by Jery Payne
On August 2, 1876, Jack McCall entered the No. 10 Saloon in the town of Deadwood in what is now South Dakota, walked up behind “Wild Bill” Hickok, shouted a curse and “Take that!”, and shot Wild Bill in the back of the head. Wild Bill was holding two black eights and two black aces. Ever since, this hand has been called the “dead man’s hand.”
Jack tried to flee but never made it out of Deadwood. The town itself was illegal because the Lakota Sioux tribe owned the land, but then Lieutenant Colonel George Custer had led an expedition that discovered gold, so the town popped up anyway. The federal government tried to buy back the gold fields, but the Lakota were not in a selling mood. Being an illegal town, there was no real law and there were no real courts. The townsfolk put together a makeshift court and tried Jack.
Jack’s defense was that Wild Bill had killed his brother and therefore deserved death. He actually used the “he needed killing” defense. The defense succeeded; Jack was set free.
In 1872, Sitting Bull and his warriors were locked in a stalemate with Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Sitting Bull was trying to forge the entire Lakota Sioux tribe into a single fighting force. He needed to show that he was the man to lead the entire tribe. The stalemate did not bode well for his leadership and people grumbled, so Sitting Bull gathered up his pipe and tobacco and walked down to the front lines, within range of the enemy’s guns. He sat down with bullets striking all around him. He then lit the pipe and smoked it, seeming to be indifferent to the danger. After taking a few puffs, he called his men to join him. Four warriors braved it but wanted to return after taking a few puffs. Sitting Bull slowly smoked the rest of the pipe, cleaned it out, and casually walked back to his warriors. His legend was made, and, by 1876, he led the entire tribe.
The 1870s West favored the bold risk-taker.
But boldness has its cost. In June of 1876, Custer had looked over a settlement on the Little Bighorn River. Custer could not see the entire settlement, but it was bigger than any he could have expected. The Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes had come together to discuss war. Custer could see that he was outnumbered, but he probably didn’t understand that it was at least three to one. His biggest concern was that the tribes would melt away and fail to give him a fight. Without a fight, he could not get the victory that would put him back in the good graces of the U.S. Army.1
Custer needn’t have worried. He faced Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, two legendary warriors who wanted to fight—especially since Crazy Horse had recently defeated the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Rosebud. A few hours later, Crazy Horse and his warriors had killed Custer and half his men and defeated the 7th Cavalry.
Two months later, Jack McCall bragged about killing Wild Bill, who was a U.S. marshal, in front of another U.S. marshal. This marshal arrested Jack. At the new trial, he was sentenced to hang. Next morning, a U.S. marshal carried out the sentence.
This may seem like ancient history that is foreign to our modern Colorado. But in 1876, the modern world was beginning to take shape. On March 10, Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call, saying the words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” On February 2, The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was formed. This league became the National League of Major League Baseball.
A game is rules. Change the rules, and you change the game. Without the rules you have no game. And without rules, you have no order.
The story of 1876 is America lying by a campfire staring up into the stars. The campfire gives light and heat but also smokes and burns, and all the while the stars in the sky are distant, pretty, and spellbinding. You need the light and heat for a time, but the stars fill your dreams. In Deadwood, justice was makeshift, but in Colorado, laws and institutions were coming. For the first time, a telephone wire hummed and a curveball was pitched. The West was changing. The day before Wild Bill gazed at his dead man’s hand, the federal government and Colorado dealt a very different hand to Colorado’s citizens: statehood.
- Custer had fallen out with the U.S. Army because he had traveled to Washington D.C. to testify to Congress about corrupt kickbacks. While in Washington, he had tarried for multiple reasons, including trying but failing to meet with President Grant to make peace. (Grant’s brother was tangentially implicated in the scandal.) But most people familiar with the situation suspected he tarried because he was having too much fun. Custer had been ordered to lead the 7th Cavalry west on April 6. Custer’s absence delayed the expedition by two months, so he had technically disobeyed an order, but also, he had angered the commander in chief. ↩︎