Calamity Jane - Autobiography

Autobiography

"Calamity Jane", as she became known, lived a very colourful and eventful life but often claimed questionable associations or friendships with notable famous American Old West figures, almost always posthumously. For example, years after the death of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, she claimed that she served under him during her initial enlistment at Fort Russell, and that she also served under him during the Indian campaigns in Arizona. However, no records exist to show that Custer was assigned to Fort Russell, and she did not take an active part in the Arizona Indian campaigns; she was given the task of subjugating the Plains Indians.

In 1896 she joined the traveling Kohl & Middleton Dime Museum as a performer, and a 7-page souvenir booklet was sold by that circus, titled The Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane by Herself; it was almost certainly written by someone else, as there is no reliable evidence that Jane could read and write. It is this booklet that is described, rather generously, as her autobiography. The booklet misstates her birth name (as "Marthy Cannary"), her birthdate, misspells "Missourri" repeatedly and refers to "Wm. Hickok". Several of the stories in the booklet are unsupported, or even contradicted, by reliable evidence.

Unlike Annie Oakley, her performances did not involve sharpshooting or roping or riding, merely Jane appearing on stage in buckskins and reciting her adventures—"which metastisized with each telling"—in colourful but clean language; however after about six months her increasing drinking and profanity ended her career as a stage performer.

Her reputation for embellishing her accomplishments, and the willingness of some others to attribute to her even more fanciful adventures (even during her lifetime she was used as a character in works of Western fiction), have made it very difficult to determine the "true facts" of her life. Historians have been unable to locate sufficient information to determine the truth about disputed events, and in many instances independent sources completely contradict her own accounts.