The mere mention of Calamity Jane conjures up images of buckskins, bull whips and dance halls, but there's more to the woman than the storied legend she became. Born Martha Canary, she was orphaned as a child and assumed the responsibility of caring for her siblings. Much too young and ambitious to rear a family, she found homes for all. After setting off on her own, Martha tried to reconnect with her fractured family in her typical haphazard fashion, all the while transforming into Calamity Jane. Soon, her own foibles and her siblings' choices rendered the attempt futile. From brother Elijah's horse thieving to sister Lena's denial of Martha's tales, author Jan Cerney uncovers the tumultuous Canary family often overlooked in the Calamity canon.
A historian separates facts from myths to search for the real woman behind the Western legend. The mere mention of Calamity Jane conjures up images of buckskins, bull whips, and dance halls, but there’s more to the woman than what’s been portrayed in dime novels and countless books, films, and TV shows. Born Martha Canary, she was orphaned as a child and assumed the responsibility of caring for her siblings. Much too young and ambitious to rear a family, she found homes for all. After setting off on her own, Martha tried to reconnect with her fractured family in her typical haphazard fashion, all the while transforming into Calamity Jane. Soon, her own foibles and her siblings’ choices rendered the attempt futile. From her brother Elijah’s horse thieving to her sister Lena’s denial of Martha’s tales, author Jan Cerney uncovers the tumultuous Canary family relationships often overlooked in the Calamity canon.
A meticulously researched account about how an alcoholic prostitute was transformed into a Wild West heroine is presented in this biography of Martha Canary, the woman known as Calamity Jane.
In 1864, vast herds of buffalo roamed the northern short-grass prairie and numerous Native American nations lived on both sides of the adjacent Continental Divide. Lewis and Clark had come and gone, and so had most of the fur trappers and mountain men. The land that would become Montana was mostly still the wild and untrammeled landscape it had been for millennia. That all changed in a single year—1864—because of gold, the Civil War, and the relentless push of white Americans into Indian lands. By the end of that pivotal year in the history of Montana—and in the history of the American West—Montana was the newest United States territory. In Montana 1864, writer and scholar Ken Egan Jr. captures this momentous year with a tapestry of riveting stories about Indians, traders, gold miners, trail blazers, fortune-seekers, settlers, Vigilantes, and outlaws—the characters who changed Montana, and those who resisted the change with words and war. Egan’s vivid narrative style immerses readers in the conflicting currents of western expansionism as it actually happened, providing a unique and thought-provoking examination of Montana’s beginnings.
Forget Doris Day singing on the stagecoach. Forget Robin Weigert’s gritty portrayal on HBO’s Deadwood. The real Calamity Jane was someone the likes of whom you’ve never encountered. That is, until now. This book is a definitive biography of Martha Canary, the woman popularly known as Calamity Jane. Written by one of today’s foremost authorities on this notorious character, it is a meticulously researched account of how an alcoholic prostitute was transformed into a Wild West heroine. Always on the move across the northern plains, Martha was more camp follower than the scout of legend. A mother of two, she often found employment as waitress, laundress, or dance hall girl and was more likely to be wearing a dress than buckskin. But she was hard to ignore when she’d had a few drinks, and she exploited the aura of fame that dime novels created around her, even selling her autobiography and photos to tourists. Gun toting, swearing, hard drinking—Calamity Jane was all of these, to be sure. But whatever her flaws or foibles, James D. McLaird paints a compelling portrait of an unconventional woman who more than once turned the tables on those who sought to condemn or patronize her. He also includes dozens of photos—many never before seen—depicting Jane in her many guises. His book is a long-awaited biography of Martha Canary and the last word on Calamity Jane.
Her name is synonymous with the West. Her celebrity has spread to the East Coast and California, traveling down the new-laid railroads and along the telegraph wire. But breathless tales of Calamity Jane bear little resemblance to the truth. As she senses death coming closer, the legendary hellcat longs to set the record straight—to reveal her life story at last, unclouded by legend, every sin and failing laid bare. Only then can she hope to rest in peace. In a Deadwood saloon, she finds a writer willing to hear her out, and recount the truth to a public hungry for more tales of Calamity Jane… So begins Libbie Hawker’s expansive biographical novel, an intimate portrait of one of the best-known yet least-understood women of the American frontier. The international bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night takes the reader on a heart-rending journey through a landscape lost to time, as seen through the eyes of one outcast woman. Calamity is a haunting meditation on hardship, unrequited love, and the stark, affecting beauty of the American West. Editorial note: In pursuit of a narrative voice faithful to the central character, this text employs deliberate misuse of grammar and occasional misspellings. These are the author’s intentional stylistic choices and should not be interpreted as a lack of editing. Readers are encouraged to use the “Look Inside” feature before purchasing.
