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Calamity Jane has a reputation for being one of the wildest women in the Old West, but it's hard to separate historical fact from fiction. Learn more about this sharp-shooting adventurer in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/calamity-jane.htm
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Episode: https://omny.fm/shows/brainstuff/how-did-calamity-jane-work
Podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/brainstuff-20922291/
Episode: https://omny.fm/shows/brainstuff/how-did-calamity-jane-work
Podcast: https://mypod.online
Episode: https://omny.fm/shows/brainstuff/how-did-calamity-jane-work
Podcast: https://mypod.online
Episode: https://omny.fm/shows/brainstuff/how-did-calamity-jane-work
Podcast: https://mypod.online
- Duration:
- 10m
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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So, relax and let AT&T provide proactive recommendations to help empower your best-connected life. There's two kinds of people in the world, people who love health-aid kombucha and people who have never tried it. The bubbly mix of probiotic tea and refreshing juice is delicious and good for your gut health, with great flavors to choose from that you can't help but love. If you've never tried it before, maybe try a bottle or can of passion fruit tangerine or ginger lemon. Your taste buds and your gut will thank you. Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health-aid kombucha today. This is Jonathan Strickland from Tech Stuff. Do you have a smart TV or a dumb screen that does more fighting with the internet than streaming? It's time to stream, play, and surf the way you were meant to with a powerful boost from the Skyworth Leap S4 from Jelfa Solutions. Two generations ahead of the leading streaming devices, the Skyworth Leap S4 Streams in 4K comes with free Google TV and has access to plenty of apps and content. Save $5 off each device now with code "techstuff" at JelfaSolutions.com. DJ-E-L-F-A-Solutions.com Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Volkobam here. Calamity Jane, with her reputation for being one of the most adventurous and foul-mouthed women in the Old West, is the stuff of American legend. She was known to be a sharpshooter, a whiskey lover, and an adopter of men's fashion at a time when women were largely confined to strict codes of conduct. But, as with many figures from this era, teasing out real detail from mythologized self-marketing and romanticized yellow journalism isn't easy. Today, let's look into the person behind the tall tale of Calamity Jane. Calamity Jane was born as Martha Jane Canary around Princeton, Missouri in the 1850s. The exact date is unknown, but some historians think it was in 1856. The family didn't have much money, and around 1865, they sold their farm and followed the promise of the mining boom west with a wagon train of other settlers. By then, Canary was the oldest of three to six siblings, accounts vary. She spent most of the five-month migration hunting with the men in the caravan. By the time the group reached their destination, Virginia City, Montana, Canary had earned a reputation for being, in her own words, a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age. Sadly, they arrived without Canary's mother. She had died along the way. Her father passed too around 1867, leaving Canary to support herself by about the age of 12. Her siblings seemed to have wound up in Utah as she moved on to Wyoming. While wandering there, she took on a variety of jobs, reportedly everything from dishwasher, waitress, and cook to nurse to dancer. She may have been a scout for General Custer and a rider in the Pony Express. At least, that's what she later said in her semi-fictional autobiography, Life and Adventures of Calamity. She wrote that by the 1870s, she was "the most reckless and daring rider and one of the best shots in the West." It seems that she may really have been an army scout around this time, though not for Custer, and the Pony Express stories are unconfirmed. Canary reportedly earned her nickname around 1875 during the Newton-Jenny Expedition, a scientific party that set out to map the Black Hills and determine the quality and quantity of gold there. Apparently, she wandered off one day, and her fellow party members hoped no calamity had befallen her. It was with this nickname that she arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876 alongside another much mythologized frontier figure, Wild Bill Hickop. The two may have come in on the same wagon train. They became friends, though probably not more than friends, as some stories claim. Their relationship was short-lived. In August of that year, Hickop was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall while sitting at a gambling table in a Deadwood saloon. Canary stayed in Deadwood, prospecting at mining camps, and later nursing residents who fell ill during the smallpox outbreak. She finally left Deadwood the following year and traveled around South Dakota, taking odd jobs. By this point, her reputation had made her somewhat of a celebrity, and magazine editors and dime novel authors were writing increasingly wild stories about her adventures. In 1882, Canary bought a ranch on the Yellowstone River, but felt antsy within the year, leaving for California, and then moving on to Texas. She met a man by the name of Clinton Burke in El Paso, and the two married around 1885. They had a daughter, Jesse Elizabeth, and left Texas for Boulder, Colorado when the girl was a toddler. For several years, the family ran a hotel and then spent time traveling yet again throughout the Northwest. By 1895, Canary realized she could use her shooting skills to support her family and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, performing sharp shooting tricks on tour around the Midwest. But her drinking habit cost her the job. She published her autobiography a year later. Then, in 1901, she was hired by the Pan-American Exposition, but once again lost the job due to her alcohol misuse. Canary moved back to the Black Hills in 1903 and worked as a cook and housekeeper in a brothel. She died a few years later, probably due to issues stemming from her drinking, and was buried next to Hiccup at Mount Mariah Cemetery. It's tough to know how many of the details surrounding Canary's life are true and how many were fabricated, either by the media or by Canary herself. Even pieces of her personal life are questionable because there's no existing marriage license confirming her union with Burke and no birth certificate for her daughter. In 1941, a woman claiming to be the child of Canary and Hiccup came into the public eye, but her claims were later proven to be false. Canary's tombstone itself displays what historians have found to be the incorrect name and birth date for her. Before the article this episode is based on, how stuff works spoke with Carolyn Weber, Executive Director of Deadwood History Incorporated. She said, Martha Jane Canary, or Calamity Jane, is so much more than her body reputation. She was an unaccompanied young child and woman in the frontier American West, doing the best she could with the situations she was handed. She supported herself at a time when there were limited opportunities for women. Today's episode is based on the article, Calamity Jane wrote hard, drank even harder and became a Wild West legend on howstuffworks.com, written by Michelle Konstantinovsky. BrainStuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with howstuffworks.com and is produced by Tyler Clang and Ramsey Young. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. [MUSIC] At Public.com, you can invest in stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more. Plus, you can earn an industry-leading 5.1% APY on your cash while you're at it. So why juggle multiple investing apps when you can have one that does it all? With Public, a US-based company with award-winning customer support. 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