Pistol Packing Mamas

We are beginning a short series on some of the West's most notorious group of women - "Pistol Packing Mamas" and some of the stories that made them legends.  Whether these women were everything given to them by their respective legends remains a part of what makes them legendary.  With any fact or event handed down through generations, the tale gets richer and more exaggerated with each passing year, but no doubt we'll find some facts to whet our appetites for history.

Folklore of the Wild West can paint fantastic characters, and in reality, many of these women may never have even carried arms, let alone used them in the way it has been told.  One such legend is of Calamity Jane.  There is no historical record that Ms. Canary was indeed able to hit the proverbial broad side of a barn door on a sober day, let alone when she was intoxicated, which by the way was the way she lived most of her life. 

It is, however, recorded that she was a boozy, disrespectful woman from Billings, Montana, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, who wore men's clothing, swore like a sailor and claimed several accomplishments such as being a Pony Express rider and wife of Wild Bill Hickok.  Calamity Jane is buried near Wild Bill in Deadwood, South Dakota. It is also recorded that she was thrown out of a bordello in Bozeman, Montana, for to much "influence" on the patrons. 

In truth, Calamity Jan was more of a self-advertiser who loved publicity and talking a long yarn about the "good old days" of the Wild West.  She certainly had what it takes to survive in the rugged mining towns of the early west, and lives forever in our hearts as one of the true "cowgirls" of the West.

Next time we meet Verona Baldwin...