The story of HBO's Deadwood has long been one of television's great tragedies because
of its untimely end. But with the release of the new Deadwood movie, many fans are revisiting the series, and the
real history behind it. Here are the true stories behind Deadwood. At a time when most people were hardened by the circumstances of life, Wild Bill Hickok
stood out as a unique outlaw. A longtime associate, Captain Jack Crawford, described him as a kind soul, saying
He was loyal in his friendship, generous to a fault, and invariably espoused the cause
of the weaker against the stronger one in a quarrel. Hickok headed to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory in 1876, and in a story that should sound
familiar to fans of the show, he did a ton of gambling. He was on a hot streak in one August poker game, but found himself forced to sit with
his back to the door. Jack McCall had arguably been humiliated when Hickok returned some of his money and told
him to get something to eat. "...you just bought yourself something with that.
McCall had already been drinking, and the perceived insult sent him over the edge. He
pulled out a pistol and shot Hickok in the back of the head, killing him instantly
The composition of Hickok last poker hand has been the subject of debate and myth The story goes that Hickok had been holding a pair of eights and a pair of aces That configuration has come to be known as the Dead Man Hand
But is this really what Hickok was holding? According to Arizona historian Marshall Trimble, that story wasn't told until the 1920s
The only contemporary reference to the cards pegs Bill's hand as a king-full house
The most likely scenario is that no one checked, and all this stuff was made up later
The name Seth Bullock doesn't carry the same kind of weight as contemporaries like Wyatt Earp
Maybe it should. According to the Theodore Roosevelt Center, Bullock was there for Hickok's death, having
arrived just the day before. He'd come from Helena, where he had presided over the first legal hanging in Montana
The scene in Deadwood where Bullock confronts a mob hellbent on hanging a man is based on
what's best described as a true legend. According to the tale told by Kermit Roosevelt in the biography Seth Bullock, Black Hills
lawman, the man who met his maker at the end of that rope was supposed to die at the hands
of a hangman. A mob of vigilantes stepped in, and rather than let mob justice get the
satisfaction, Bullock held him off with a pistol and did the hangman's job himself
You call the law in, Samson. You don't get to call it off just because you're liquored up and popular on payday The story is likely Bullock own invention because newspapers reported that the trouble they expected never came The hanging was a very public affair with hundreds of people lining rooftops to get
a bird's-eye view of the proceedings. That was against territory law, which stated Bullock's duty was to perform the execution
in private with just a few witnesses. The Chinese population on the Deadwood TV series largely kept to itself, not getting
up to too much trouble aside from occasionally using pigs to dispose of bodies
But what's the real story? Jerry Bryant, research curator and resident archaeologist of Deadwood's Adams Museum
says the real Deadwood's community of Chinese immigrants lived on a section of Main Street
called the Badlands, and many had moved from China to the U.S. in hopes of striking it rich
But when they got there, most weren't allowed to stake mining claims. Even so, Deadwood ended up having a Chinese population of at least 110 people, according
to 1880 census records, and about half of Lawrence County's Chinese were in the laundry business
Why laundries? Apparently, it's because they could save the wash water, sluice it, and get gold dust from
the miners' clothes. Most of Deadwood's restaurants were also Chinese-owned, and one of Deadwood's major general stores
was Phi Li Wong Wing Su Emporium Immigration slowed in the early 1880s with the passing of 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act but Deadwood continued to embrace its Chinese residents especially a group that organized into a firefighting force
"'Suechen! Wu! Hang die!' "'Wu and Suedchen! Hang die!' Part of the appeal of Deadwood is its raw portrayal of frontier times
not dressing up the story as some idealized Wild West. That's something you can see in the
unglamorous portrayal of alcohol and opium addictions among some of the town's residents
According to the Smithsonian, morphine was a brilliant new cure-all in the 1870s
Doctors administered it for everything from headaches and asthma to stomach pains
At its height, about one in 200 Americans were addicted to opiates, an addiction undoubtedly
encouraged by the 12.8 million doses of opium pills, powders, and tinctures handed out during
the Civil War. made up the majority of opium addicts, mostly because it was so regularly used to treat
conditions from menstrual cramps to morning sickness. Opium dens popped up across the U.S., particularly in the West, where they tended to be operated
by Chinese immigrants. According to the Adams Museum, Deadwood's opium dens were both medicinal and recreational
and by 1882, newspapers were sounding moral alarm bells calling for the end of opium use
It was finally made illegal in 1936