If the influence of the cattle industry was paramount in the development
of the frontier region found by the first railways, it should not be
concluded that this upthrust of the southern cattle constituted the
only contribution to the West of that day. There were indeed earlier
influences, the chief of which was the advent of the wild population of
the placer mines. The riches of the gold-fields hastened the building of
the first transcontinental railroads and the men of the mines set their
mark also indelibly upon the range.
It is no part of our business here to follow the great discoveries of
1849 in California. * Neither shall we chronicle the once-famous rushes
from California north into the Fraser River Valley of British Columbia;
neither is it necessary to mention in much detail the great camps of
Nevada; nor yet the short-lived stampede of 1859 to the Pike's Peak
country in Colorado. The rich placer fields of Idaho and Montana, from
which enormous amounts were taken, offer typical examples of the mining
communities of the Rockies.
* See Stewart Edward White: "The Forty-Niners" ("Chronicles of
America").
We may never know how much history remains forever unwritten. Of the
beginnings of the Idaho camps there have trickled back into record only
brief, inconsequent, and partial stories. The miners who surged this
way and that all through the Sierras, the upper Cascades, north into the
Selkirks, and thence back again into the Rockies were a turbulent mob.
Having overrun all our mountain ranges, following the earlier trails of
the traders and trappers, they now recoiled upon themselves and rolled
back eastward to meet the advancing civilization of the westbound rails,
caring nothing for history and less for the civilized society in which
they formerly had lived. This story of bedlam broken loose, of men gone
crazed, by the sudden subversion of all known values and all standards
of life, was at first something which had no historian and can be
recorded only by way of hearsay stories which do not always tally as to
the truth.
The mad treasure-hunters of the California mines, restless,
insubordinate, incapable of restraint, possessed of the belief that
there might be gold elsewhere than in California, and having heard
reports of strikes to the north, went hurrying out into the mountains of
Oregon and Washington, in a wild stampede, all eager again to engage in
the glorious gamble where by one lucky stroke of the pick a man might be
set free of the old limitations of human existence.
So the flood of gold-seekers--passing north into the Fraser River
country, south again into Oregon and Washington, and across the great
desert plains into Nevada and Idaho--made new centers of lurid activity,
such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it was that Walla Walla
and Lewiston, outfitting points on the western side of the range, found
place upon the maps of the land, such as they were.
Before these adventurers, now eastbound and no longer facing west, there
arose the vast and formidable mountain ranges which in their time had
daunted even the calm minds of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. But
the prospectors and the pack-trains alike penetrated the Salmon River
Range. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes were
to be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West,
conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought in whiskey, women, pianos,
food, mining-tools. Naturally all these commanded fabulous prices.
The price for each and all lay underfoot. Man, grown superman, could
overleap time itself by a stroke of the pick! What wonder delirium
reigned!
These events became known in the Mississippi Valley and farther
eastward. And now there came hurrying out from the older regions
many more hundreds and thousands eager to reach a land not so far
as California, but reputed to be quite as rich. It was then, as the
bull-trains came in from the East, from the head of navigation on the
Missouri River, that the western outfitting points of Walla Walla and
Lewiston lost their importance.
Southward of the Idaho camps the same sort of story was repeating
itself. Nevada had drawn to herself a portion of the wild men of the
stampedes. Carson for its day (1859-60) was a capital not unlike the
others. Some of its men had come down from the upper fields, some had
arrived from the East over the old Santa Fe Trail, and yet others had
drifted in from California.
All the camps were very much alike. A straggling row of log cabins or
huts of motley construction; a few stores so-called, sometimes of logs,
or, if a saw-mill was at hand, of rude sawn boards; a number of saloons,
each of which customarily also supported a dance-hall; a series of
cabins or huts where dwelt individual men, each doing his own cooking
and washing; and outside these huts the uptorn earth--such were the
camps which dotted the trails of the stampedes across inhospitable
deserts and mountain ranges. Church and school were unknown. Law there
was none, for of organized society there was none. The women who lived
there were unworthy of the name of woman. The men strode about in
the loose dress of the camp, sometimes without waistcoat, sometimes
coatless, shod with heavy boots, always armed.
