7/21/1865 - Establishing the template that novelists and screen writers will use for years and years to come when in need of a story ending big gunfight, two former friends, gambler Davis Kasey Tutt (better known as just Dave Tutt) and Union Civil War scout, James Butler Hickok (the first "Wild Bill" of the West), meet in the downtown square of Springfield, Missouri to settle their differences over an unpaid loan of $25 and a valued Waltham repeater gold pocket watch. Facing off standing sideways at 75 yards, two shots ring out just before 6:00 in the evening, but only one finds it's mark and hits meat, with Tutt dying in the street from a round that enters into his left side, piercing his heart.
Hickok Vs. Tutt
Not yet the legendary figure he will become, in 1865, Hickok is a six-foot tall, mustached, red-headed twenty-eight-year-old young adult, freshly returned to civilian life after completing his service to the Union cause as a teamster and then a wagon master for the North in the Sedalia, Missouri region, serving in the Kansas Jayhawker militia brigade of Brigadier General James Henry Lane (the man Quantrill's raiders are seeking when they launch their brutal attack on Lawrence, Kansas in 1863), working as a provost marshal in southwest Missouri for the town of Springfield's police department identifying Federal soldiers drinking on-duty, verifying hotel liquor licenses, and tracking down scofflaws owing money to the Union Army (during this period of his life he earns the sobriquet "Wild Bill" he will be best known for, when after stopping a mob intent on lynching a Independence, Missouri bartender by firing two bullets over the heads of would-be miscreants, prompts a woman witness to call out "Good for you, Wild Bill!"), participating in the Union victory at the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862 that takes place northeast of Fayetteville, Arkansas, masquerading as a Confederate officer while serving as a spy and scout for Union General Samuel R. Curtis, and scouting for the command of Northern General John Benjamin Sanborn. Out of the service after receiving his walking papers in April of 1865 in Springfield, Hickok remains in town while trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life, supporting himself by gambling almost every day in the city's bars and saloons, as does his friend, fellow gambler Dave Tutt.
Young Hickok
Pea Ridge
Surviving the war while serving as a member of Company A of the 27th Arkansas Infantry Regiment in its battles in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, Davis Kasey "Little Dave" Tutt is twenty-nine-years-old in the summer of 1865 and a veteran of violence, having watched members of his family engage in an Arkansas political blood feud called the Tutt-Everett War that takes place between 1844 and 1850 (the Whig supporting Tutts versus the Democrat favoring supporters of John "Slim," Jesse, and Bart Everett) ... a conflict that costs the youth four of his relatives, including his father, family leader Hansford "Hamp" Tutt. Bumping into each other while playing poker, Tutt and Hickok, despite supporting opposite sides in the just concluded war, become friends (Tutt will even lend Hickok money for his gambling endeavors) until their feelings for each other sour over rumors of Hickok fathering an illegitimate child with Tutt's sister and Tutt courting Hickok's paramour, Susanna Moore. Soon, the men begin getting in arguments with each other every time they meet, with Hickok refusing to play in any card game that Tutt is also playing in, and Tutt starts loaning money and card shark advice to gamblers going up against the former Union scout. The building animus between the two men finally boils over on the evening of July 20, 1865. Playing high stakes poker in an upstairs room at Lyon House Hotel (now Springfield's Old Southern Hotel just south of the city's downtown square on South Street) with a group of well off locals, Hickok wins $200 (in 2023 dollar power, a nice payday of $3,823), an outcome that makes Tutt livid (money Tutt has loaned other players has made it's way into Hickok's pockets and his advise hasn't helped anybody beat the man). Seeking a way to get under the gambler's skin, Tutt reminds Hickok of the $40 Wild Bill owes him from a previous horse trade, a debt Hickok immediately pays off from his poker winnings. Unappeased, Tutt then brings up another unpaid obligation of the Union card player, a debt of $35 Tutt says he is owed for from a previous poker game. Hickok acknowledges the debt, but states that it is only for $25 per his reckoning, based on a note he carries with him so he can keep his wins and losses current. Neither man willing to budge from the total of the debt, Tutt grabs Hickok's gold pocket watch off the table and states he will keep the time keeper as collateral until he is payed in full (the gold keepsake watch is worth more than $100). Like pouring gasoline on an already raging fire, outgunned and outnumbered by Tutt's friends, Hickok refrains from doing anything rash and tells his former friend to put the watch back on the table, but Tutt only grins as he pockets the watch and leaves the hotel. Taunted by Tutt's friends with boasts that the Confederate will enjoy telling time on the morrow with Hickok's watch, the Kansas shootist states to anyone who will listen that Tutt better not wear the watch in the square the next day or he will be a "dead man." A few minutes later, Hickok leaves the poker game and returns to his hotel where he cleans, oils, and reloads his pistols in anticipation of the weapons being used the next day.
