The Real Calamity Jane

The biography of Calamity Jane is a mix of fantastic tales and some accurate facts. Many of these tales she created and promoted herself in her autobiography, written in 1896. However, she was a woman living in a man’s world, occasionally taking on men’s work and sporting men’s clothes. She could ride a horse, shoot, drink and chew tobacco like the toughest cowboys. She was a woman who did not confine herself and became known for her daredevil ways. She was a woman who became a legend. 

Calamity Jane was born May 1, 1852 in Princeton, Missouri, as Martha Jane Canary and was the eldest of six children. Their mother died of pneumonia in 1866 and their father a year later in 1867 when the family was living in Salt Lake City.  If these dates are accurate, Jane became an orphan at the age of 14 (although some accounts of her life state that she became an orphan at the age of 12). Being the eldest, she was in charge of her siblings and uprooted them again and move to Piedmont, Wyoming. There she did a range of jobs to provide food for her and her siblings. She is said to have worked as a waitress, cook, dishwasher, dance hall girl, ox team driver and a prostitute. 

Since she lived on the frontier where conflicts with the white pioneers and the Native Americans were common, Jane claimed to have taken part in several campaigns against them. According to her autobiography, it was during one of these campaigns that she acquired the name Calamity Jane. In her recount, she claimed that whilst helping to quell an uprising where several soldiers were killed or badly injured; she helped to save the life of their Captain. 

During retreat, the Captain was shot and Jane caught him before he fell off his horse and pulled him on her own horse. She then carried him in front of her back to the safety of the Fort. When the Captain recovered, he said Jane was a heroine of the plains and called her Calamity Jane. 

Another popular version of how she got her nickname is that she used the phrase ‘court calamity’ to warn men from offending her. The truth of how she got her nickname might be as obscured and exaggerated as the rest of her life. However, there is no denying that both the name and her life became notorious. 

One verified fact is that she joined a wagon train from Fort Laramie to Deadwood in July 1876. Wild Bill Hickok was part of the same train. They were certainly acquainted, but some claim they were more than casual acquaintances. Some claim that they were married and had a daughter. In 1941, a Jane McCormick claimed to be the daughter of Jane and Bill. Later she published a book with letters she said were from Calamity and proved that the two were married. However, the authenticity of these letters is disputable as Calamity Jane was illiterate (she dictated her autobiography to a scribe). 

Whether McCormick was a legitimate daughter of Calamity Jane or not, Calamity seems to have had at least one, possibly two daughters. One occasion, when she was seen with a girl she introduced as her daughter, was in the late 1880s when she returned to Deadwood with a young girl in tow. She hoped to send her daughter to school and they held a benefit at Deadwood to raise money. According to the story, the benefit raised a lot of money, but Jane spent a significant fraction of that money the very same evening by getting drunk. 

Not all Jane’s moves are known - or verified - but she is thought to have bought a ranch in Montana in 1881 and tried her hand at inn keeping. How long she remained there is uncertain, but in 1893 she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. She was a storyteller. She also took part in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Sadly, by this time it was reported that she was suffering from depression. She was also addicted to alcohol, an addiction she had struggled with from an early age. 

In 1903 Jane returned to the Black Hills where an old acquaintance, brother owner Dora DuFran, was still running a business. She hired Jane to help with cooking and laundry, which she is said to have done until she travelled to Terry, South Dakota. Reportedly, she became ill on route and was transferred from the train she was travelling on to a hotel. On August 1, 1903, she died at the hotel from pneumonia and an inflammation of the bowels. 

She was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in South Dakota, next to Wild Bill Hickok. Unsurprisingly there are several theories of why she was buried there. Some are romantic, linked to the theory that they were married. Others say it was a prank by Bill Hickok’s friends. 

She might be best known for her daredevil ways and behaving like a man, but she was also known to have a softer, caring side. She was said to be ready to help anyone in need or suffering from illness. There are several accounts of her nursing people who had caught smallpox during an epidemic in Deadwood. 

Why is Calamity Jane an inspiration woman? The accounts of her life (including - or maybe most of all - her autobiography) may be an incredible mixture of fact and fiction but she still deserves a place in The Hall of Fame of Inspirational Women. The life she led set her apart from other women of the era and was reportedly one of the first white women to enter the Black Hills of South Dakota. 

She might have been more motivated by hunger, booze and fame than women’s rights, but she had a role in challenging traditional views of women, their capabilities and their role in the society. She was a pioneer of the frontier life but also of equal rights and therefore deserves to be recognised as a woman with the power to inspire.