Utter, There Is No Other"

   Okay, I lied. There is another one, with slightly different coloring:

Daily Whip Out: "Another Charlie Utter Slightly Colored Brother"

  This all stemmed from a funky copyright deal where the original art print had a French publication ownership warning on it and I decided to take matters into my own hands and create my own version of the image. This was my test of the tester, below, on regular typing paper (note paper rippling at top):

Daily Whip Out: "Charlie Utter Typing Paper Flutter"

   I think I made it mine. It's a full page in the Wild Bill book, since it's Charlie who hand letters Wild Bill's tombstone headboard in a famous photo:

"Colorado" Charlie Utter

   According to Wild Bill expert and author, Joseph Rosa, we have to take this drawing of Charlie (also styled as Charley) Utter "with reservation." He doesn't explain, but I assume there is some doubt about it actually being our boy. It was drawn by Janet Lange and published in 1869 in the French magazine Le Tour du Monde (Tour of The World?). This is really early—1869—and predates Buffalo Bill Cody's European tours by a dozen years, or so. Utter evidently grew up in Illinois but moved to Colorado to become a trapper and guide. He was known to be a fastidious dresser and insisted on bathing every day (almost unheard of in the trapper-scout fraternity). He was also a close friend of Hickok's and it was Charlie who arranged for Wild Bill's funeral and paid for the plot.

"If it's true that legend is truth exaggerated to make a better story, then one of the things we historians do best is to ruin a good story."

—BBB

Did Wyatt Earp Meet Wild Bill Hickok?

October 12, 2017
   By the early 1870s, Wild Bill Hickok was a national celebrity and, in fact, basically lived off that notoriety for the last two years of his life. Like all celebrities, people flocked to him, bought him drinks and fawned over him. After his death in 1876, many a Westerner claimed to know him. It became almost a touchstone, or badge of authenticity, to have even seen him.

   In the book, "Frontier Marshal," on page 43, the author Stuart Lake quotes Wyatt Earp as saying he met Wild Bill in Kansas City, in 1871. The dates don't quite work (Earp was in Peoria, Illinois working in, ahem, beaver procurement) and historians wonder if Lake was trying to tie the two together to make Earp look better. Earp author, Casey Tefertiller, doesn't think Earp made the claim, but that Lake put the words in Earp's mouth.

Wyatt Earp in Los Angeles about the time he met Stuart Lake in the late 1920s

The original photo was photographed by a historian in March of 1957

(thus the time stamp on the border of the photo).

   On the other hand, Casey maintains, "There is a brief mention that Earp met Wild Bill in passing. I think it is in the disputed Adelia Earp Edwards memoir, which I think is probably real. I would have to dig it out to be certain.  I think it very possible that Earp met Wild Bill in passing, perhaps long enough to shake hands." 

   There is another Earp connection to Hickok, and that is, in 1924, Western movie star William S. Hart returned to the silver screen after a two year absence, with a story written by himself, "Wild Bill Hickok." Hart supposedly used Wyatt as a consultant on the film and Hart included many frontier characters Earp did know, like Chalk Beeson, Charles Basset, Bill Tilghlman and Luke Short. In fact, an actor portrays Wyatt in the film, and it's the first portrayal of Earp on film.

   Here is a newspaper clipping Casey Teferteller found and shared with me:

Stevens Point Journal (Stevens Point, Wisconsin), March 20, 1924

Getting The Look of Wild Bill Right

October 11, 2017
   I've spent a good part of my life trying to capture the look and feel of a fleeting time in history: basically 1860-1890 on the American frontier. Like so many of my Old West maniac pards, I spend an inordinate amount of time studying the details of photographs like this little gem:

Deputy U.S. Marshal Wild Bill Hickok, at left, with a group of locals at the

Quarter Master's Department, Fort Harker, Kansas. Author Joseph Rosa

speculates the date of this Alexander Gardner photograph as 

"on or about September 27" 1867. Notice how Hickok looms over 

his fellow citizens and wears his two ivory-handled Colt 1851

model Navy revolvers in open-topped holsters

worn butts forward in a simple belt rig.

This photograph was shot at Pioneer, Arizona. It was not intended to duplicate

the top photo, but taken merely to document all the people who posed for

photographs that day. But the similarities to the Hickok photo are striking.

This is my volunteer crew who often showed up

and worked for free to help me capture authentic reference photos

for my books, and this was for my Wild Bill Hickok book

(which I started 22 years ago!). This photo is circa 1996 and

there are three Wild Bill's in the photo. Can you spot them?

