Poker & Pop Culture: The First Hand Report — Quad Aces v. Quad Kings!

Long before poker came to be, cards and gambling already had achieved considerable notoriety. Just as the first version of the game appearing in the American south in the early 1800s combined elements of other card games, so, too, did poker inherit from those earlier games a kind of outlaw status right from the very start.

Poker was dangerous. Unsafe. Of uncertain legality. A threat to individuals and perhaps society as a whole. At best an idle waste of time and at worst a way to lose whatever you were willing to risk in the game and maybe even more than that.

In fact, by the time we find the earliest reference to poker in print — a first reflection on the game by the culture — we discover many of the hallmarks of poker’s dark, dangerous character turning up in this very first poker story.

Poker News from the Frontier

In the spring of 1833, Congress created a new military organization called the United States Regiment of Dragoons. Its duties included exploring the Mississippi Valley to seek treaties with Native American tribes while also defending the already established frontier.

Over that summer officers were recruited to serve from every state in the Union, all 24 of them. By year’s end five companies’ worth of men belonging to what would subsequently be called the “First Regiment of Dragoons” were sent to Fort Gibson in the Arkansas Territory, with five more companies joining them the following spring.

Accounts of the First Regiment’s campaigns started appearing shortly after they were conducted, including an official one kept in journal form by Lieutenant T.B. Wheelock. In 1836 a lively telling of the First Regiment of Dragoons’ story was produced with title Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains; Being a History of the Enlistment, Organization, and First Campaigns of the Regiment of United States Dragoons; Together With Incidents of a Soldier’s Life, and Sketches of Scenery and Indian Character.

Published by New York City booksellers Wiley & Long, the book presents a series of letters written anonymously “BY A DRAGOON” from August 1833 to the fall of 1834. They contain a full and occasionally critical picture of the regiment’s organization and operation during this period.

Drawing largely from his own experience, the author of the Dragoon Campaigns supports his narrative with additional material from his various correspondents, from Lt. Wheelock’s journal, and from others’ accounts. The letter-writer describes himself as hailing from western New York, one of a few clues along with his age that have led some to identify a young soldier named James Hildreth as the author.

Some have disputed such attribution thanks in part to the book’s inclusion of material describing later campaigns in which Hildreth himself did not take part. They think another, older veteran of the campaigns originally from England named William L. Gordon-Miller is the true author, with Hildreth perhaps having merely been only involved in the book’s sale to Wiley & Long.

In any event, among the letters appearing in Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains is one written from Fort Gibson during the spring of 1834 relating “an occurrence” thought by the author to provide “a little amusing material.”

It’s a minor episode in the context of the account, but an important one for the history of poker.

A Big Hand, and a Major Blow-Up

The story begins with a small group of officers discussing …

continue reading in source www.pokernews.com