Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed 1876
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He was an American frontiersman, army scout, and lawman who helped bring order to the frontier West. His reputation as a gunfighter gave rise to legends and tales about his life. He was one of the early "heroes of the West" popularized in those dime novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1876 in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, Hickok married one Agnes Lake Thatcher who was a former circus performer. A month or so later, he left their honeymoon in Cincinnati for the goldfields of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory, where he hoped to make enough money to send for her.
He traveled west to Deadwood, South Dakota, in a wagon train that included Martha Jane Cannary aka "Calamity Jane" who later claimed she had secretly married him. Deadwood was overrun with miners, gunmen, and gamblers when Hickok became a peace officer there in July 1876, on his reputation as well as his gun skills which were failing slowly due to problems with his vision.
On August 2, 1876, during a poker game in a saloon where he sat with his back to the door, Hickok was shot in the back of his head by Jack McCall whom many thought was a gun for hire. McCall was tried and acquitted of murder as a result of his dubious claim that the killing was in revenge for Hickok’s murder of his brother in Abilene. Later, after allowing braggadocio to get the better of him regarding his murder of Hickok, McCall was retried in Laramie, Wyoming Territory, found guilty, and hanged on March 1, 1877.
The hand of cards Hickok had been playing when he was shot and killed — a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights plus an unknown fifth card—became known as the "Dead Mans Hand".
I was never a fan of the portrayals of this man in the movies. However, I feel that he was murdered in cold blood and I'm glad that the man responsible was held accountable. So often the perpetrators get away with things, not just back then but now as well.