Young Martha Jane Cannary began life as a camp follower and street urchin. Parentless by the age of twelve, she morphed into the mother of two who just as often took employment as a waitress, laundress, or dance hall girl as she did an Indian scout or bullwhacker. Just as likely to wear a dress as she was buckskins, she was impossible to ignore no matter what she wore, particularly after she’d had a few drinks! And she shamelessly parlayed into a legend the aura of fame that Edward L. Wheeler’s dime novels crafted around her. Perhaps most amazing of all, in an era where women had few options in life, Calamity Jane had the audacity to carve them out for herself. The gun-toting, tough-talking, hard-drinking woman was all Western America come to life. Flowing across the untamed small towns and empty spaces of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana like the wild running rivers of the American West, she helped create the legend of Calamity Jane from scratch. Part carnie barker, part actor, part sexually alluring siren, part drunken lout--she was all of these and much more.
Everyone knows the name Calamity Jane. Scores of dime novels and movie and TV Westerns have portrayed this original Wild West woman as an adventuresome, gun-toting hellion. Although Calamity Jane has probably been written about more than any other woman of the nineteenth-century American West, fiction and legend have largely obscured the facts of her life. This lively, concise, and exhaustively researched biography traces the real person from the Missouri farm where she was born in 1856 through the development of her notorious persona as a Wild West heroine. Before Calamity Jane became a legend, she was Martha Canary, orphaned when she was only eleven years old. From a young age she traveled fearlessly, worked with men, smoked, chewed tobacco, and drank. By the time she arrived in the boomtown of Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876, she had become Calamity Jane, and the real Martha Canary had disappeared under a landslide of purple prose. Calamity became a hostess and dancer in Deadwood’s saloons and theaters. She imbibed heavily, and she might have been a prostitute, but she had other qualities, as well, including those of an angel of mercy who ministered to the sick and the down-and-out. Journalists and dime novelists couldn’t get enough of either version, nor, in the following century, could filmmakers. Sorting through the stories, veteran western historian Richard W. Etulain’s account begins with a biography that offers new information on Calamity’s several “husbands” (including one she legally married), her two children, and a woman who claimed to be the daughter of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity, a story Etulain discredits. In the second half of the book, Etulain traces the stories that have shaped Calamity Jane’s reputation. Some Calamity portraits, he says, suggest that she aspired to a quiet life with a husband and family. As the 2004–2006 HBO series Deadwood makes clear, well more than a century after her first appearance as a heroine in the Deadwood Dick dime novels, Calamity Jane lives on—raunchy, unabashed, contradictory, and ambiguous as ever.
This exhaustive bibliographical reference will be the first stop for anyone looking for Calamity Jane in print, film, or photograph—and wanting to know how reliable those sources may be. Richard W. Etulain, renowned western-U.S. historian and the author of a recent biography of this charismatic figure, enumerates and assesses the most valuable sources on Calamity Jane’s life and legend in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and movies, as well as historical and government archives. Etulain begins with a brief biography of Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane (1856–1903), then analyzes the origins and growth of her legends. The sources, Etulain shows, reveal three versions of Calamity Jane. In the most popular one, she was a Wild Woman of the Old West who helped push a roaring frontier through its final stages. This is the Calamity Jane who fought Indians, marched with the military, and took on the bad guys. Early in her life she also hoped to embody the pioneer woman, seeking marriage and a stable family and home. A third, later version made of Calamity an angel of mercy who reached out to the poor and nursed smallpox victims no one else would help. The hyperbolic journalism of the Old West, as well as dime novels and the stretchers Calamity herself told in her interviews and autobiography, shaped her legends through much of the twentieth century. Many of the sensational early accounts of Calamity’s life, Etulain notes, were based on rumor and hearsay. In illuminating the role of the Deadwood Dick dime novel series and other pulp fiction in shaping what we know—or think we know—of the American West, Etulain underscores one of his fascinating themes: the power of popular culture. The product of twenty years’ labor sifting fact from falsehood or distortion, this bibliography and reader’s guide includes brief discussions of nearly every item’s contents, along with a terse, entertaining evaluation of its reliability.
