Deadwood: Comparing The Lead Characters And Their Real World Counterparts

Second only to Wild Bill in the pantheon of Wild West mythos to call Deadwood home, Martha Jane Canary, better known as "Calamity Jane," was likewise portrayed with a fair amount of accuracy as her real life was already the stuff of legend. Jane bucked stereotypes of the time by wearing men's clothing, being an expert shot, and drinking most men under the table. Like her friend Wild Bill, Jane had worked as an Army Scout before joining the wagon train led by Charlie Utter headed to Deadwood. Unlike Bill, Jane had no plans to settle down or stake a claim.

Upon arrival in Deadwood, she earned her living riding for the Pony Express on a route to Custer, Wyoming. Just as in the series Jane worked as a nurse when smallpox struck the camp and the real life camp doctor remarked of her bedside manner, "oh, she’d swear to beat hell at them, but it was a tender kind of cussin’." After the death of her friend Wild Bill, Jane remained in Deadwood until 1877.

In contrast to her on screen relationship with Joanie Stubbs, historical records indicate Jane would often claim that she and Bill were an item despite his marriage at the time they ran together. When she left Deadwood she continued to travel throughout the west: California, Texas, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, even got married and had a daughter, and she toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Eventually she returned to the Black Hills and when she died in 1903, unsurprisingly of ailments related to alcoholism, she was buried next to Bill in Deadwood.