136 Years Ago Today . . .

Not long before his demise, Hickok was interviewed by Henry Morton Stanley, the British journalist who later gained fame in Africa by finding the missing Dr. Livingstone in search of the source of the Nile River. Asked by the hero-adoring Stanley how many men he had killed in his life, Hickok said, offhandedly, "Oh about 30 or so." Stanley actually took him seriously. It's on record that at the time he had killed, at the very least, two or three men, one of them his own deputy marshall in Abilelene, KS, whom he shot by accident.

But that was fairly typical of Hickok's bragadoccio.
He considered himself the greatest gunfighter in the West.

(In fairness, it must be admitted that he was a sharpshooter of great skill with a six-gun. He spent a year with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show demonstrating his marksmanship to oo-ing and ah-ing audiences. He didn't like the regmentation of curtain-time, however, and left after one season.)

Ned Buntline went looking for people he could popularize and immortalize. Hitchcock was his own best press agent.

(Again, in fairness, Buffalo Bill Cody ran him a very, very close second.)

BTW, Cody was in the neighborhood when Hickok sat at his final poker game.
Buffalo Bill had volunteered his services to the Army in chasing down the "renegades"

who had done in Custer and company at the Little Big Horn, leaving his theatrical troupe in Philadelphia where the U.S.entennial observance was in full swing. This, from all I can gather, was also a publicity stunt. The Army had no need of Cody's so-called "services"
but it made all the late editions.

From what had thay reneged ?

The story was that Bill made it a point to avoid that position (an idiosyncrasy for which he was KNOWN)
for reasons of personal security, but on one occasion (his last occasion),
he arrived LATE for an appointment to play poker.

His friends had some fun, at his expense, by denying him
any vacancy at the poker table, except the position to which he was aversive,
where he sat for the rest of his life

Quote:

Buffalo Bill had volunteered his services to the Army in chasing down the "renegades" who had done in Custer and company at the Little Big Horn,

Merry the "historian".


Buffalo Bill had volunteered his services to the hired assassins in chasing down people who could no longer stand the perfidy of the US government and who had then done in Custer and company [a fitting end for a genocidal monster] at the Little Big Horn.

Quote:

Jerome A. Greene. "Washita." Chap. 8, p.169.
Ben Clack told Walter M. Camp: many of the squaws captured at Washita were used by the officers...Romero was put in charge of them and on the march Romero would send squaws around to the officers' tents every night. [Clark] says Custer picked out a fine looking one and had her in his tent every night."
This statement is more or less confirmed by Frederick Benteen, who in 1896 asserted that Custer selected Monahseetah/Meotzi from among the women prisoners and cohabited with her "during the winter and spring of 1868 and '69" until his wife arrived in the summer of 1869. Although Benteen's assertions regarding Custer are not always to be trusted, his statements nonetheless conform entirely to those of the reliable Ben Clark and thus cannot be ignored."

http://www.nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/242/custer-rape-genocide-happy-meals

See also,



http://www.dickshovel.com/was.html

In his time, Hickok had made quite a few mortal enemies.

The story was that Bill made it a point to avoid that position (an idiosyncrasy for which he was KNOWN)
for reasons of personal security, but on one occasion (his last occasion),
he arrived LATE for an appointment to play poker.

His friends had some fun, at his expense, by denying him
any vacancy at the poker table, except the position to which he was aversive,
where he sat for the rest of his life

There is another theory, i.e. that the people he was to play cards with were in no sense "his friends."
They made sure he sat with his back to the door because
they had already arranged for the drunken McCall to come in from behind.

In his time, Hickok had made quite a few mortal enemies.

This is fun, JTT. You keep posting horseshit and I keep collapsing your posts on my machine.

Show me how it's horseshit, Merry.

It is unlikely in the extreme that he 'd have put up with THAT.
He 'd not let his enemies set him up.

It is universally known that Geo. Armstrong Custer had at least one, possibly several, native mistresses; that members of the 7th Cavalry routinely used the sexual services of native women; etc. etc.

So what?

What does it have to do with the shootout that killed Hickok?

2. The Black Hills are stolen land.

In 1868, the U.S. government signed a treaty with various American Indian peoples guaranteeing Indian ownership of the Black Hills forever. Just nine years later the government took back the land (there’s a term for that, isn’t there?) following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

In other words, a proud monument commemorating heroes of American democracy sits on land acquired through lies.


And you say, "So what?" As I said, a rank apologist. You would have made a great member of the Gestapo or a top commandant at a German concentration camp.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the Black Hills had been illegally seized and ordered the federal government to pay $105 million to the American Indians still residing in the region.

The money was refused.

What’s more, on another cliff just 17 miles from Rushmore, a new monument is slowly taking shape. Its subject is Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala Lakota leader.

Progress is slow, due to the desire of those involved to avoid using government funds. But when completed, it will be nearly 10 times as tall as Mt. Rushmore — the largest statue in the world.

http://matadornetwork.com/trips/the-shady-history-of-mt-rushmore/

U.N. Probe: U.S. Should Return Stolen Sacred Land, Including Mt. Rushmore, to Native Americans

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/11/un_probe_us_should_return_stolen