New Book On Deadwood By Accomplished Historian Will Dispel Myths, He Says

Digging deep enough to get past the myths swirling around Old West characters Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok to the reality of life in Deadwood, South Dakota, from April 1876 to 1879 has been a “fun” journey for award-winning historian Peter Cozzens.

His new book “Deadwood — Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West” is the latest for the Kensington, Maryland-author, who has 18 books in his resume. That includes several on the Civil War and a trilogy of books dealing with Native Americans and westward expansion.

A member of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s McCracken Research Library Board, Cozzens said putting his sights on the storied town that represented debauchery, criminality and greed in the dime-novel version of the West seemed like good timing.

“My most recent book was about was a brutal reckoning of the Indian wars in the American South,” he said. “I wanted to go back out West, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“I’ve always enjoyed watching and rewatching HBO’s ‘Deadwood’ and I thought, ‘I wonder what the truth of the story is here?’”

He spent the past two-and-a-half years poring through newspapers, old records, books and anything else he could find related to the three peak years of Deadwood’s existence from birth to fire that still provide lessons for today.

He spent a lot of time in the town and the Black Hills, but his research also led to the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut, where he found real nuggets of historic treasure.

HBO Series Not Always Accurate

Cozzens said those who read the book will come from two different camps — those who watched the HBO series and those who did not.

Spoiler alert: The HBO version was not exactly accurate in its portrayal of the leading characters in the series.

“Those who watched the series are going to be surprised by the real-life version of some of these people like Al Swearingen, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane,” he said. “I think all people will be surprised that although there was a high level of violence in Deadwood, enough to propel my story forward and cover that ‘Guns’ portion of the subtitle, there really was an effort right from the start by Deadwood founders to bring order and law to the town.”

In the beginning pages of his book, Cozzens brings out the “Greed” part of his subtitle by documenting and detailing the illegality of the town that began on tribal land awarded to the Lakota in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. 

He chronicles how prior to 1876, the rumors of gold and an innocent conversation between Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet and a Sioux City Daily Times editor in Sioux City, Iowa led to disaster for the Lakota.

And how the gold in the Black Hills coupled with the economic Panic of 1873 led President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration to try and wrest the Black Hills away from the tribes.

Cozzens said the plight of the Lakota and their attempt to “repel the interlopers” from the Black Hills becomes a theme of the story.

“Even the best characters in Deadwood had no regard at all for Indian rights,” he said. “They were going to take it for themselves and the gold and to heck with everyone else.”

Cozzens brings several town characters to life in addition to the “legends” who most people are familiar with.

There is a Preacher Smith who arrives at the beginning of Deadwood to share the Gospel and ends up losing his life. There are Chinese and Blacks and later Jews who were able to make a living and a difference in the community.

Opportunity

His research shows that unlike other areas of the West, the Chinese could own land in Deadwood and that Blacks were treated better than in other parts of the West.

A Black character and “ne’er do well” named General Sam, because he was a cavalry trooper in the Civil War, had “somewhat good-natured abuse piled on him because he was pretentious,” Cozzens said.

But a Black woman in Deadwood owned three or four houses in the town and a community vote on the most popular woman awarded a Black woman named Lucretia Marshbanks “an accomplished cook in one of the hotels” took the prize.

The book also details the character of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

Readers learn Wild Bill slept outside of town at a campsite “tucked in deep heavy brush and timber” and awoke to a “stiff drink of whiskey” before breakfast. His morning routine included emptying his pistols onto a cottonwood tree.

The book includes a meeting in 1875 between Hickok and a “well-bred” woman, Annie Tallent, in Cheyenne who had been the first white woman to enter the Black Hills. He wanted to know about the Black Hills .

Tallent was left with the impression that the noted gunman “was by no means all bad.”

Wild Bill’s death by an assassin and the subsequent “injustice” followed by “justice” for his assassin is laid out in the pages.

A Calamity Story

Meanwhile, Cozzens writes that Calamity Jane arrived at Deadwood with Wild Bill in buckskins and a few days later begged for money from two characters she knew named Colorado Charlie and White Eye.

“Boys, I wish you’d loan me twenty dollars. I can’t do business in these old buckskins,” she said. “I ain’t got the show that the other girls have.”

Cozzens writes that she reappeared days later in a yellow silk dress trimmed in green, pulled up the dress, rolled down a stocking and produced a wad of bills, returning the $20.

White Eye was quoted: “She said she was doing a good business but didn’t just express it in just that way.”

Cozzens devotes a chapter to the infamous “Treasure Coach” robbery on the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Line. He said he believes there were more robberies along the Cheyenne-Deadwood line and Deadwood to Sydney, Nebraska, line than any other places in the West.

“One of the things that surprised me was how gentlemanly these stage robberies were,” he said. “The last thing they wanted to do was kill somebody and face a greater charge than just stage robbery.”

The robbers were after gold coming out of the region’s mines and when the robbers came up empty on a particular stage, they would not always steal the passengers’ possessions. And in one robbery, a passenger recognized the voice of a robber as his former employee.

The bandit then took down his mask and offered his boss a drink of whiskey and “just kind of laughed about it,” Cozzens said.

The Sheriff

One person that shines from his research is Sheriff Seth Bullock and he said as his research was winding up, he learned that Bullock’s official papers were at Yale University.

“No one else every writing about Seth Bullock or Deadwood ever had a chance to look at these,” he said. “These included his official correspondence as sheriff and his personal correspondence - really revealing stuff about early Deadwood. I developed a great admiration for him.”

One Bullock story in the book has him trying to dislodge miners who seized control of a mine through non-violent means. Bullock tosses a bag of burning sulfur down the shaft. And shortly after that, the sheriff has to swallow his pride when he loses an election.

Cozzens recounts how Deadwood was known for its profanity, was a place filled with saloons and “soiled doves” but came of age by 1878 with improvements and racial acceptance.

A Jewish community moved in, and the Chinese were being westernized with a report of two young Chinese men in western wear “splendidly mounted on thoroughbred horses and well-armed and equipped.”

Like many towns in the West, Deadwood’s downturn came by fire. Cozzens labels the chapter “Black Friday” when a fire at a bakery spread to much of the town leaving hundreds in the community homeless.

Cozzens writes that one New York newspaper, The Sun, characterized the fire as judgment for Deadwood’s wickedness, while a competing paper The Tribune wrote that it was something “to be regretted.”

“The city had attained an exceptional degree of civilization for a mining town,” The Tribune editorialized.

The Lessons

Cozzens characterizes Deadwood as a “microcosm of American history and kind of the American experience” with lessons applicable for today.

“It’s striving to bring good law and order and good out of a very flawed beginning,” he said. “It’s a timeless story … anyone interested in how Western society developed, and how a town in the West developed should read this book.”

Those who have read the book have commented on the “olfactory” experience because Cozzens said his writing details not only legends and characters, but the “sights and smells” of what living there would have entailed.

“I am really immersing readers into what it was like to be in a rough-and-tumble time as it came of age,” he said.

Cozzens said the 400-plus-page book can be preordered. He plans to give a talk and sign books at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West on Thursday, Sept. 18.

He already is doing research for another book about another town in the West: Virginia City, Montana

“I am working on that right now,” he said. “The working title of the book is ‘Bonanza.’”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.