Woman called Calamity Jane

In the company of legends of the Wild West, such as Bill Hickok, Jesse James and Wyatt Earp, there was also one woman - the one who was anxiously called Calamity Jane and who could match any cowboy, whether it was shooting, riding or chewing tobacco. How much is her portrayal in Hollywood films based on reality?

Lady in pants

Information about this woman is rather scanty. It is known that she was born in 1852 near Princeton, Missouri, under the name Martha Jane Cannary. At the tender age of fourteen, she became an orphan: her mother died of leukemia, and her father, a short-tempered farmer, simply collapsed in the field one afternoon, most likely from a heart attack.

The burden of caring for two younger brothers and three sisters fell on the girl's weak shoulders. After moving with them to Piedmont, Wyoming, she took a number of low-paying jobs to survive. She was a dishwasher, an assistant cook and a hired keeper of oxen, and some historians believe that she also engaged in prostitution.

Although she was illiterate and tough-tempered, her skill with a firearm earned her respect among the lone horsemen, soldiers, and outlaws of the Wild West. She began to wear men's clothes and participate in battles against Indians, and in one such conflict she earned the nickname by which history remembers her. The story goes like this: when the redskins ambushed Captain Eagan's troops, with whom she was riding, Jane tore the captain from his horse, mounted him on her own, and rode with him to safety. From that day on, she was talked about as Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.

Savages of Deadwood

In 1876, during the Gold Rush, she moved to Deadwood, a fledgling mining town in Indian Territory where the law of the stronger ruled. She stayed with Dora DuFran, the owner of the most frequented brothel in the city, in the little room below where the "friends of the night" practiced. The two women became friends, and Jane occasionally worked for Madame DuFran - cooking for the prostitutes and doing their laundry. According to some reports, she herself knew how to make a few cents by practicing the oldest craft in the world.

In Dradwood, she also met Bill Hickok, a notorious gunslinger whose "career" at that time was on the wane: due to an untreated venereal disease, he had begun to lose his sight, which is quite a nuisance for someone who earns a living by drilling decks with karate bullets or using them by forcing the corks into the bottles without breaking them. Two fearless, wild, often despised people are known to have developed a friendship of sorts. Although their relationship has been romanticized in many films, there is no evidence that the duo were in a relationship, nor is there an oft-repeated rumor that they had a daughter.

Deadwood will be the last stop in the turbulent life of Jane's new acquaintance. On August 2, 1876, the legend of the Wild West was cowardly shot from behind by a petty thief and failed gambler named Jack McCall. He shot him in the back of the head while he was sitting at a card table, allegedly to avenge a friend Hickok had killed years before. According to some reports, Calamity Jane is attended Wild Bill Hickok's funeral.

Fatal weakness

In addition to Jane's bravery, her compassionate nature was widely known. During the smallpox epidemic in 1878, she treated the sick and watched over their beds. Without thinking about the fact that she might become infected herself, she held the dying by the hand, wiped the sweat from their foreheads and offered comforting words. Like every hero, she had a fatal weakness, and hers was called alcohol. As she sank deeper into addiction, one by one her friends turned their backs on her. She died of pneumonia in 1903 - alone, in a miserable hotel room. Her coffin was carried by the man she nursed during the smallpox epidemic.

She is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, next to Bill Hickok.