If we look for causes contributory to the history of the mining-camp, we
shall find one which ordinarily is overlooked--the invention of Colt's
revolving pistol. At the time of the Civil War, though this weapon was
not old, yet it had attained very general use throughout the frontier.
That was before the day of modern ammunition. The six-shooter of the
placer days was of the old cap-and-ball type, heavy, long-barreled, and
usually wooden-handled. It was the general ownership of these deadly
weapons which caused so much bloodshed in the camps. The revolver in
the hands of a tyro is not especially serviceable, but it attained great
deadliness in the hands of an expert user. Such a man, naturally of
quick nerve reflexes, skillful and accurate in the use of the
weapon through long practice, became a dangerous, and for a time an
unconquerable, antagonist.
It is a curious fact that the great Montana fields were doubly
discovered, in part by men coming east from California, and in part by
men passing west in search of new gold-fields. The first discovery of
gold in Montana was made on Gold Creek by a half-breed trapper named
Francois, better known as Be-net-see. This was in 1852, but the news
seems to have lain dormant for a time--naturally enough, for there was
small ingress or egress for that wild and unknown country. In 1857,
however, a party of miners who had wandered down the Big Hole River on
their way back east from California decided to look into the Gold Creek
discovery, of which they had heard. This party was led by James and
Granville Stuart, and among others in the party were Jake Meeks, Robert
Hereford, Robert Dempsey, John W. Powell, John M. Jacobs, Thomas Adams,
and some others. These men did some work on Gold Creek in 1858, but seem
not to have struck it very rich, and to have withdrawn to Fort Bridger
in Utah until the autumn of 1860. Then a prospector by the name of Tom
Golddigger turned up at Bridger with additional stories of creeks to the
north, so that there was a gradual straggling back toward Gold Creek and
other gulches. This prospector had been all over the Alder Gulch, which
was ere long to prove fabulously rich.
It was not, however, until 1863 that the Montana camps sprang into
fame. It was not Gold Creek or Alder Gulch, but Florence and other
Idaho camps, that, in the summer and autumn of 1862, brought into the
mountains no less than five parties of gold-seekers, who remained in
Montana because they could not penetrate the mountain barrier which lay
between them and the Salmon River camps in Idaho.
The first of these parties arrived at Gold Creek by wagon-train from
Fort Benton and the second hailed from Salt Lake. An election was held
for the purpose of forming a sort of community organization, the first
election ever known in Montana. The men from the East had brought with
them some idea of law and organization. There were now in the Montana
fields many good men such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser,
Walter Dance, and others later well known in the State. These men were
prominent in the organization of the first miners' court, which had
occasion to try--and promptly to hang--Stillman and Jernigan, two
ruffians who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about four
days when they thus met retribution for their early crimes. An
associate of theirs, Arnett, had been killed while resisting arrest.
The reputation of Florence for lawlessness and bloodshed was well known;
and, as the outrages of the well-organized band of desperadoes operating
in Idaho might be expected to begin at any time in Montana, a certain
uneasiness existed among the newcomers from the States.
Two more parties, likewise bound for Idaho and likewise baffled by the
Salmon River range, arrived at the Montana camps in the same summer.
Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in Colorado. And in the
autumn came a fifth--this one under military protection, Captain James
L. Fisk commanding, and having in the party a number of settlers bound
for Oregon as well as miners for Idaho. This expedition arrived in the
Prickly Pear Valley in Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St.
Paul on the 16th of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While
Captain Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of
the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the
yield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their original
destination, still awaited them. Winter was approaching. It was now too
late in the season to reach the Salmon River mines, five hundred miles
across the mountains, and it was four hundred miles to Salt Lake, the
nearest supply post; therefore, most of the men joined this little
army of prospectors in Montana. Some of them drifted to the Grasshopper
diggings, soon to be known under the name of Bannack--one of the wildest
mining-camps of its day.
These different origins of the population of the first Montana camps are
interesting because of the fact that they indicate a difference in the
two currents of population which now met here in the new placer fields.
In general the wildest and most desperate of the old-time adventurers,
those coming from the West, had located in the Idaho camps, and might
be expected in Montana at any time. In contrast to these, the men lately
out from the States were of a different type, many of them sober, most
of them law-abiding, men who had come out to better their fortunes and
not merely to drop into the wild and licentious life of a placercamp.
