HICKOK, WILD BILL

born May 27, 1837, Troy Grove, Ill., U.S. died Aug. 2, 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota, U.S.] byname of James Butler Hickok American frontiersman, army scout, marksman, and gambler who became an American legend. His reputation as a marksman gave rise to legends and tales about his life. As a child in Illinois, he worked on neighbouring farms and helped his father in assisting escaped slaves. He left home in 1856 to farm in Kansas and there became involved in the Free State (antislavery) movement. He later served as a village constable in Monticello, Kan. While working as a teamster in 1861, he killed Dave McCanles at Rock Creek (Nebraska Territory), and legends about him probably began in the exaggerated tales of his role in this gunfight. During the American Civil War Hickok worked for the Union as a teamster, scout, and spy. After the war he was appointed deputy U.S. marshal, and he later became a scout for the army. Hickok is remembered particularly for his services in Kansas as sheriff of Hays City and marshal of Abilene, where his ironhanded rule helped to tame two of the most lawless towns on the frontier. From 1872 to 1874 Hickok traveled through New York state with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, then drifted some more. In 1876 he met and married a widowed actress, Mrs. Agnes Lake, ne Mersman, but he soon left her (in Cincinnati) to visit the goldfields of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory. It was there, at a poker table in the Number Ten saloon in Deadwood, that Hickok was shot dead by a drunken stranger, Jack McCall. McCall's motive was never learned; he was tried, convicted of murder, and hanged on March 1, 1877.