VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
WONDERS OF THE YELLOWSTONE
in _Scribner’s Magazine_
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT HAYDEN
in _Scribner’s Magazine_
[Illustration: _Nathaniel P. Langford._]
VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
THE PIONEERS OF THE ROCKIES
THE MAKERS AND MAKING OF MONTANA AND IDAHO
BY
NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1890.
BY NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD.
_All Rights Reserved._
COPYRIGHT,
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1912
W. G. Hull Printing Company
Chicago
[Illustration: “_Why doesn’t he write?_”]
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF THOSE
Unknown Pioneers
WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN LAYING
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE
Empire
OF THE
New Great West.
“_One of the chief temptations of
the Devil is that he can persuade a
man that he can write a book, by
which he can achieve both wealth and
fame._”—CERVANTES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
I HENRY PLUMMER 19
II SOCIETY IN LEWISTON 26
III NORTHERN MINES 34
IV CHARLEY HARPER 40
V CHEROKEE BOB 45
VI FLORENCE 53
VII FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE 60
VIII NEW GOLD DISCOVERIES 64
IX DESERTION OF MINING CAMPS 69
X BOONE HELM 74
XI DEATH OF CHARLEY HARPER 87
XII PINKHAM AND PATTERSON 91
XIII EARLY DISCOVERIES OF GOLD 111
XIV CAPTAIN FISK’S EXPEDITION 122
XV BANNACK IN 1862 130
XVI MOORE AND REEVES 137
XVII CRAWFORD AND PHLEGER 148
XVIII BROADWATER’S STRATAGEM 163
XIX ORGANIZATION OF THE ROUGHS 171
XX A MASONIC FUNERAL 181
XXI BATTLE OF BEAR RIVER 195
XXII ALDER GULCH 206
XXIII VIRGINIA CITY 221
XXIV COACH ROBBERIES 232
XXV LEROY SOUTHMAYD 244
XXVI JOURNEY TO SALT LAKE CITY 255
XXVII COL. SANDERS AND GALLAGHER 266
XXVIII ROBBERY OF MOODY’S TRAIN 279
XXIX GEORGE IVES 285
XXX TRIAL OF GEORGE IVES 298
XXXI RESULT OF IVES’S EXECUTION 305
XXXII LLOYD MAGRUDER 318
XXXIII HILL BEACHY 331
XXXIV HOWIE AND FETHERSTUN 349
XXXV EXECUTION OF PLUMMER 360
XXXVI DEATH OF PIZANTHIA 367
XXXVII EXECUTION OF DUTCH JOHN 371
XXXVIII VIRGINIA CITY EXECUTIONS 374
XXXIX PURSUIT OF ROAD AGENTS 389
XL EXECUTION OF HUNTER 400
XLI THE STRANGER’S STORY 407
XLII WHITE AND DORSETT 420
XLIII LANGFORD PEEL 429
XLIV JOSEPH A. SLADE 441
XLV A MODERN HAMAN 463
XLVI JAMES DANIELS 473
XLVII DAVID OPDYKE 476
XLVIII SAN ANDREAS IN 1849 485
XLIX AN INTERESTING ADVENTURE 492
L THE STAGE COACH 517
LI RETROSPECTION 537
INDEX 545
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
NATHANIEL P. LANGFORD _Frontispiece_
A PACK TRAIN: CINCHING 66
JAMES STUART, WHO SET THE FIRST SLUICES IN MONTANA 112
GRANVILLE STUART, WHO SET THE FIRST SLUICES IN MONTANA 116
CAPTAIN JAMES L. FISK, COMMANDER OF NORTHERN OVERLAND
EXPEDITION 124
JUDGE J. F. HOYT, MINERS’ JUDGE AT TRIAL OF MOORE AND
REEVES 144
JUDGE WALTER B. DANCE, MINERS’ JUDGE AT BANNACK 174
GENERAL P. E. CONNOR, COMMANDER AT BATTLE OF BEAR RIVER. 198
SAMUEL T. HAUSER, EX-GOVERNOR OF MONTANA 256
COLONEL WILBUR F. SANDERS, PRINCIPAL PROSECUTOR OF
GEORGE IVES 300
HILL BEACHY, LLOYD MAGRUDER’S AVENGER 332
NEIL HOWIE, CAPTOR OF “DUTCH JOHN” 352
JOHN FETHERSTUN, OVERLAND EXPRESS MESSENGER 358
A VIGILANTE EXECUTION 396
JOHN X. BEIDLER, LEADING VIGILANTE AND EXPRESS MESSENGER 464
INTRODUCTION
It is stated on good authority, that soon after the first appearance of
Schiller’s drama of “The Robbers” a number of young men, charmed with
the character of Charles De Moor, formed a band and went to the forests
of Bohemia to engage in brigand life. I have no fear that such will be
the influence of this volume. It deals in facts. Robber life as
delineated by the vivid fancy of Schiller, and robber life as it existed
in our mining regions, were as widely separated as fiction and truth. No
one can read this record of events, and escape the conviction that an
honest, laborious, and well-meaning life, whether successful or not, is
preferable to all the temporary enjoyments of a life of recklessness and
crime. The truth of the adage that “Crime carries with it its own
punishment” has never received a more powerful vindication than at the
tribunals erected by the people of the northwest mines for their
protection. No sadder commentary could have stained our civilization
than to permit the numerous and bloody crimes committed in the early
history of this portion of our country to go unwhipped of justice. And
the fact that they were promptly and thoroughly dealt with stands among