Hint: Jerry Crandall, at far left, and Jerry Terrantino, second from right, 

and Doc Ingalls,  fourth from left.

All three show up in various guises in the book, like this reference shot for Hickok's wedding to Agnes Lake in Cheyenne:

Wild Bill Wedding: Jenny Smith,

Jim Dunham and Jerry Tarrantino

   When I get on the last leg of a book project, I stop shaving. Kathy calls it my book ritual, as in "Oh, I see you are in book ritual mode." Here I am with the guy who does all the heavy lifting, Robert Ray, tweaking a spread on Wild Bill that includes the top photo of Hickok at Fort Harker. Also notice we have blown up Wild Bill so you can study the details in his gun rig. Drop dead deadline is next week. Hairy, eh?

"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also truth."

—Thomas Mann

"Deadwood" Is Dead-On

October 11, 2017
   When I was a panelist at the Lone Pine Film Festival last Saturday, the panel moderator told us the word in Hollywood is that the reprise of "Deadwood," the HBO acclaimed series, is apparently a go. As I have been researching the authentic Wild Bill and his demise in the illegal boomtown, I have been struck with how authentic many of the characters in the fictional David Milch production really are:

Timothy Oliphant as Seth Bullock in the HBO series "Deadwood"

"Deadwood" Is Dead-On

   Here are a few of the things the HBO show got right historically:

• Seth Bullock and Sol Star, did establish the Star and Bullock Hardware Store in 1876.

• Al Swearingen did own the Gem Theater but he was from Iowa, not England.

• As many as 400 Chinese lived in an area of Deadwood, known as the “Badlands.” They elected their own mayor and council, as well as establishing their own police force and fire department.

• George Hearst did come to Deadwood and eventually bought the Homestake Mine.

• E.B. Farnum was appointed as mayor by the first miners’ court in Deadwood. 

• Calamity Jane was every bit as foul-mouthed and drunk as she is portrayed in the series. 

• Lucretia  Marchbanks was known as “Aunt Lou” in the camp and she did work at the Grand Central Hotel as the kitchen manager.

• Albert W. Merrick did found the Deadwood Pioneer newspaper in 1876. 

• There actually was a Gem Theater prostitute named Tricksie, who shot a man through the front of his skull for beating her up. The attending doctor was amazed that he survived the gunshot.

• Jack Langrishe did in fact come to Deadwood Gulch in 1876 along with the rest of his troupe. They temporarily conducted their productions at the Bella Union Theatre before building their own building.

A Slight Nitpick:

• Jack McCall’s first trial that acquitted him of murder was not held in the Gem as shown, but instead at the Deadwood Theatre, sometimes referred to as McDaniel’s Theatre (for its builder,) or the Langrishe Theatre, for Jack Langrishe, the performer’s troupe manager.

I need to thank Mary Kopco, director of the Adams Museum in Deadwood, and Jerry L. Bryant, the museum’s research curator and archaeologist for this great inside information.

Also, it must be said, the best portrayal of Jack McCall, based on the descriptions of him (there are no known photos) is this guy:

Garret Dillenhunt as Jack McCall in "Deadwood"

"Here's my counteroffer to your counteroffer: go f--- yourself!" 

—Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), in "Deadwood"

"

An Inspiring Talk, A Deranged Billionaire & A Deadly Poker Hand

October 10, 2017
   Last Wednesday, on my way to the Lone Pine Film Festival, I stopped off at Mohave County Cummunity College, outside Kingman, Arizona to talk to several art classes about making it as an artist. I made a vow in 1964 that if I ever discovered the secret to making it I would return home to give them the inside skinny. Here is the local newspaper's account of my efforts:

Kingman Boy Makes Good On Promise

   Not the best photo ever taken of me, but I dig that T-shirt. Got back in the trenches this morning:

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill's Last Hand"

   Yes, Jack McCall walked up behind Hickok and shot him in the head. The bullet went through Wild Bill and hit William Massey sitting opposite him, in the hand. In fact, Massey, initially thought Hickok had shot him. McCall tried to fire the gun again, but it misfired, as if it's only purpose was to dispatch Wild Bill (this is Thom Ross's take on the jammed gun). Massey carried the bullet in his wrist for the rest of his life and proudly displayed it when anyone brought up the subject.

William Massey, at left, was wounded in the hand, by the same bullet that killed Hickok.

