CALIFORNIA JIM: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

CALIFORNIA JIM – The Frontierado Holiday is coming up on Friday, August 4th, so here is another blog post in honor of the season. California Jim was also known as Six-Shooter Jim Smith and Six-Shooter Bill, but on his deathbed, he claimed that his real name was John Henry Hankins (some sources say Jankins or Hawkins).

A large part of California Jim’s history is known only from that deathbed confession, with periodic news reports or journals offering supplementary information. Jim was born around 1856 in either Texas or Missouri, depending on which source you go by.

In his teens, California Jim supposedly went to California, where he spent some of the 1870s pulling off masked robberies of gold shipments and mine payrolls. By 1877 or 1878, this man had wandered back to Texas, where he shot to death a man in Cooke County and took it on the run.

Jim lingered in Dodge City, Kansas for a time, committing various crimes. On August 17th, 1878 Deputy Marshal Bat Masterson himself arrested California Jim for stealing a horse.

For unknown reasons, our gunslinger was not sentenced over this crime and continued fraternizing with other Dodge City desperadoes like Dirty Dave Rudabaugh and Mysterious Dave Mather. The summer of 1879 saw plenty of Dodge City criminals, California Jim among them, gravitate to newly thriving Las Vegas, New Mexico where they joined Hoodoo Brown’s organized crime outfit.

That group was called the Dodge City Gang despite operating in Las Vegas and also included figures like Dutch Henry, Bullshit Jack and many others. California Jim served in train robberies, stagecoach holdups, horse theft and possibly additional crimes during that time.

By this point, Jim had gained a reputation for being a deadly gunfighter and for indulging in an activity that would become a western cliche – shooting at the feet of victims in order to make them “dance.” 

Las Vegas, NM became notorious for its lawlessness, with respected New Mexico Governor Miguel Otero publicly noting that in just one month twenty-nine people had been killed in that city. On April 8th, 1880, the law-abiding citizens of Las Vegas showed they had had enough by forming a vigilante group and running an ad in the Las Vegas Optic newspaper warning the area’s criminals to leave town or lose their lives.

After a few Las Vegas outlaws were lynched by anonymous vigilantes, Hoodoo Brown and his surviving gang members scattered to different parts of the west. California Jim wound up in Tombstone, Arizona for a time and served in ad hoc rustling gangs for the Clanton-McLaury Crime Faction. He is known to have gunned down at least one man in Benson, AZ, a city connected to Tombstone by rail. 

In November 1881, Hankins/ Jankins/ Hawkins was involved in a vicious gun battle between rustlers and San Simon Valley ranchers trying to protect their herds. During this time period, Jim was also running the rackets in Mimbres, NM, either as his own gang or as a satellite operation of the Clanton-McLaury Faction.

The year 1882 saw California Jim trying to expand his Mimbres operation to San Marcial, NM but he was ultimately driven out of town by organized opposition. Forced to flee without funds on him and being wanted by the law throughout New Mexico and Arizona Territories, Jim decided to lie low in Laredo, TX.   

He worked in the Beehive Restaurant doing kitchen work, including washing dishes until earning his first paycheck. The outlaw then took that pay on July 17th, 1882 and returned to the cafe, where he took out his accumulated resentments against his boss, making him “dance” by shooting at the ground near the terrified man’s feet.

Deputy Marshal A.A. Johnson arrived on the scene to put a stop to this, but California Jim shot him in the resulting gunfight and fled town. Johnson lingered before dying on July 19th at 3:00am. This added an additional $300.00 bounty (equal to $10,000 today) on Jim’s head.

The day before, Jim had been surrounded twenty miles outside Laredo by the local lawmen, but held them at bay until nightfall in the hours-long gunfight that followed. Overnight, the wily outlaw slipped away without any of the besieging law enforcement agents realizing it until daybreak. 

California Jim headed north in a hurry, and before long pulled off an armed robbery of the railroad station agent in Cactus, TX. During August, with multiple posses closing in on him, Jim was sighted in Cibolo, TX and was said to be trying to make San Antonio.

After exchanging gunfire with a pair of Texas Rangers somewhere near Cibolo, California Jim was cornered by other pursuers in the brush outside Millett, TX. Former Texas Ranger Charley Smith and his 17-year-old ranch hand Wesley DeSpain, hoping to collect the reward money on Jim’s head, shot it out with him there.

California Jim shot DeSpain to death and mortally wounded Smith, who had seriously wounded the outlaw in the battle. The closest pursuing posse arrived and took all three figures to Millett for medical care.

Charley Smith died on August 25th. California Jim was beyond saving as well, and on his deathbed a few days before, bequeathed his gun to the still-lingering Smith, gave his real name and confessed to killing seventeen men. He also informed those at his bedside about the additional rewards on his head in New Mexico and Arizona so that his killer could collect on that money, too.

That was the end for California Jim and his aliases, at the ripe old age of 26.