the earliest and noblest characteristics of a people which derived their
ideas of right and of self-protection from that spirit of the law that
flows spontaneously from our free institutions. The people bore with
crime until punishment became a duty and neglect a crime. Then, at
infinite hazard of failure, they entered upon the work of purgation with
a strong hand—and in the briefest possible time established the
supremacy of law. The robbers and murderers of the mining regions, so
long defiant of the claims of peace and safety, were made to hold the
gibbet in greater terror there than in any other portion of our country.
Up to this time, fear of punishment had exercised no restraining
influence on the conduct of men who had organized murder and robbery
into a steady pursuit. They hesitated at no atrocity necessary to
accomplish their guilty designs. Murder with them was resorted to as the
most available means of concealing robbery, and the two crimes were
generally coincident. The country, filled with cañons, gulches, and
mountain passes, was especially adapted to their purposes, and the
unpeopled distances between mining camps afforded ample opportunity for
carrying them into execution. Pack trains and companies, stage coaches
and express messengers, were as much exposed as the solitary traveller,
and often selected as objects of attack. Miners, who had spent months of
hard labor in the placers in the accumulation of a few hundreds of
dollars, were never heard of after they left the mines to return to
their distant homes. Men were daily and nightly robbed and murdered in
the camps. There was no limit to this system of organized brigandage.
When not engaged in robbery, this criminal population followed other
disreputable pursuits. Gambling and licentiousness were the most
conspicuous features of every mining camp, and both were but other
species of robbery. Worthless women taken from the stews of cities plied
their vocation in open day, and their bagnios were the lures where many
men were entrapped for robbery and slaughter. Dance-houses sprung up as
if by enchantment, and every one who sought an evening’s recreation in
them was in some way relieved of the money he took there. Many good men
who dared to give expression to the feelings of horror and disgust which
these exhibitions inspired, were shot down by some member of the gang on
the first opportunity. For a long time these acts were unnoticed, for
the reason that the friends of law and order supposed the power of evil
to be in the ascendant. Encouraged by this impunity the ruffian power
increased in audacity, and gave utterance to threats against all that
portion of the community which did not belong to its organization. An
issue involving the destruction of the good or bad element actually
existed at the time that the people entered upon the work of punishment.
I offer these remarks, not in vindication of all the acts of the
Vigilantes, but of so many of them as were necessary to establish the
safety and protection of the people. The reader will find among the
later acts of some of the individuals claiming to have exercised the
authority of the Vigilantes, some executions of which he cannot approve.
For these persons I can offer no apology. Many of these were worse men
than those they executed. Some were hasty and inconsiderate, and while
firm in the belief they were doing right, actually committed grievous
offences. Unhappily for the Vigilantes, the acts of these men have been
recalled to justify an opinion abroad, prejudicial to the Vigilante
organization. Nothing could be more unjust. The early Vigilantes were
the best and most intelligent men in the mining regions. They saw and
felt that, in the absence of all law, they must become a “law unto
themselves,” or submit to the bloody code of the banditti by which they
were surrounded, and which were increasing in numbers more rapidly than
themselves. Each man among them realized from the first the great
delicacy and care necessary in the management of a society which assumed
the right to condemn to death a fellow-man, and they now refer to the
history of all those men who suffered death by their decree as affording
ample justification for the severity of their acts. What else could they
do? How else were their own lives and property, and the lives and
property of the great body of peaceable miners in the placers to be
preserved? What other protection was there for a country entirely
destitute of law?