Law and order always did prevail eventually in any mining community.
In the case of Montana, law and order arrived almost synchronously with
lawlessness and desperadoism.
Law and order had not long to wait before the arrival of the notorious
Henry Plummer and his band from Florence. Plummer was already known as
a bad man, but was not yet recognized as the leader of that secret
association of robbers and murderers which had terrorized the Idaho
camps. He celebrated his arrival in Bannack by killing a man named
Cleveland. He was acquitted in the miners' court that tried him, on
the usual plea of self-defense. He was a man of considerable personal
address.
The same tribunal soon assembled once more to try three other murderers,
Moore, Reeves, and Mitchell, with the agreement that the men should have
a jury and should be provided with counsel. They were all practically
freed; and after that the roughs grew bolder than ever. The Plummer band
swore to kill every man who had served in that court, whether as juryman
or officer. So well did they make good their threat that out of the
twenty-seven men thus engaged all but seven were either killed or driven
out of the country, nine being murdered outright. The man who had acted
as sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly hounded
by Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on him. Plummer
was the best shot in the mountains at that time, and he thought it
would be easy for him to kill his man and enter the usual plea of
self-defense. By good fortune, however, Crawford caught Plummer off his
guard and fired upon him with a rifle, breaking his right arm. Plummer's
friends called in Dr. Glick, the best physician in Bannack, to treat
the wounded man, warning him that if he told anything about the visit
he would be shot down. Glick held his peace, and later was obliged to
attend many of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairs
with firearms.
Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted, and
of the stern ways in which retribution overtook the desperadoes of
the mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P. Langford, a
prominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland expedition
of 1862 and took part in the earliest life of Montana. His work,
"Vigilante Days and Ways," is an invaluable contemporary record.
It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these scenes,
although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil War. "Life in
Bannack at this time," says Langford, "was perfect isolation from the
rest of the world. Napoleon was not more of an exile on St. Helena than
a newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakes
and mountains. All the great battles of the season of 1862--Antietam,
Fredericksburg, Second Bull Run--all the exciting debates of Congress,
and the more exciting combats at sea, first became known to us on the
arrival of newspapers and letters in the spring of 1863."
The Territory of Idaho, which included Montana and nearly all Wyoming,
was organized March 3, 1863. Previous to that time western Montana and
Idaho formed a part of Washington Territory, of which Olympia was the
capital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territory
of Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri. Langford
makes clear the political uncertainties of the time, the difficulty
of enforcing the laws, and narrates the circumstances which led to the
erection in 1864 of the new Territory of Montana, comprising the limits
of the present State. *
* The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admitting
States are milestones in the occupation of this last West. On the eve of
the Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, the
Territories of Colorado, Nevada, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana
were organized, and Nevada was admitted as a State. Immediately after
the war, Nebraska was admitted and Wyoming was organized as a Territory.
In the Centennial Year (1876) Colorado became a State. In 1889 and 1890
North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were
admitted as States. In the latter year Oklahoma was carved out of the
Indian Territory. Utah with its Mormon population was kept waiting at
the doors of the Union until 1896. Oklahoma became a State in 1907;
Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912.
In Montana as elsewhere in these days of great sectional bitterness,
there was much political strife; and this no doubt accounts for an
astonishing political event that now took place. Henry Plummer, the most
active outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with the
enforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of enforcing the
laws. He married, settled down, and for a time was thought by some of
the ill-advised to have reformed his ways, although in truth he could
not have reformed.
By June, 1863, the extraordinarily rich strike in Alder Gulch had been
made. The news of this spread like wildfire to Bannack and to the Salmon
River mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercest
of all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City.
Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle
on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack
Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This made
travel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the rich
Last Chance Gulch on which the city of Helena now stands attracted a
tremendous population almost at once. The historian above cited lived
there. Let him tell of the life.
"One long stream of active life filled the little creek on its
auriferous course from Bald Mountain, through a canyon of wild and
picturesque character, until it emerged into the large and fertile
valley of the Pas-sam-a-ri... the mountain stream called by Lewis and
Clark in their journal 'Philanthropy River.' Lateral streams of great
beauty pour down the sides of the mountain chain bounding the valley....
