Who Is Wild Bill Hickok?

Between Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill it’s tough to say who was the most prominent gun-carrying lawman of the old west. One distinction between the two men is that Wyatt didn’t become the legendary character among his peers that Wild bill had become during his own lifetime. He was certainly known and had a reputation (the degrees of which can be saved for another, more complete discussion another time), but he was never the praised folk hero that Hickok was.  And while Wyatt has become the more popular cultural figure of recent generations, there is no doubt that Wild Bill was the preeminent gunman of his time.

Having started his career primarily as a scout for the US Army, he earned a reputation for fearlessness and proficiency. Some stories are unverifiable, such as the incident where he allegedly took on a wild bear (though he did suffer an unknown attack that had him convalescing in a near death state), and others are well documented like his impressive shot across the courtyard that took down the antagonistic Davis Tutt.

Regardless of which stories are true and which are not, he was a striking and commanding figure; many people have noted as such in their various journals and recollections. Helpful to his branding was the friendship he had with Buffalo Bill. There’s something about the bonds of battle between two men that increases the interest and sympathies. To wit, Wyatt and Doc, Bat and Luke Short, Butch and Sundance; there’s just something about two legends who are bound together, even if the legend may be stretched a bit from the reality.

Avoiding a full biography on the man, it can summarily be said that he was foremost among his peers, and the embodiment of the quintessential frontier lawman. Even Wyatt Earp, according to Stuart Lake, claimed to have learned early valuable lessons from Wild Bill while a young man in Kansas City.

Wild Bill Hickok – Gunfighter

If we want to be honest with ourselves, the reason we, the gunfighter-enthused, love westerns so much is often, if not now than at our point of beginning, all because of one hero or another gunning down some bad guys. In simple terms, it’s the excitement of the gun duel that really brings us to the show. And Joseph Rosa, in his final book on Wild Bill, really presents a fun volume in analyzing the most dangerous and celebrated moments in his life.

Rosa gives step-by-step, excruciating detail of each and every gunfight that we have recorded for the gunman known as Wild Bill. He gives floor plans and movement-by-movement accounts of where a particular person was standing and where they moved to. He shows you just where Wild Bill was positioned, and where his adversaries stood.

In addition, he gives you the background to each encounter and surrounds each account with context for the diagraming. Plus, beyond just the accounts of the fights, Rosa educates the reader with a complete background on what kinds of guns Hickok used, how he carried them, and how he used them. This volume is a very intentional effort at giving the reader a clear view of what it meant to say that Wild Bill Hickok was a gunfighter.

This one is also just over two-hundred pages, but utilizes a slightly larger font than the other books. It’s a pretty quick easy read, given the font combined with the pictures and diagrams, but certainly worth owning. Though it’s a quick read, there’s plenty to study over, and the time-value in this book is really in the time you’ll spend understanding the fights scenarios and feeling a little bit more what Hickok himself might have felt.

Though it’s the last of the four books Rosa wrote on Wild Bill, it’s probably my favorite follow up, simply based on the fun of breaking down the gunfights. Definitely get this one and enjoy going over the real-life exploits of a man who inspired so many wild west legends.

Wild Bill Hickok – The Man & His Myth

Author and researcher Joseph G. Rosa continues his descent into the understanding of historic lawman and all-around dangerous gun-hand Will Bill Hickok with his third book on the subject, titled The Man & His Myth. After following up his seminal work on Wild Bill (They Called Him Wild Bill) with the photographic collection that takes you into his world, he now takes on another angle by breaking down and examining all the stories about Wild Bill Hickok, and especially those that seem a bit too tall of tale to be believed.

But along the way he does more than just research and share his notes, he also takes a look at the practice of myth building and how it happens, and why it happens. The main purpose, or maybe effect, of this volume is to pull back the curtain a bit more after what had been written in his first. In that biography Rosa was careful to give a fair view of the different stories and claims that existed when studying Hickok, but in this effort he is able to spend more time, given that it is the singular focus of this book, to make sense of some of the seeming craziness that was a part of Wild Bill’s life and legend.

As always, Rosa delivers, and if you are a Hickok reader, fan, or student, then this one should also be in your collection. However, I will say, that of the four books on Hickok that Rosa put out, I would rank West Of and Gunfighter as slightly higher priority than this one.

Wild Bill Hickok – The West of Wild Bill

The West of Wild Bill Hickok is a fantastic resource for study of Wild Bill. Joseph Rosa has put together an intensely in-depth collection of pictures and references to give context to the world that Hickok roamed through. The majority of the book is old images, with enough narrative to set up each chapter. He includes just about every photo of Wild Bill that’s ever been taken (one has to assume), as well as just about every location he ever visited, or every person he ever associated with (again, one has to assume based the bevy of pictures.

