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The Man They Called Medicine Bill

True West Magazine “Who was California Joe?” asked J.W. Buel in his Heroes of the Plains published in 1882, for Joe’s origin was as much a mystery to his contemporaries as it was for many who came later. Some claimed his name was Joseph Milner (favored by Buffalo Bill Cody) or Joseph Hawkins, and others claimed that he was Truman Head, the famous “California Joe” of Col. Hiram Berdan’s Civil War Sharpshooters. Even Custer admitted that he did not know Joe’s real name, for “no other name seemed ever to have been given him, and no other name ever seemed necessary.”