Gold placers were found upon these streams and occupied soon after the
settlement at Virginia City was commenced.... This human hive, numbering
at least ten thousand people, was the product of ninety days. Into
it were crowded all the elements of a rough and active civilization.
Thousands of cabins and tents and brush wakiups... were seen on every
hand. Every foot of the gulch... was undergoing displacement, and it was
already disfigured by huge heaps of gravel which had been passed
through the sluices and rifled of their glittering contents.... Gold was
abundant, and every possible device was employed by the gamblers, the
traders, the vile men and women that had come in with the miners into
the locality, to obtain it. Nearly every third cabin was a saloon where
vile whiskey was peddled out for fifty cents a drink in gold dust.
Many of these places were filled with gambling tables and gamblers....
Hurdy-gurdy dance-houses were numerous.... Not a day or night passed
which did not yield its full fruition of vice, quarrels, wounds, or
murders. The crack of the revolver was often heard above the merry notes
of the violin. Street fights were frequent, and as no one knew when
or where they would occur, every one was on his guard against a random
shot.
"Sunday was always a gala day.... The stores were all open.... Thousands
of people crowded the thoroughfares ready to rush in the direction
of any promised excitement. Horse-racing was among the most favored
amusements. Prize rings were formed, and brawny men engaged in
fisticuffs until their sight was lost and their bodies pommelled to
a jelly, while hundreds of onlookers cheered the victor.... Pistols
flashed, bowie knives flourished, and braggart oaths filled the air, as
often as men's passions triumphed over their reason. This was indeed
the reign of unbridled license, and men who at first regarded it with
disgust and terror, by constant exposure soon learned to become a part
of it and forget that they had ever been aught else. All classes of
society were represented at this general exhibition. Judges, lawyers,
doctors, even clergymen, could not claim exemption. Culture and religion
afforded feeble protection, where allurement and indulgence ruled the
hour."
Imagine, therefore, a fabulously rich mountain valley twelve miles in
extent, occupied by more than ten thousand men and producing more than
ten millions of dollars before the close of the first year! It is a
stupendous demand on any imagination. How might all this gold be sent
out in safe-keeping? We are told that the only stage route extended from
Virginia City no farther than Bannack. Between Virginia City and Salt
Lake City there was an absolute wilderness, wholly unsettled, four
hundred and seventy-five miles in width. "There was no post office in
the Territory. Letters were brought from Salt Lake first at a cost of
two dollars and a half each, and later in the season at one dollar each.
All money at infinite risk was sent to the nearest express office at
Salt Lake City by private hands."
Practically every man in the new gold-fields was aware of the existence
of a secret band of well-organized ruffians and robbers. The general
feeling was one of extreme uneasiness. There were plenty of men who had
taken out of the ground considerable quantities of gold, and who would
have been glad to get back to the East with their little fortunes, but
they dared not start. Time after time the express coach, the solitary
rider, the unguarded wagon-train, were held up and robbed, usually with
the concomitant of murder. When the miners did start out from one camp
to another they took all manner of precautions to conceal their gold
dust. We are told that on one occasion one party bored a hole in the end
of the wagon tongue with an auger and filled it full of gold dust, thus
escaping observation! The robbers learned to know the express agents,
and always had advice of every large shipment of gold. It was almost
useless to undertake to conceal anything from them; and resistance was
met with death. Such a reign of terror, such an organized system of
highway robbery, such a light valuing of human life, has been seldom
found in any other time or place.
There were, as we have seen, good men in these camps--although the best
of them probably let down the standards of living somewhat after their
arrival there; but the trouble was that the good men did not know one
another, had no organization, and scarcely dared at first to attempt
one. On the other hand, the robbers' organization was complete and kept
its secrets as the grave; indeed, many and many a lonesome grave held
secrets none ever was to know. How many men went out from Eastern States
and disappeared, their fate always to remain a mystery, is a part of the
untold story of the mining frontier.
