Footnotes
Reading edition
On the other hand, Mr. Will G. Robinson, the eminent State Historian of South Dakota, reports: “On the authority of Dr. McGillicuddy, who was a medico at Ft. Laramie, and whose original letter I have, I would be entirely certain that she was born at Ft. Laramie, of a couple by the name of Dalton. Dalton was a soldier, was discharged and went out a short distance west to LaBonte. Here he was killed by Indians, although his wife got back into the fort with one eye gouged out, after which she shortly died. Her child got her name—Calamity—by reason of this disaster. She was not much over 40 when she died in 1903.”
The discrepancy between these two accounts, both studiously researched and documented by men whose professional careers have been given over to solving puzzles of this nature with which western history abounds, is typical of the disagreement among well-authenticated reports of the birth and early life of this female enigma.
In any event, it is a matter which is still subject to a maximum amount of conjecture, and for a much more complete account of the variant clues readers are enthusiastically referred to Nolie Mumey’s Calamity Jane (Denver: Privately printed, 1949).
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