   When I was a talking head on the Discovery Channel's "Gunslingers" series several years ago, the guy they hired to portray Hickok was pretty good:

Walt Willey as Wild Bill on the cable TV series "Gunslingers"

   We did a joint appearance at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, at the TV Critics annual showcase, to promote the series and Walt and I had lunch afterwards with various Discovery Channel executives. He was a former soap opera heart throb and I must say he is still catnip to the ladies.

I'm not a paranoid, deranged millionaire. Dammit, I'm a billionaire.
—Howard Hughes, an alleged quote, not sure I believe it.

Needles In The Rearview

October 9, 2017
   Traveled all day yesterday, driving home from the Lone Pine Film Festival. Drove right by Olive Oatman's Mojave home:

Daily Whip Out: "Olive Oatman On The Colorado"

   That would be just north of a distinctive Arizona landmark, below. Her Mojave home was actually on the California side (at the current site of Needles, the town).

The Needles south of Topock Marsh

   This is a sight, she woke up to every day for four years. It's another four hours from Needles to my front door. Needed to get back on Sunday so I can finish up the book on this guy:

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill Bust"

   Worked all day today on the layouts with Robert Ray. Locked down a ton of pages, with about 17 holes to fill, Got about ten days to finish. Going to be tight, but it's going to be mucho groovy.

   I am fond of saying the problem in this world is everyone is about half right, but this quote says it better:

"The world is divided into people who think they are right."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Hangin' With Tom Mix, Bogie's '37 Plymouth and A Six String Samurai

October 7, 2017
   Second day of the Lone Pine Film Festival. Just did a great panel on "The Image of The American Cowboy: John Wayne and John Ford." The panel was moderated by Ben Mankiewicz, the Turner Classic Movies host (his grandfather wrote "Citizen Kane"!); and, Scott Eyman, who has written excellent biographies on John Wayne and John Ford; Western film historian Ed Hulse; and actor Ed Faulkner, who starred with John Wayne in "McClintock". We hit the ground running and although most of us had never met, we played off each other like seasoned pros. When I referenced being a fan of AC/DC, Mankiewicz asked the audience (average age, 62) if anyone present has ever been to an AC/DC concert, and three people raised their hands and I stood up and gave them a shout out. Ben quipped that he would have "bet the under" on that premise before the vote. Hulse is second to none with his knowledge of early B-Westerns—who was in them, how they were made, who got stiffed and who got laid. Ed Faulkner had funny stories from the set, including playing chess with the Duke:

   "You just made your first mistake, Pilgrim."
 
   "But I just sat down?"

   "That was your first mistake."

   I, of course, sang the theme song to "The Life & Legend of Wyatt Earp," and when the entire crowd helped me finish it with loud bravado, and to great applause, Mankiewicz quipped, "When I signed up for this gig I was told there would be no singing."

   It was a rare panel where everyone knew their place, took their shots and then lobbed watermelons to the next guy.

   Afterwards, I went over to the Lone Pine Film Museum for a book signing. Sat next to William Wellman who has 180 movies and television credits, 17 stage productions and 200 commercials and is the son of the legendary directory, "Wild Bill" Wellman. Bought his book and had it autographed, met some great folks and sold everything I brought with me and I had a ton of people ask me how to subscribe to True West (the main reason I am here).

   Also got to hang out and chat a bit with these two lovebirds:

Linda and Bruce Boxleitner celebrating their one-year anniversary this week.

   The museum has some of the best lobby cards I have ever seen. Many of them brand new from my visit at last year's festival:

Tom Mix at the Lone Pine Film Museum, in Lone Pine, California

Bogie's '37 Plymouth from "High Sierra"

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon's "Tremors"

   This is a display that celebrates the cult film that is known world-wide. When I was up in the Alabama Hills last year gawking at the sites of countless classic Westerns, a rental car pulled up and one of the two Euro trash kids inside rolled down the window and said, "Is this the canyon where 'Tremors' was filmed?"

Six-String Samurai

"John Ford is our Homer and the Western is our Illiad."