Through Rosa’s spectacular pictorial essay it is easy to get a more intimate understanding of J.M. Hickok. We get to see his family and their likenesses to each other, his different moods in different settings, and we get to see the transition of a young man hunting the world transition in to the slowly aging gunfighter who was slowly going blind.

This was Rosa’s second book on Wild Bill and if you find, after reading his first volume, They Called Him Wild Bill, still wanting to know more about the man, then this is the book to take you deeper. Of the three follow up volumes Rosa scripted, one will give you a better picture of his gunfights, one will give you a better understanding of how the myth was formed and where it came from, and this one will give you a better understanding of Will Bill himself, and just what the world around him was actually like.

The West of…was first published in 1982 and is just a hair over two-hundred pages with introduction and notes; meaning there is probably well over 400 images (if I had to guess). All-in-all, a great book, and a must for a western history collection.

Wild Bill Hickok – They Called Him Wild Bill

Your first stop on your way to learning about Wild Bill Hickok should definitely be They Called Him Wild Bill, by Joseph G. Rosa. There are many writings on Hickok previous to Rosa’s book, but the benefit is that he has synthesized everything into a comprehensive, and well documented chronological biography. Rosa’s knowledge is vast, and he is the expert on all things Wild Bill, in much the same way that DeArment is for Bat Masterson or Gary Roberts is for Doc Holliday.

The qualities in Rosa’s book is that he doesn’t make assumptions, nor does he require it of the reader. He gives plausible statements for what he determines to be the most likely truth, and still leaves room for things to change were new evidence to be presented. In fact, his introduction states as much, and cites it as the reason why a second edition follow-up to the first was necessitated.

There were a lot of stories told about Wild Bill; he was a western celebrity while he was still alive, and journalists loved to tell stories about him. Unfortunately this makes for a murky quagmire when wishing to process the truth out of the swamp of lies, but Rosa handles it deftly and thoroughly. When one hears an anecdote, and due to it’s un-believability, Rosa consistently makes a fair case for both ways the conventional thought could. Regarding the claim that Hickok was made a U.S. Deputy Marshal at Fort Riley in the beginning of 1866, Rosa shows that the work he was doing would certainly fall under that title, and also shows why it could be plausible that there may be no documentation of his engagement. And, at the same time, Rosa also shows how the title may have been an exaggeration of what he was actually doing, which was classed as detective work. Almost without fail, when he reaches a conclusion, he will state that it is his belief, and not dismiss what he doesn’t believe.

The book goes, with introduction, almost exactly 350 pages, however, Rosa has written four different books on Wild Bill, and this one serves as the first volume, for all practical purposes. Together with the other three, he has done rather similarly what Lee Silva has done with Wyatt Earp; the prime difference being  that Silva published one very large volume, where as Rosa did four different books. But what results in the end is complete dissecting of James Butler and all the pertinent elements of his life as a gunman. He has covered him in a standard, and very well done, biography, followed by books that break down his gunfights, examine the world he lived in, giving context to his world, and a book solely devoted to examining the stories that made Hickok a legend.

To really study Wild Bill Hickok, a person should read all four of Rosa’s books covering the man, and They Called Him Wild Bill is definitely the starting point. And if you want to know about him, but don’t need to go deeper into follow-up books then this one will set you straight.

Who Is Mysterious Dave Mather?

There was a lot of reasons for Dave Mather to be coined Mysterious, and it’s telling that he was known by this name even while he was alive and running in the wild ‘n wooly circles. Some say it was because of the way he would stay so tight-lipped, some say it’s because no one knew for sure where he came, but for those of us reading about him today, it’s mostly about the fact that he just disappeared and no one knows where he went (though there was a claim in 1988 about his disappearance, but that’s in the timeline).

He seemed to be a good shot, and at times served as an honorable lawman, but yet also spent plenty of time as a shifty desperado. He appears to have been contemporary to Dodge City with Bat and Wyatt, but even that is not certain, and he could have even been involved in posses from Las Vegas out looking for Billy the Kid and his group of ne’er do wells. But even this is only surmising and not at all a certainty. Everything about him is hard to nail down; he just didn’t make it easy on us today.

What really makes Mysterious Dave Mather interesting is that he spent time in many of the significant towns and areas, but seems to be overlooked, which we may have to assume is the way he would’ve wanted it. He was most likely in Dodge during the late 70’s, and then again around the time of the Dodge City Peace Commission. He was in Las Vegas at the time of Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid, and he was in El Paso at the time of Dallas Stoudenmire; by some reports even possibly serving as a deputy. He was certainly prolific in his western travels and escapades, but yet he always seems to fly under the radar.

The timelines are drawn from information gathered from Colin Rickards book Mysterious Dave Mather published in 1968, and from Jack DeMattos book Mysterious Gunfighter, published in 1989.