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The Real Deadwood
Series creator David Milch talks about gold, Custer, betrayal — and the remarkable accidents of history that created the wildest town in the West.
Executive producer David Milch warns that Deadwood is not a docu-drama about the famed outlaw town. "I want to make it clear," he says, "that I've had my ass bored off by many things that are historically accurate."
That said, Milch spent months immersing himself in the true stories of the people of 19th century Deadwood, absorbing not just the events, but also the subtle motivations behind them. "I like to read the primary materials; I love reading the Black Hills Pioneer, you know," he says. "I could read that all day. I'm interested in the personalities who were kind of the first prime movers in the community."
What has emerged is a picture of a place finding its own "order" without the benefit of laws. "Deadwood was a place created by a series of accidents. A kind of original sin — the appropriation of what belonged to one people by another people — was enacted with no pretense at all," he says. "You know, the people who landed in Manhattan, they paid 24 bucks. Well, maybe they got a bargain, but they still recognized the obligation to pay. In the Black Hills, the land had just been given to the Indians, to get 'em to move from another piece of land."
“I want to make it clear that I've had my ass bored off by many things that are historically accurate.”
The "appropriation" of the Black Hills began a chain of events the lead to Deadwood's strange status as a town that wasn't subject to American laws. "The Black Hills had been given to the Ogallala Sioux and some other groups. But Custer needed one more war," Milch says. "Custer was one of a group of young Turks, young generals in the Civil War. He was a psychopath, which always gives you a leg up, you know — it makes you more active and more imaginative in your strategies."
With an eye toward a political career and even a presidential run, Custer organized support for a 1,000-man expedition into the Black Hills. "A lot of people were broke. There was a panic in 1873, and migrations of people." Milch says. "There were all kinds of social disruptions going on, and into this foment, you stir in Custer's personal ambitions.
"Now for years and years there had been rumors that there was gold in the Black Hills. But what would become the Dakota Territory was owned by the Sioux 'for as long as the river shall run' according to the treaty signed six years before. So Custer says, let me ascertain the scientific content about the mineral deposits in the hills. And the guys in the Senate who wanted to run Custer for president authorized the expedition. Custer gets 25 photographers, reporters from the New York Times. It's a media event."
“He (Custer) was a psychopath, which always gives you a leg up, you know — it makes you more active and more imaginative in your strategies.”
"They don't find too much gold. But they find a little, and Custer makes some hysterical pronouncements in Harper's, I think it was: 'Gold by the handful! Gold by the pocketful. Gold everywhere you turn'."
The coverage led to expeditions into the Dakota Territory, and eventually to the big gold discovery around what would become Deadwood. But Custer's rivals urged President Grant — no fan of Custer, himself — to honor the treaty and oust the prospectors. Grant had a reputation of being sympathetic to the American Indian, and had even mentioned in his inauguration address that he hoped to see Native Americans one day become citizens.
"He agrees that they won't betray the treaty," Milch says. "Which makes one in a row. He sends in some cavalry in 1875, and they make all the whites leave. Calamity Jane had been in there. But in 1876, people are still broke, and the cavalry who'd been left out there, they start to go AWOL. They're deserting left and right. The prospectors come back in and find more gold. Now, you know, Grant was no idiot; he couldn't get any soldiers to stay in the army. So he said let 'em in, and pull your troops.
"Custer's got what he wants. Now he gets his troops organized, he's going to go in and kick the shit out of the Indians. And we all know how that one turned out. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull kicked the living shit out of Custer at Little Big Horn, which is a stone's throw from Deadwood. That was in late June. By then, the hills were swarming with prospectors. And they were doing very well."
“Custer's got what he wants. Now he gets his troops organized, he's going to go in and kick the shit out of the Indians. And we all know how that one turned out.”
With the invasion of adventurers, outlaws and entrepreneurs into a vacuum of order, Deadwood had become a world unto itself. "This is the equivalent of the first amphibians coming out of the primordial ooze," Milch says. "In March, there was nothing. All the whites were lurking in the hills. In June, there were 10,000 people there. That's a lot of people to move to Buffalo, let alone Indian Territory. It was not part of America. They were an outlaw community, and they knew it."
That meant no government. No organized religion. Not even basic law enforcement. When a prominent figure in town was murdered, for example, "they didn't want Congress to take umbrage — what are you, secessionists, are you setting up your own government? So they just let the guy go," Milch says. "Not only was there an absence of law, there was a premium on the continued absence of law. Economic forces organized the settlement."
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Deadwood History
For more information and on the Real Deadwood, try the following source:
Adams Museum and House
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Deadwood Nuggets
The Battle of Little Big Horn also known as Custer's Last Stand took place on June 25, 1876. Lieutenant Colonel Custer's forces—including all 197 of his men were wiped out in less than 20 minutes.
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