FOOTNOTES:
[A] Afterward Fort Lyon, on the Arkansas River, and later abandoned. The site is within a few miles of the present town of Lamar, Colorado.
[B] James Butler Hickock, better known as Wild Bill, was a famous character in Kansas and the West from 1860 to 1876. In 1861 he was sometimes called "Indian Bill" or "Buckskin Bill," but the nickname "Wild Bill" soon became so firmly fixed that few people knew his real name.
Wild Bill was the son of New England parents, born in Vermont, who moved to New York immediately after their marriage, which occurred in 1829 or 1830. From New York they moved to Illinois, settling first in Putnam County and later in La Salle County. Here, near the village of Troy Grove, the son, James Butler, was born, on May 27, 1837.
He went West when only a boy and for some time served as scout at different military posts and afterward as marshal and sheriff in various new towns in Kansas. He was a man of unflinching courage and a natural shot with the pistol and had many extraordinary adventures, in all of which he was successful. A remarkable incident told of him was the killing of Jake McCandless and his gang of twelve men in a hand-to-hand fight near Fort Hayes, Kansas.
In 1873 or 1874, with William F. Cody and John Omohundro and a number of Pawnee Indians, he appeared for a short time on the stage in one of Ned Buntline's dramas of the plains, but his career as an actor was brief.
In March, 1876, Wild Bill was married to Mrs. Agnes Thatcher Lake and that summer went to the Black Hills, where he prospected. Here, in Deadwood, South Dakota, August 2, 1876, he was murdered, while playing cards, by Jack McCall, who walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head. McCall was tried at Deadwood and acquitted. Subsequently he was rearrested by Colonel N. J. O'Brien, then sheriff of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was taken to Dakota, tried, convicted, and executed during February, 1877.
Wild Bill was in no sense a desperado. He was a mild-mannered, pleasant man who avoided trouble when it was possible, but when trouble came he met it with a strong heart.
[C] Tom Carney, wholesale groceryman of Leavenworth City, was, a year or two later, elected governor of Kansas.