Grabbing The Watch
Cornered by their actions and words, Hickok now must show he is not an insolvent gambler that can't be trusted to make good on his debts (and that his challenges are to be taken seriously), while Tutt must wear the watch into the square so there are no questions of whether he can be buffaloed by his fear of another gambler or gunman. Yet, neither man is willing to go to their guns without first discussing the situation, and so the two men are brought together by mutual friends to see if a peaceful resolution can be agreed on. Unfortunately, though both men say they don't want to fight, Tutt raises the price to what he is owed to being $45, a number Hickok can not accept. Stepping into a nearby saloon, the pair share a final drink of whiskey together before parting with another round of threats about the watch and where it better not be displayed. Positions cemented by another round of ire, at around 6:00 in the evening of Friday, July 21, 1865, Tutt makes his way into the square with Hickok's gold watch fully on display, hanging from a waist pocket of the vest he is wearing. People scattering from close proximity to either man recognizing what is coming, Tutt strolls into the northwest corner of the square from a livery stable on Baker Alley, while Hickok enters the square from South Street, opposite the ex-Confederate's position. At a distance of about 75 yards from Tutt, with gun in hand, Hickok stops walking and loudly states, "Dave, here I am," as he cocks his right hand pistol, returns it, ivory handle forward (throughout his career as a shootist, Hickok prefers to cross pull his weapon using a "cavalry draw" in which he can get to his guns underhanded, with a spin forward into a reverse draw, and a cross body draw, maneuvers that can also be performed while sitting down at a card table), to the red sash around his waist and turns sideways, assuming a duelist's stance. "Don't you come across here with that watch," is Hickok's last warning to Tutt, who responds to the threat by stirring up the animosity stew just a little more by pulling the said implement from his pocket and consulting it to see what time it is. Hesitating briefly and then also turning sideways, Tutt pulls his gun and brings it up to a firing position, prompting Hickok to also draw his weapon, rest it on his left forearm, and target his opponent.
1860s Wild Bill
Tutt
Both men are using the Samuel Colt designed, 1851 .36-calibur Colt Navy cap & ball revolvers (six shots available if fully loaded, the lead bullets within weigh 80 grains and when fired, move at a rate of 1,000 feet per second after being set off by a fulminate percussion cap), weighing 2.6 pounds apiece. No one in the square is sure who fires first, the twin reports produced by each man's gun sound like one large bang, but no one is in doubt as to which man is victorious in the duel ... Tutt's shot misses, passing over Hickok's head, Hickok's bullet is much more accurate, striking the Confederate veteran between the fifth and seventh rib on his right side, the lead ball passes through Tutt's heart, and exits the losing gunman's body between the fifth and seventh rib on his left side. Screaming, "Boys, I'm killed!" (Tutt's last words), the gambler stumbles on to porch of the town's nearby courthouse, before reeling back into the street and collapsing into death. Satisfied that his shot has taken care of his antagonist, holding his pistol at the ready, Hickok then pivots away from Tutt and yell's at a group of the gamblers associates reaching for their pistols, "Aren't yer satisfied, gentlemen? Put up your shootin-irons, or there'll be more dead men here!" Crowd cowed into submission for the moment by Hickok, the victor of the gunfight now sure that he won't be assassinated or lynched walks off the square and back to his hotel room after someone in the crowd brings him his still ticking gold watch. The loser in the battle, Tutt, is carried to a local doctor that documents the gambler's fatal wound before turning the body over to the town's local undertaker for burial (the former Confederate will first be interred in the town's Old City Cemetery before being exhumed and buried in the town's newest body repository, the Maple Park Cemetery, next to his half-brother, Lewis Tutt, in March 1883, a headstone is not added until 1991).
Hickok Revolver - Sold For A Quarter To Help
Pay For The Gunslinger's Funeral In 1876
Hickok Crowd Control
Federal troops in charge of law-and-order in Springfield after the Civil War concludes, under the name William Haycocke (the name Hickok is using to keep creditors off his trail), Hickok is charged with murder (it will soon be changed to manslaughter), arrested, and placed in custody by troops under the command of 7th United States Cavalry Captain Albert Trorillo Siders Barnitz. Bail for Hickok is at first denied, but on July 22nd, the price for getting out of jail immediately is set at $2,000 (a sum in 2023 dollars of $38,200), which the gunfighter posts the same day with help from friends. Brought to trial on August 3, 1865, Hickok is prosecuted by Major Robert Washington Fyan (a future Missouri congressman) in the courtroom of Judge Sempronius Hamilton Boyd (the former mayor of Springfield and a future Missouri congressman and United States minister to Siam), defending the gambler's plea of self-defense is former Union military governor of Arkansas, Colonel John Smith Phelps (a future Missouri congressman and 23rd governor of the state). The big event in town for the three days it lasts, twenty-two witnesses are called to testify as to the events of the 21st, with four giving accounts of the actual fight. On August 6, 1865, the decision on the matter is turned over to a Springfield jury after Judge Boyd gives the panel contradictory instructions, telling it's members that the jury could use the state law on "mutual combat" to convict Hickok, or they can free him using jury nullification of the law based on no one being able to say who shot first, Tutt being the person who grabbed the watch and went for his pistol first, and the fact that the scout had given Tutt several opportunities to not fight. Sent away to deliberate, it takes the men only an hour to decide that Hickok was merely defending himself, and so it is that he is found not guilty of the manslaughter charges and acquitted (a verdict that there are mixed feelings about in Springfield).
