Deadwood: The Murder of Wild Bill Hickok and Personal Reminisces and Historical Accounts of the Black Hills' Most Infamous Town (1899)
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Deadwood: The Murder of Wild Bill Hickok and Personal Reminisces and Historical Accounts of the Black Hills' Most Infamous Town (1899)
Annie Donna Tallent (1827-1901) was the first white woman to enter the Black Hills region. She along with her husband and son were members of the Gordon-Russell gold-seeking expedition in 1874. After being detained and escorted out of the area by US Cavalry, Tallent and her family returned in 1876, and lived in Deadwood for four years.
Tallent unique vantage point provides us with an extraordinary personal glimpse of the formation and history of Deadwood and the interesting events taking place during this brief "Wild West" period---including the murder of famous Old West gunman Wild Bill Hickok.
Upon her retirement from the education field in 1897 she authored "The Black Hills: or The Last Hunting Ground of the Dakotahs," in which she defended the white settlers' and prospectors' incursions into the Black Hills region which were in violation of treaties then existing with the Indians. Tallent stated that "such treaties as tend to arrest the advance of civilization, and retard the development of the rich resources of our country," should never have been agreed to.
This Kindle version includes her writings about the famous town of Deadwood. In 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and announced the discovery of gold on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota. This announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and gave rise to the new and lawless town of Deadwood, which quickly reached a population of around 5,000. Ever since Deadwood has gained legendary status as a prototypical Wild West mining town, as can be seen from its frequent references in popular culture:
Deadwood Dick is a fictional character who appears in a series of stories published between 1877 and 1897 by Edward Lytton Wheeler (1854/5–1885). These types of books were meant to be exciting and lurid and earned the popular name 'penny dreadfuls.' Several men associated with the city used this nickname at various times of their lives.
The 1953 Warner Bros. movie musical Calamity Jane starring Doris Day was set in Deadwood City.
The Adam-12 1969 episode, "The Long Walk" features an old man who reminisces about his early life in Deadwood.
A 1978 children's book in the Choose Your Own Adventure series is set in Deadwood City.
In Flashman and the Redskins, a 1982 novel by George MacDonald Fraser, the eponymous hero, an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok, ends his adventure in Deadwood in 1876, shortly before Hickok's death. Deadwood's history and inhabitants are the foundation of Pete Dexter's 1986 novel, Deadwood, in which Charles Utter, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane are the central characters. The film Dances With Wolves (1990) was filmed in the area and featured several nearby locations. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation 1992 episode "A Fistful of Datas", a holodeck program takes place in 19th-century Deadwood. Dead Man in Deadwood, Book #87 in the Hardy Boys Casefiles series and published in 1994, is set in Deadwood. Setting for part of the 1995 TV film Buffalo Girls Deadwood, an HBO TV series that ran from 2004 to 2006, had the town's early history as its setting. The three Tales from Deadwood novels (2005–07) by Mike Jameson are set in Deadwood and feature Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Al Swearengen and other historical figures. Showed as a haunted town in American Sci/Fi, Horror TV series Supernatural in the 2nd Season's 21st & 22nd Episode named "All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 1)" and "All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 2)" The Doctor Who comic book story Dead Man's Hand, published by IDW, takes place in Deadwood several years after the burial of "Wild Bill" Hickock. In the 2012 video game Borderlands 2, The town of Lynchwood is a space western-themed homage to Deadwood. The town includes a large mining operation near Main Street, as well as a "Gunslinger's Corner".