—Scott Eyman

Zabriskie Has A Point

October 6, 2017
   Didn't get a chance to lollygag in Death Valley on Wednesday but I did buy four books and a poster:

Zabriskie Point poster

Zabriskie Has A Point
   A tireless worker for Borax, starting in 1885, Christian Brevoort Zabriskie worked his way up to vice president and general manager of Borax and was instrumental in taking the Borax company into the hospitality industry. In gratitude, the company named a prominent landmark in Death Valley after the loyal producer. The landmark with the exotic ethnic name has gone on to star in a surprisingly broad range of the popular culture. It is the name of the 1970 movie by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, with music by Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia, and, allegedly, the cover of U2's album The Joshua Tree was shot at the location. The 1959 movie "Spartacus" used the location, showing Gladiator school master dude, Peter Ustinov, on a mule trekking to an Egyptian mine to buy slaves. Oh, and the philosopher Michel Foucault went on an acid trip at the Point in 1975 and said it was the greatest experience of his entire life.

Death Valley By The Book
   "Nothing prepares you for the scope of the landscape. With 96 percent of Death Valley designated as wilderness, this terrain remains fierce and untamed. Sudden mountains are bracketed by the sultry curves of alluvial fans. A sea of spindly creosote washes up against slanted cliffs with swirls of strata like the grains of exotic woods. Soft gnawed badlands slouch across the valley floor and desert winds etch intricate patterns into shifting sand dunes."
—Roger Naylor, "Death Valley: Hottest Place On Earth"

A view of the original Borax loading docks where they hauled out the materials

from the dry Furnace Creek lake bed, seen at right.

"It was an ashen gray through a leaden haze. Iron walled and sun blasted. . .as hateful and horrible as the portal of hell. . . Death Valley will never be popular with men, and is fatal to women."

—Zane Grey, 1918

I'm On A Highway to Hell

October 5, 2017
   Been on the road for the past two days. On Wednesday morning, Dr. John Langellier and I took off from Cave Creek in my Ford Flex and blasted thru Nothing, Bullhead, Searchlight, Nipton, Baker and landed at Furnace Creek last night, which is several feet below sea level. Here's the view of Furnace Creek driving in from the north:

Approaching Furnace Creek from the north.

   You can just see the oasis on the horizon at the center of the photo, above. Here's a close-up:

Furnace Creek rippling in the heatwaves.

   If you haven't guessed where we are yet, the general area is sort of famous for its catchy name.

A movie poster for "Saga of Death Valley" in the cafe at Stovepipe Wells

Another movie poster of the same movie in the same cafe.

Death Valley Is The Bad Boy Desert

   "Death Valley is truth in advertising. This is the bad boy of deserts. Staggering extremes are the norm," says my friend and author Roger Naylor, in his cool book "Death Valley: Hottest Place On Earth," which I bought at the Borax Museum in Furnace Creek.

BBB@Borax Museum, Furnace Creek, Death Valley

   John and I are on the way to the Lone Pine Film Festival and I wanted to finally take a side trip to the infamous Death Valley, which I had never been to. Along the way the good doctor and I talked and laughed about the cache and popularity of the long-running TV show "Death Valley Days" and the fact that very few of the shows ever took place in the actual location, but that the name has a certain romance and charm, in spite of, or, maybe because of the ridiculously dramatic name. I believe it's the least visited National Park because, well, the name is kind of off putting. Imagine if it was the name of a subdivision? I rest my case.

"She burns green Rosie, by God we're rich!"

—Aaron Winters to his wife Rosie, who, in 1882 grabbed a handful of lakebed sand in Furnace Creek and lit a match to sulfuric acid and alcohol and began farming Borax in Death Valley

The News From Deadwood

October 3, 2017
   Nasty couple of days. It affects us in our every day efforts, no matter if we are working on something that happened 150 years ago.

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill Looks Back"

   Just when you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, you read an old newspaper and it gives one a pinch of perspective on our perpetual journey, as we find ourselves as a culture ping-ponging between too little law and too much.

The News From Deadwood
"We have also a large number of VERY BAD, HARD CHARACTERS among us who openly commit murder without provocation. Neither law nor order prevails; we have no organized system to punish criminals and our government has committed a grave error in allowing the settlement of this country without opening it by proclamation, giving the Governor power to organize a county and appoint county officers, and ensuring peaceable citizens protection against the vagabonds who infest this country. A few days ago Wild Bill, the noted Indian scout, fell by the hand of an assassin. A trial and acquittal was the result. Numerous other crimes of a like nature have been committed. All going unpunished, leaving us in a state of chaos."
—The New North-West, Deer Lodge, Montana, August 25, 1876


"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened."
—Willa Cather

Artwork In Progress for Wild Bill

October, 2017
   Spent most of the weekend filling holes in the Wild Bill book. When I see a hole, off I go:

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill In Progress"

   Then I woke up this morning to the Las Vegas horror story. The panting in progress, above, was a straight-ahead painting of Wild Bill witnessing unknown horrors in 1856 Kansas. Here is Hickok's quote in a letter to his mother: 

"I have seen since I have been here sights that would make the wickedest hearts sick."

