Colorado Charlie Utter
Charlie Utter was born near Niagara Falls and spent most of his youth in Illinois before moving west, where he at some point met and befriended James Butler Hickok. Charlie was a trapper and sometime guide in Colorado when he heard of the gold strike in the Black Hills, and with his brother Steve he organized a wagon train to transport what he believed to be needed commodities to the mining camps. These included prostitutes and gamblers to relieve the more successful prospectors of their gold. The brothers departed Georgetown, Colorado, in the spring of 1876, and when the wagon train arrived at Cheyenne, Wyoming, they were joined by Hickok and several more hoping to strike it rich in Deadwood.
A working woman and self-claimed former army scout named Martha Jane Cannary joined the group as it passed through Fort Laramie. Known as Calamity Jane throughout the territory, Cannary had a penchant for dressing in men’s clothes, and had in the past worked as a cook, a dance hall girl, a prostitute, a teamster, and other assorted professions. Years later, army officers testified that her claims to have served as an army scout were false, and that she had never served the army in any official capacity. When she joined the Utter’s wagon train she met Hickok for the first time, despite her later claims to have known him for many years.