There are known to have been a hundred and two men killed by Plummer
and his gang; how many were murdered without their fate ever being
discovered can not be told. Plummer was the leader of the band, but,
arch-hypocrite that he was, he managed to keep his own connection with
it a secret. His position as sheriff gave him many advantages. He posed
as being a silver-mine expert, among other things, and often would be
called out to "expert" some new mine. That usually meant that he left
town in order to commit some desperate robbery. The boldest outrages
always required Plummer as the leader. Sometimes he would go away on
the pretense of following some fugitive from justice. His horse, the
fleetest in the country, often was found, laboring and sweating, at the
rear of his house. That meant that Plummer had been away on some secret
errand of his own. He was suspected many times, but nothing could be
fastened upon him; or there lacked sufficient boldness and sufficient
organization on the part of the law-and-order men to undertake his
punishment.
We are not concerned with repeating thrilling tales, bloody almost
beyond belief, and indicative of an incomprehensible depravity in human
nature, so much as we are with the causes and effects of this wild
civilization which raged here quite alone in the midst of one of the
wildest of the western mountain regions. It will best serve our purpose
to retain in mind the twofold character of this population, and to
remember that the frontier caught to itself not only ruffians and
desperadoes, men undaunted by any risk, but also men possessed of a yet
steadier personal courage and hardihood. There were men rough, coarse,
brutal, murderous; but against them were other men self-reliant, stern,
just, and resolved upon fair play.
That was indeed the touchstone of the entire civilization which followed
upon the heels of these scenes of violence. It was fair play which
really animated the great Montana Vigilante movement and which
eventually cleaned up the merciless gang of Henry Plummer and his
associates. The centers of civilization were far removed. The courts
were powerless. In some cases even the machinery of the law was in the
hands of these ruffians. But so violent were their deeds, so brutal, so
murderous, so unfair, that slowly the indignation of the good men arose
to the white-hot point of open resentment and of swift retribution. What
the good men of the frontier loved most of all was justice. They now
enforced justice in the only way left open to them. They did this as
California earlier had done; and they did it so well that there was
small need to repeat the lesson.
The actual extermination of the Henry Plummer band occurred rather
promptly when the Vigilantes once got under way. One of the band by the
name of Red Yager, in company with yet another by the name of Brown,
had been concerned in the murder of Lloyd Magruder, a merchant of the
Territory. The capture of these two followed closely upon the hanging of
George Ives, also accused of more than one murder. Ives was an example
of the degrading influence of the mines. He was a decent young man until
he left his home in Wisconsin. He was in California from 1857 to 1858.
When he appeared in Idaho he seemed to have thrown off all restraint and
to have become a common rowdy and desperado. It is said of him that "few
men of his age ever had been guilty of so many fiendish crimes."
Yager and Brown, knowing the fate which Ives had met, gave up hope when
they fell into the hands of the newly organized Vigilantes. Brown
was hanged; so was Yager; but Yager, before his death, made a full
confession which put the Vigilantes in possession of information they
had never yet been able to secure. *
* Langford gives these names disclosed by Yager as follows:
"Henry Plummer was chief of the band; Bill Bunton, stool pigeon and
second in command; George Brown, secretary; Sam Bunton, roadster;
Cyrus Skinner, fence, spy, and roadster; George Shears, horse thief and
roadster; Frank Parish, horse thief and roadster; Hayes Lyons, telegraph
man and roadster; Bill Hunter, telegraph man and roadster; Ned Ray,
council-room keeper at Bannack City; George Ives, Stephen Marshland,
Dutch John (Wagner), Alex Carter, Whiskey Bill (Graves), Johnny Cooper,
Buck Stinson, Mexican Frank, Bob Zachary, Boone Helm, Clubfoot George
(Lane), Billy Terwiliger, Gad Moore were roadsters." Practically all
these were executed by the Vigilantes, with many others, and eventually
the band of outlaws was entirely broken up.