—Wild Bill Hickok

 When I went home for lunch to finish the painting, I heard the news about Tom Petty dying, so the painting took an even darker turn. 

 Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill's Day of The Dead"

   Now, it turns out he's alive (as of 2 P.M Arizona Standard Time), so scratch the second painting?

Daily Whip Out: "Mr. & Mrs. Lake

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill, Scratch That"

Daily Whip Out: "Colorado Charlie Utter"

"The truth is not facts lined up. Images lined up, well, that's a different story."

—Old Vaquero Saying

When It Comes to Wild Bill, Joseph G. Rosa Is The Gold Standard

October 1, 2017
   One of the biggest challenges of doing any book on a real life Old West character, is separating fact from legend. (In essence, legend is a series of facts exaggerated.) I have to admit that in the case of Wild Bill, the legend is piled on so high and so deep, it's sometimes hard to even determine whether an event even happened!

Daily Whip Out: "Wild Bill In Progress"

   A good example is a supposed invitation from a U.S. senator, Harry Wilson, for Hickok to be a guide on an excursion to the Wild West. In a letter, dated May 17, 1869, Senator Wilson invited the famous frontiersman to "accompany our party as guide some time during the following month, please write me at once at Willard's Hotel . . ." Sounds authentic, citing specific locations and written in the style of prose so popular at the time. According to the early Wild Bill authors, Frank Wilstach, J.W. Buel, and William Connelley, Wild Bill took the job and was supposedly paid $500 to be the guide, meeting the Washington D.C. plutocrats in Hays City, Kansas. They had a grand time and at a banquet they presented Bill with a pair of pistols.

   Joseph Rosa lays out the event in his masterful "They Called Him Wild Bill," but he is ultimately suspicious of the trip. He concludes, "The only proof of this trip is this letter—and its whereabouts (if it exists) is unknown." This is always a cause for alarm because Rosa is the Gold Standard on Hickok. If he says it happened, you can take it to the bank, or, in my case, include it in the book.The problem with the excursion is that beyond the letter there is no supporting evidence. So thanks to a heads up from Rosa, this incident will not be in the book.

Joseph G. Rosa

(1932—2015)

   There are more than a dozen "events" I had to kill. Here's another good example of the legend smothering the facts. There is a shooting by Hickok in Hays City, Kansas. Here are the bare bones of the gunfight:

August 24, 1869

   In office for only a few days, Hays City Marshal James Hickok is accosted by Billy Mulrey (also Mulvey). With two pistols leveled at the lawman, Wild Bill shoots him dead. (Tradition says Wild Bill calmly waved his hand past Mulrey and yelled, "Don't shoot him in the back; he's drunk." Mulvey turned and Hickok shot him in the head.)

   This clever, diversion has been repeated countless times in books and movies, even appearing in the classic Western comic strip, Rick O'Shay:

Rick O'Shay, 1969, the syndicated comic strip by the late, great Stan Lynde

  The only problem is the diversion tactic is not in the primary sources, and more importantly, Rosa doesn't include it. So, you'll notice in the account of the gunfight, I couched the diversion element with, ("Tradition says. . .") which is a tip of the hat to the legend, but I am not endorsing it.

    But back to Mr. Rosa. No one has done more for rescuing Hickok from being a glorified Roadrunner cartoon than Joseph G. Rosa. So, it's no accident my Wild Bill book is dedicated to Joe Rosa.

Here's an interview with the Hickok Master in True West magazine back in 2003:

Rosa Interview

"I first encountered Hickok in a movie when I was about seven years old. At that time, many youngsters, both sides of the Atlantic, regarded Western movies as a way of life, and we all had our favorite Western star. Mine was Buck Jones whose tragic death in 1942 came as a great shock. As for Hickok, I first saw him portrayed by Bruce Cabot in Wild Bill Hickok Rides; but it was Gary Cooper as Hickok in The Plainsman that really impressed me. I began reading and collecting anything I could find on Wild Bill, and by the early 1950s, I had discarded the Hollywood version and concentrated upon the real Hickok. In my youthful arrogance, I then decided I should write a book—little realizing how difficult that would be!"
—Joe Rosa