Eldridge Aver Burbank, who examined the Apache medicine man at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1897, wrote in his journal: "One day Geronimo came into my quarters at Fort Sill in a most peculiar mood. He told me no-one could kill him, or me either--if he willed it so. Then he bare himself to his waist. I was dumbfounded to see the number of bullet hole scars on his body. I knew he had been in many battles and had been shot dozens of times, but I never heard of anyone living with at least 50 bullet wounds on his body. Geronimo had that many scars. Some of these bullet wounds were large enough to rest a pebble in as Geronimo picked up pebbles and putting them in each wound he would make a noise like a gunshot--then take the pebble out and throw it to the ground ... and shout 'Bullets cannot kill me!'"
Bat Masterson held a wide variety of jobs during his adventurous lifetime, including stints as a buffalo hunter, frontier lawman, gambler, Army scout, U.S. Marshal, and sports editor for the New York Morning Telegraph. Masterson was also a frequent visitor to Theodore Roosevelt's White House and the inspiration for the character of Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls.
Calamity later claimed she was so upset by Hickok's murder that she went after his killer with a meat cleaver, having left her guns at her residence. According to historical accounts, however, her story is more fiction than fact.
Crazy Horse received a black stone from a medicine man named Woptura to protect his horse, a black-and-white pinto he named Inyan, meaning "rock" or "stone". He placed the stone behind the horse's ear so that he and his horse would be one in battle. He believed the sacred stone would protect him from bullets. Subsequently, Crazy Horse was never wounded by a bullet.
On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, Belle was ambushed and killed while riding home from a neighbor's house in Eufaula, Oklahoma. According to legend, she was shot with her own double barrel shotgun. Suspects included her husband and both of her children, but the case was never solved.
At a March 1884 performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, sharpshooter Annie Oakley befriended the Lakota leader Sitting Bull who had defeated Custer eight years earlier at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Believing that Annie was "gifted" by supernatural means in order to shoot so accurately with both hands, the Native American chief sent $65 to her hotel with a request for an autographed photograph. "I sent him back his money and a photograph, with my love, and a message to say I would call the following morning," Oakley later recalled. "The old man was so pleased with me, he insisted upon adopting me, and I was then and there christened 'Watanya Cicilla,' or 'Little Sure Shot.'"
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