WWWest-Online Development Blog

As stated on our home page, WWWest Online will offer equal opportunities to all players, be they male or female. The real Wild West, however, was not so even a playing field. If I were to ask you to name some famous people from the Wild West, how many men would you name, and how many women? In the Old West, if you were well known, you were probably a man. Sure, some of those great men had great women behind them but, proverbs aside, not many women made a name for themselves. But some women did, and Calamity Jane was one of those few.

Shrouded Beginnings

Like many things in the Wild West, the details of Calamity Jane’s past are a bit… vague. Truth be told, Jane’s past is even vaguer than the norm. Calamity Jane was born on May 1, 1852. This occurrence took place in Missouri. Or Wyoming. Or possibly Illinois. And her father was a farmer. Or perhaps a gambler, a soldier, or even a minister; and he and her mother were scalped by Indians. Or maybe not. You can see where I’m going with this .

It’s generally accepted that Calamity Jane was born Martha Jane Canary (or Cannary; even that’s not quite certain…) on May 1, 1852, near Princeton, Missouri, and that her parents were farmers, and had 4 additional children after Jane was born. After that point, much of her history is gathered from stories and reports, or from her own autobiography (which is even less reliable), so you’d be well-advised to take anything you read or hear with a grain of sand. When Jane was 14 or so, her family, like many others, journeyed to the gold rush town of Virginia City. Jane was a high-spirited child, and is said to have spent much of her time on the Overland Route, in the company of men. During that time she also learned to drive the teams of oxen that drew the wagons. One year later, Jane was orphaned of both her parents within the course of a single year.

An Unseen Teen

Little is known about Jane’s whereabouts in the years that followed. In her autobiography she claimed that she served as an Army scout between 1868 and 1876, but many historians doubt the truth of that claim: besides the fact that the Army has no records of her service whatsoever, Jane’s accounts of her scouting expeditions are so riddled with errors and inaccuracies that they can hardly be believed. However, it is believed that Jane did accompany Army expeditions, possibly as a bullwhacker (i.e., a driver for a team of oxen).

Name That Jane

It is generally believed that it was during these years that Martha Jane Cannary became Calamity Jane. How this came to be, however, is a subject of debate (more debate?? Bet you didn’t see that coming, eh?). Jane claims the name was given to her by an army Captain by the name of Egan, after she saved his life during an Indian attack, but historians say the name was either descriptive of the fate awaiting those who didn’t take her skill with a gun seriously, or of her calamitous, hard-knock life. Naturally, Jane’s version, completely made-up though it is, is the one that stuck and is part of “formal” Western canon.

Life Goes On

As you can see, Calamity Jane had quite an exciting life up to this point (or at least claimed to), and she wasn’t even 25. In my next post I’ll tell y’all some more about her later life.

Until then, I bid you farewell.

Kraz