The Man Who Put The "Wild" In The West

James Butler Hickok was born 188 years ago today, May 27, 1837. Most folks don’t remember him by that name. They know him as Wild Bill—the long-haired gunslinger with twin ivory-handled revolvers, the gambler with nerves of steel, the unerring lawman who could shoot the wings off a fly at twenty paces.

But here’s the thing: Most of what we “know” about Wild Bill Hickok is legend. Not fact.

Was he ever called “Duck Bill” for his oversized nose, or "Shanghai Bill" for his slim build, or “Dutch Bill” for his German heritage? Some sources claim so. Others never mention it. Even the name “Bill” is a mystery—his given name was James, and William was his father. Why “Bill”? No one knows for sure.

Was it a fight with a cinnamon bear that sent young Hickok limping west toward Rock Creek Station? Maybe. But probably not. Did he really kill David McCanles in a dramatic shootout at Rock Creek, outnumbered and outgunned? The facts are murky, the accounts contradictory.

Was the famous shootout with Davis Tutt in Springfield really about a gold pocket watch, or was there something more personal—like a falling out over a woman, maybe even Tutt’s sister? Did Hickok truly warn Tutt to stay away from the town square, or was that detail added later for dramatic flair? The accounts vary.

Did he despise acting alongside Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack onstage, or was he simply uncomfortable in the spotlight, a poor performer cast in a role that didn’t fit? Some said he hated every moment of it; others remembered him trying his best, if awkwardly.

And that “Dead Man’s Hand”—aces and eights, black cards, cursed forever by the blood spilled in a Deadwood saloon? That tale didn’t appear until decades after Hickok’s death. In reality, when Jack McCall shot Wild Bill in the back of the head on August 2, 1876, the cards he was holding likely scattered across the floor with everything else. The hand, like so much of Wild Bill’s story, was assembled later—built not from evidence, but from awe.

Yet the fact that these stories sprang up at all tells us something important. Hickok didn’t need to make himself a legend. He simply lived in a way that invited it. He fascinated people. He unsettled them. He inspired awe, and envy, and fear. He left behind a shape too large to measure, a shadow too long to ignore.

When Buffalo Bill Cody and Texas Jack Omohundro created their first frontier stage show in 1872, they played themselves—two scouts turned showmen bringing the prairie to the stage. The following season, in 1873, they added a new star: their old friend James Butler Hickok. And when Cody eventually expanded that small stage act into the grand outdoor spectacle that toured the world, he didn’t name it The Cody Show or The Frontier Spectacle. He called it Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Hard not to see that as a tribute. A nod to the man who embodied the West’s wildness long before anyone else tried to define it. The man they called Wild Bill.

And whether the stories about Hickock are true or not, they still echo—loud and clear—because of the man who left them behind.