Deadwood Business on Calamity Jane

Deadwood Business... (www.deadwood.biz) A freedom statement!

Calamity Jane... a true old west pioneer!

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This is a better known photo, more like she normally was... The photo at right is one of the few times she "dressed up" while here.

So much has been printed about this woman it is hard to know what to say for sure... so much of it is untrue/exaggerated/enhanced or just plain "made up" we do not know where to begin, or end... Maybe we should start with the end, and the real truth about it... I may just build this page different, with the truth on the "right"... and all the baloney on this side. But then it will be so "one-sided" it may be hard to read... I need serious direction on just how to tell the story on this woman, many people have such a different idea in their mind about her I hate to change it... Even her name was in question at times through the years, some evil-minded words say she got the nickname calamity added because if you had sex with her you got something incurable like syphilis or the clap... There is some truth to that, but the discussion of this it is too vulgar to place here, you must go to a link deep within called clap first... The story that she died from butt VD is also not true, it was poor quality meat, consumed too fast! In that page I will also explain how she got the name Jane as well...>

Wild Bill had once "bedded" her, but that was years before their time in Deadwood. He was also in the prime of his life at that time, so was she... both were well-worn by his end, but she still had a fondness for him, and it continued to her end many years later... Some say the drinking preserved her, others say it was just the "tough living" that had hardened her enough to live a long life.

The little girl she brought into Deadwood, then got those in the bars to take up a collection for, and then sent back east for a proper upbringing was actually the daughter of a man she married down south, it is not documented why she had her along for sure... Various stories have surfaced. (Read more about it over there). >

She did nurse a number of people back to health in several "epidemic" times while living here... She was not only brave, but felt invincible to many illnesses, and was seldom sick herself! A number of the stories were written several ways, sometimes she got all their gold and belongings for the care she rendered, other times she was truly a saint and saved them when they were "given up for lost"... It will never be know what is true or false about that, when many are sick and dieing all at once very little is recorded about it. (People do not like to write anything about such times, they are better forgotten).

Much about her life was told wrong, even by her. The public wants to believe she looked like Doris Day and could not only keep up with men, but was better than many of them... I am not sure if I want to tell the truth, it is way too depressing! This column will be added to and changed often!

The last days of Calamity Jane were spent in misery... In a run-down boarding room at a remote town in the "Tinton" area... She had "worn out" her welcome in Deadwood and had no money... She died because no doctor was called, the true cause of death was from a "blockage"... Basically she just needed an enema, but nobody cared... And it must have been a very painful way to die!

Martha Cannary was her true name, (Canary is wrong), she never had any children by Wild Bill, or anyone else... She was sterile in fact, and seldom even had a "cycle," which was actually a blessing, as she lived among some of the most wicked men on earth at times!

The little girl made her some money when she brought her to Deadwood due to many feeling sorry and sad for the child... Jane "drank up"
the money collected, that girl was then raised by some Catholic nuns in Sturgis, there may have been one other too!

In "sickness" times the poor died along with the very young, very old, and the weak... Often money made the most difference, Jane cared for several who had nothing, she earned much respect from many for what she did. Several people correctly document those times!

It is possible that the only way to tell her true story is just to say she was a very remarkable woman, a true pioneer of the new frontier... She did more things right and more things wrong than any ten average women of that day... But the point is she did things, she stood up for herself too, and entertained many men while changing their feelings towards not only her, but every kind of women. She also touched more lives than almost anyone else before she died, and had a positive affect on most of them. She will always be remembered, but how is the question... I need more advice from women on how to do the final writings on this subject! The next two generations of women in Deadwood, and also a few other "wild" places in the frontier, would truly make her appear a saint compared to them! Once you read what I have found out about them, you will see what I mean...

I will continue to seek out more interesting true facts, and this page will change often.

Starting with the "most" accurate done by the City of Deadwood called CjaneRun... Although it is updated often, I am not sure why it still has a few facts wrong, and some mistakes in the printing? (It is also a free-served government page and takes a while to come up, wait a minute).

There are many other links, some quite interesting in fact, a few are even true... I will place the links to their pages after I see a link back to mine placed on their pages. Which is something very few, (other than us), do these days... (A few years ago people were paid ten times what they are now to do web pages, most due to the lack of competition, and the difficulty in doing it the hard way. Now some of the best "page creators" are not even in high school yet, and others have better things to do than correcting old mistakes).

Calamity Jane is mentioned in every book ever printed concerning wild women of the old west... For some of the best reading, most recommend: Dee Brown's... The Gentle Tamers; Ronald Dean Miller's... Shady Ladies of the West; and Anne Butler's... Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery. (The Adams Museum in Deadwood has the finest collection of other books printed about her)!

She may have been about the roughest and toughest woman alive at the time of the gold rush, and she may have "bedded" many a man, drank much whisky, cussed and carried on... But she LIVED like no other... and lived a long, and often very hard life... If this was not a sexually biased world, and women were "equally" given metals for bravery or honorable acts, she would have received more than most others to this day!

And the portrayal of her by the HBO series on Deadwood is very cruel minded and not accurate of the way she was during the gold rush, (possible closer to what she was like later on). Someone decided to make her look that way on propose I think, just to poke fun at her, shame on them!

Many letters that mention her have been re-written by others later on in an attempt to correct the poor English and grammar so those writing them did not appear as uneducated as they were... When these letter were copied before being made public the people knew how Jane had become in later years and they changed some of the things said, (or at least the way they were said). This changed history in effect, for sure it degraded this person long before she deserved it...