Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer described him as a’strange character, just the one which a novelist might gloat over… a Plainsman in every sense of the word… whose skill in the use of the rifle and pistol was unerring.’ Many others besides Custer regarded Wild Bill as the best pistol shot on the Plains–a man whose quick-witted reaction to danger enabled him, according to one account, to draw and fire his Colt Navy revolvers ‘before the average man had time to think about it.’Ĭredited with the deaths of 100 or more badmen, Hickok emerged as perhaps the most prolific man-killer of his generation. This woodcut of Hickok appeared in the February 1867 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine as the lead illustration for a George Nichols article that helped make Wild Bill famous.īut even without such publicity, Hickok would have made his mark, for he was a man whose personality, strength of character and single-mindedness set him apart. And since his death in 1876, he has achieved worldwide fame. Thanks to an article in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in February 1867 and some other colorful accounts published in the mid-1860s, Hickok, or rather ‘Wild Bill,’ as he was generally called, was soon elevated from regional to national status.

James Butler Hickok’s reputation as the Old West’s premier gunfighter or ‘man-killer’ made him a legend in his own lifetime–a distinction shared by few of his gunfighting contemporaries. Wild Bill Hickok: Pistoleer, Peace Officer and Folk Hero | HistoryNet Close

Wild bill hickok