Calamity Jane: The Calamitous Life of Martha Jane Cannary
(Return to the real-life days of the wild, wild West where...)
Return to the real-life days of the wild, wild West where the life was rough... especially for women. The prototypical cowgirl, Calamity Jane was a bona fide frontierswoman, a professional scout, drunk, and sometime whore, doing whatever it took to stay alive in the hardscrabble days of American expansion. Writer Christian Perrissin (El Niño, Cape Horn) joins forces with Alph-Art-winning artist Matthieu Blanchin to tackle the legend of Martha Jane Cannary and her daring life alongside the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. Presented in English for the first time ever, this graphic novel illustrates the extraordinary tale of an independent woman with gumption -- the incredible Calamity Jane!
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#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods retu...)
#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods returns with a story of the Calamity Janes fierce friends facing challenges in life and love
Lauren Winters has achieved fame and fortune, but all she wants when she goes home to Winding River, Wyoming, for a reunion with old friends is a break from her high-profile career. Seizing the chance to work incognito as a horse trainer for Wade Owens, she revels in the wrangler's attention.
But how is the man who's disdainful of the rich and powerful going to feel when he discovers she's deceived him? Will Wade be able to see past her celebrity and believe in the woman who's fallen in love with him?
Searching for Calamity: The Life and Times of Calamity Jane
("Who in the world would think that Calamity Jane would ge...)
"Who in the world would think that Calamity Jane would get to be such a famous person?" one of the pallbearers at her funeral asked an interviewer many years later. It seemed like a reasonable question. Who else has accomplished so little by conventional standards and yet achieved such enduring fame?
But conventional standards do not apply. Calamity was poor, uneducated, and an alcoholic. For decades, she wandered through the small towns and empty spaces of the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. But she also had a natural talent for self-invention. She created a story about herself and promoted it tirelessly for much of her life. The story emphasized her love of adventure and the heroic role she played in key events in the early history of the American west. She became that story to people around the country who read about her. And she became that story to herself. The details about her exploits were rarely accurate, but a larger truth lay beneath them. In an era when there were few options for women, Calamity had the audacity to be herself. She lived as she pleased, which is to say that she allowed herself the same freedoms her male contemporaries assumed as their birthright. She spoke her mind. She flouted the rules. She dressed as a man when it was illegal for women to wear pants; hung out in saloons although that was unheard of for any woman who was not a prostitute; did men's work; cursed, hollered, and smoked cigars.
Although Calamity's name is imprinted in history, most people know little about her. This highly readable biography brings Calamity to life against the backdrop of the American west and of women's determination to break free from their historical constraints.
17 photographs
6 maps, including 5 maps of Calamity's travels through the west
Calamity Jane was a notorious American frontier woman in the days of the Wild W.
Background
The most likely date of Jane Cannary's birth is May 1, 1852, probably at Princeton, Mo. When she was 12 or 13, the family headed west along the Overland Route, reaching Virginia City, Mont. , 5 months later. En route Jane learned to be a teamster and to snap 30-foot bullwhackers. Her fatherdied in 1866 and her mother died a year later. Late in 1867 Jane was in Salt Lake City. Until the early 18706 nothing more is known of Jane.
Career
Marta Jane participated in several military campaigns in the course of protracted conflicts with the Indians, the indigenous inhabitants of the continent, the Indian wars. Her first campaign was allegedly the campaign of 1872 under the command of General Custer, when Caster, Miles, Terry and Crook with their troops were engaged in the suppression of the riots in Sheridan (modern Wyoming), in the area of Gus Creek. Allegedly that was her only opportunity to get to know Kaster, although it seems unlikely. In her own words, during one of the battles, she also in the same year of 1872 saved the life of Captain Igan with a risk for herself. She took him wounded, to her horse, and delivered him to a safe fort. It's as if he called her "Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains, " and she retained this nickname. After this campaign in 1874, the detachment in which she allegedly served was sent to Fort Custer, where she remained until the spring of the following year. Neither in this campaign, nor in others (in which Custer and Crook participated), she under the command of Custer did not participate, and soon she was ordered to leave the fort. In 1875 Calamity went with Gen. George Crook's expedition against the Sioux, probably as a bullwhacker. While swimming in the nude, her sex was discovered and she was sent back. Excitement and wild adventure lured Calamity, whether it meant joining "her boys" at the bar or fighting with Native Americans. She was adept at using a six-shooter. In Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876 Calamity found a home. It was an outlaw town, so her escapades and drinking bouts did not seem out of place. Calamity came back to Deadwood in 1899, searching for funds for her daughter's education. A successful benefit was held at the Old Opera House. In 1900 Calamity appeared briefly at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N. Y. , as a Western attraction, but she was homesick for the West and soon went back. In poor health, in July 1903 she arrived at the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, where she died on August 1 or 2. She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok.
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Forget Doris Day singing on the stagecoach. Forget Robi...)
Personality
As unconventional and wild as the territory she roamed, she has become a legend. She dressed and acted like a man and hired out as a mule skinner, bullwhacker, and railroad worker. "Calamity" became part of her name; she was proud of it. Calamity took no revenge, as she later claimed, and McCall was legally hanged. Yet this flamboyant woman was kind, and many remembered only her virtues. During the 1878 Deadwood smallpox epidemic Calamity stayed in the log pesthouse and nursed the patients.
Connections
Jane later did have a daughter, but that she was fathered by Hickok (as the daughter claimed in 1941) is questionable. Jane married E. M. Burke in 1885, and her daughter was born sometime before or after this.