Much has been written and much romanced about the conduct of these
desperadoes when they met their fate. Some of them were brave and some
proved cowards at the last. For a time, Plummer begged abjectly, his
eyes streaming with tears. Suddenly he was smitten with remorse as
the whole picture of his past life appeared before him. He promised
everything, begged everything, if only life might be spared him--asked
his captors to cut off his ears, to cut out his tongue, then strip him
naked and banish him. At the very last, however, he seems to have become
composed. Stinson and Ray went to their fate alternately swearing and
whining. Some of the ruffians faced death boldly. More than one himself
jumped from the ladder or kicked from under him the box which was the
only foothold between him and eternity. Boone Helm was as hardened as
any of them. This man was a cannibal and murderer. He seems to have had
no better nature whatever. His last words as he sprang off were "Hurrah
for Jeff Davis! Let her rip!" Another man remarked calmly that he cared
no more for hanging than for drinking a glass of water. But each after
his own fashion met the end foreordained for him by his own lack of
compassion; and of compassion he received none at the hands of the men
who had resolved that the law should be established and should remain
forever.
There was an instant improvement in the social life of Virginia City,
Bannack, and the adjoining camps as soon as it was understood that the
Vigilantes were afoot. Langford, who undoubtedly knew intimately of the
activities of this organization, makes no apology for the acts of the
Vigilantes, although they did not have back of them the color of the
actual law. He says:
"The retribution dispensed to these daring freebooters in no respect
exceeded the demands of absolute justice.... There was no other remedy.
Practically the citizens had no law, but if law had existed it could
not have afforded adequate redress. This was proven by the feeling of
security consequent upon the destruction of the band. When the robbers
were dead the people felt safe, not for themselves alone but for their
pursuits and their property. They could travel without fear. They had
reasonable assurance of safety in the transmission of money to the
States and in the arrival of property over the unguarded route from Salt
Lake. The crack of pistols had ceased, and they could walk the streets
without constant exposure to danger. There was an omnipresent spirit of
protection, akin to that omnipresent spirit of law which pervaded older
and more civilized communities.... Young men who had learned to believe
that the roughs were destined to rule and who, under the influence of
that faith, were fast drifting into crime shrunk appalled before the
thorough work of the Vigilantes. Fear, more potent than conscience,
forced even the worst of men to observe the requirements of society, and
a feeling of comparative security among all classes was the result."
Naturally it was not the case that all the bad men were thus
exterminated. From time to time there appeared vividly in the midst of
these surroundings additional figures of solitary desperadoes, each to
have his list of victims, and each himself to fall before the weapons of
his enemies or to meet the justice of the law or the sterner meed of the
Vigilantes. It would not be wholly pleasant to read even the names of
a long list of these; perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, the
notorious Joseph Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom a
great deal of inaccurate and puerile history has been written. The
truth about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in the
discharge of his duties as an agent of the stage company. Needing at
times to use violence lawfully, he then began to use it unlawfully. He
drank and soon went from bad to worse. At length his outrages became so
numerous that the men of the community took him out and hanged him. His
fate taught many others the risk of going too far in defiance of law and
decency.
What has been true regarding the camps of Florence, Bannack, and
Virginia City, had been true in part in earlier camps and was to be
repeated perhaps a trifle less vividly in other camps yet to come. The
Black Hills gold rush, for instance, which came after the railroad
but before the Indians were entirely cleared away, made a certain
wild history of its own. We had our Deadwood stage line then, and
our Deadwood City with all its wild life of drinking, gambling, and
shooting--the place where more than one notorious bad man lost his life,
and some capable officers of the peace shared their fate. To describe in
detail the life of this stampede and the wild scenes ensuing upon it is
perhaps not needful here. The main thing is that the great quartz lodes
of the Black Hills support in the end a steady, thrifty, and law-abiding
population.
All over that West, once so unspeakably wild and reckless, there now
rise great cities where recently were scattered only mining-camps scarce
fit to be called units of any social compact. It was but yesterday
that these men fought and drank and dug their own graves in their own
sluices. At the city of Helena, on the site of Last Chance Gulch,
one recalls that not so long ago citizens could show with a certain
contemporary pride the old dead tree once known as "Hangman's Tree." It
marked a spot which might be called a focus of the old frontier. Around
it, and in the country immediately adjoining, was fought out the great
battle whose issue could not be doubted--that between the new and the
old days; between law and order and individual lawlessness; between
the school and the saloon; between the home and the dance-hall; between
society united and resolved and the individual reverted to worse than
savagery.