It was in 1876 that Deadwood, S.D., became the scene of the last great gold rush in the Lower 48 states (Alaska's didn't get going in earnest until 1897), when the precious metal was discovered in the Black Hills. Among the hordes of prospectors, muleskinners, gunslingers, prostitutes, and lawmen who descended on the camp was former abolitionist, stagecoach driver, failed miner, and notorious frontier gunfighter James Butler Hickok. Seemingly uninterested in the gold, Wild Bill, as he was by then known, attempted to resume his career as a "professional" gambler, although by this point he had fallen on pretty hard times and was reputedly seldom sober.
The story goes that on the afternoon of Aug. 2, 1876, Hickok entered Nuttal & Mann's Saloon No. 10 to play poker. Unable to find a seat in the corner, he broke his own cardinal rule and sat down at the table with his back to the door, whereupon he was promptly fatally shot in the back of the head by one Jack McCall. His motive is still the subject of controversy. Some accounts claim that McCall was in a drunken rage over what he perceived as a patronizing offer by Wild Bill to buy him breakfast after losing all his money at the poker table the previous day. Others say that he was settling an earlier dispute, or even that he may have been a paid assassin hired by one of Hickok’s enemies. McCall himself claimed that he was avenging Hickok’s prior slaying of his brother and at his first trial he was found not guilty of murder, but a subsequent enquiry found out that McCall never had a brother and he was eventually hanged for the shooting.
Having already established himself as a Wild West legend during the course of his own lifetime, the circumstances of Wild Bill Hickok’s death have also become the stuff of legend. Most accounts seem to agree on the fact that the five-card-draw poker hand he held when McCall fired the fatal bullet consisted of two pair, black aces and eights, and these cards have since become immortalized as the "Dead Man’s Hand." But the identity of the fifth card has always been and remains a mystery.
Today at Saloon #10, reconstructed on a new plot in the ‘30s after the 1879 fire that obliterated much of original Deadwood, it’s maintained that the card was the nine of diamonds. Yet other sources cite the deuce of spades, five of diamonds, or queen of clubs. Over the years, Hollywood has taken some typical liberties with the famous hand: In the movie Stagecoach, director John Ford not only included the queen of hearts as the fifth card, but replaced one of the black aces with the ace of diamonds. In The Plainsman, Gary Cooper holds the king of spades. Yet another theory is that Hickok had discarded his original fifth card and had not yet been dealt a new one when McCall fired, meaning that he actually only held four cards in his hand at the time of his death.
Wild Bill Hickok’s body was claimed by his friends and buried in the Ingleside Cemetery outside Deadwood. At the insistence of his friend Calamity Jane, it was subsequently disinterred and moved to Mount Moriah Cemetery, where it was marked with a proper grave and enclosed by a fence. When she passed on three years later, Jane’s dying wish was honored with her burial in a grave by the side of her old friend.
In addition to visiting his final resting place, today visitors to Deadwood can also relive Hickok’s final moments at Saloon #10, where his death is reenacted four times a day between Memorial Day and the end of September. You can also try your hand at poker, blackjack, or slots in this small gambling hall that maintains the Wild West tradition of sawdust on the floor.
Images kindly supplied by the City of Deadwood Historic Preservation department.