Barnitz
Judge Boyd
Phelps
Afterwards, in September of 1865, Hickok runs for election as Springfield's city marshal, but loses, coming in second out of five candidates, a city decision that sends him off to Fort Riley, Kansas where he can gamble, enforce laws as a Federal deputy marshal, and scout for Colonel George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry. But not before he gives an interview on the gunfight and his activities to Colonel George Ward Nichols, a journalist writing for Harper's New Monthly Magazine (at roughly the same time, an interview with Hickok featuring questions from journalist Henry Morton Stanley, the same fellow that will utter the question in 1872, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" while wandering through central Africa, is published in the Weekly Missouri Democrat), Articles published in 1867 (Hickok will also provide the writer's with a show of his marksmanship by pumping lead into the pattern of a heart from over fifty yards away, the skills his horse, Black Nell, possesses, by having the creature gracefully climb up and stand on a saloon's billiard table, and a lying discussion of his hundred plus victims) in a time before the James Brothers, the Daltons, and the Wild Bunch begin robbing banks and trains, before Custer and his command are slaughtered by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse along the shores of Montana's Greasy Grass River, before Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett have their fatal "Quien es?" meeting in New Mexico, before John Wesley Hardin begins gunning down snoring neighbors, before Leland Stanford drives in the golden spike that symbolically completes the build of America's first trans-continental railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah, before Apache legends Cochise and Geronimo raid through vast areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico, before William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody scalps Sioux Chief Yellow Hair at Warbonnet Creek, before any of it, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok becomes the most famous Western celebrity in the country, one still discussed and written about over a century later ... and he is just beginning. Eleven years left to live before being murdered by Jack McCall while playing poker in Deadwood's Nuttal and Mann's Saloon No. 10, Hickok will burnish his legendary status as an American gunfighter with stints as U.S. deputy marshal in Kansas, scouting for the 7th and 10th Cavalry and fighting Cheyenne and Sioux warriors, getting elected the city marshal of Hays, Kansas, fatally besting in gunfights a drunken cavalryman John Mulrey (8/24/1869) and a inebriated teamster named Samuel Strawhim (9/27/1869), subtracting two individuals from Custer's command during a Hays bar brawl in which Private John Kile is killed and Private Jeremiah Lonegan is grievously wounded (7/17/1870, the other three soldiers involved flee when Hickok begins firing his revolvers), surviving gunman John Wesley Hardin's 1871 visit to Abilene, Kansas (where once again he is the town marshal), killing two men in Abilene in 1871, gambler Phil Coe is a deliberate action, while shooting Deputy Marshal Mike Williams to death is a total accident, brought on by Williams running out of a crowd to help his boss, resulting in Wild Bill putting two lead balls fatally into his helpmate's head (the death of Williams will haunt the gambler for the rest of his life), performing for East Coast audiences with friends "Buffalo Bill" Cody and John Baker "Texas Jack" Omohundro in a Wild West production called "Scouts of the Plains," having his eyesight begin to fail between 1871 and 1876, marrying 50-year-old circus proprietress Agnes Thatcher Lake in 1876 in Cheyenne, Wyoming (her specialty is walking a tightrope and lion taming), and prospecting for gold in the Deadwood area (where he becomes involved with wagon master Charlie Utter and army scout Martha "Calamity" Jane Canary and does a lot of poker playing).
Mrs. Hickok
Calamity Jane
In The Wrong Seat
Establishing the calling of western gunfighter and gambler, and the unwritten codes that order the occupation (like leaving the hammer of a pistolero's weapon on an empty chamber, only sitting somewhere that a gunslinger can have his back to a wall, etc.), "Wild Bill" Hickok (still with us in 2023, some of the actors that will portray Hickok over the years include Guy Madison, Lloyd Bridges, Josh Brolin, Keith Carradine, William S. Hart, Gary Cooper, "Wild Bill" Elliott, Roy Rogers, Bruce Cabot, Howard Keel, Forrest Tucker, Robert Culp, Don Murray, Jeff Corey, Charles Bronson, Richard Farnsworth, Jeff Bridges, Sam Elliot, Sam Shepard, and Luke Helmsworth, will kill Dave Tutt in a face-to-face gunfight in downtown Springfield, Missouri on July 21, 1865.
Gary Cooper As Hickok
The Real McCoy
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