Let those who would condemn these men try to realize how they would act
under similar circumstances, and they will soon find everything to
approve and nothing to condemn in the transactions of the early
Vigilantes. I have endeavored to narrate nothing but facts, and these
will enable every reader to judge correctly of the merits of each case.
I would fain believe that this history, bloody as it is, will prove both
interesting and instructive. In all that concerns crime of the blackest
dye on the one hand, and love for law and order on the other, it stands
without a parallel in the annals of any people. Nowhere else, nor at any
former period since men became civilized, have murder and robbery and
social vice presented an organized front, and offered an open contest
for supremacy to a large civilized community. Their works for centuries
have been done by stealth, in darkness, and as far away from society as
possible. I cannot now remember the instance, within the past three
hundred years, when the history of any country records the fact that the
criminal element of an entire community, numbering thousands, was
believed to be greater than the peaceful element. Yet it was so here.
And when the Vigilantes of Montana entered upon their work, they did not
know how soon they might have to encounter a force numerically greater
than their own.
In my view the moral of this history is a good one. The brave and
faithful conduct of the Vigilantes furnishes an example of American
character, from a point of view entirely new. We know what our
countrymen were capable of doing when exposed to Indian massacre. We
have read history after history recording the sufferings of early
pioneers in the East, South, and West, but what they would do when
surrounded by robbers and assassins, who were in all civil aspects like
themselves, it has remained for the first settlers of the northwestern
mines to tell. And that they did their work well, and showed in every
act a love for law, order, and for the moral and social virtues in which
they had been educated, and a regard for our free institutions, no one
can doubt who rightly appreciates the motives which actuated them.
A people who had not been reared to respect law and order, and to regard
the privileges which flow from a free government as greater than all
others, in the regulation of society, would have been restrained by fear
from any such united and thorough effort as that which in Montana
actually scourged crime out of existence, and secured to an unorganized
community all the immunities and blessings of good government. The
terror which popular justice inspired in the criminal population has
never been forgotten. To this day crime has been less frequent in
occurrence in Montana than in any other of the new Territories, and no
banded criminals have made that Territory an abiding place.
Although not the first exhibition of Vigilante justice, the one I here
record was the most thorough and severe, and stands as an example for
all new settlements that in the future may be similarly afflicted, for
it was not until driven to it both by the frequent and unremitting
villainies of the ruffians, and by the necessities of a condition for
which there was no law in existence, that the people resorted to
measures of their own, and made and enforced laws suited to the
exigency. But enough! If the history fails to remove the prejudices of
my readers, nothing I can say will do so. It speaks for itself, and
though there are a few of its later occurrences I would gladly blot,
there is nothing in its early transactions, nothing in the design it
unfolds, nothing in the results which have followed, that on a similar
occasion I would not wish to see reproduced.
VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
CHAPTER I
HENRY PLUMMER
The Snake River or Lewis fork of the Columbia takes its rise in a small
lake which is separated by the main range of the Rocky Mountains from
the large lakes of the Yellowstone, that being less than twenty miles
distant from it. The Yellowstone, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin,
forming the head waters of the Missouri, and the Snake, the largest
tributary fork of the Columbia, all rise within or near the limits of
the territory recently dedicated by the Government to the purpose of a
National Park.
As contrasted with the large rivers of regions other than the one it
traverses, the Snake River would be a very remarkable stream, but there,
where everything in nature is wonderful, it is simply one of the marked
features in its physical geography. From its source to its junction with
the Clarke fork of the Columbia, a distance of nine hundred miles, it
flows through a region which, at some remote period, has been the scene
of greater volcanic action than any other portion of North America.
Unlike other streams, which are formed by rivulets and springs, this
river is scarcely less formidable in its appearance at its commencement
than at its termination. It leaps into rapids from the moment of its
exit, and its waters, blackened by the basaltic bed through which it
flows, roar and fret, and lash the sides of the gloomy cañon which it
enters, presenting a scene of tumult and fury, that extends far beyond
the limits of vision. This initiatory character it maintains, alternated
with occasional reaches of quiet large expansions, and narrow
contractions, fearful and tremendous cataracts, to its debouchure into
the Columbia. Its channel and its course, alike sinuous, have obtained
for it its name. Navigation is impeded by reason of fearful rapids,
every few miles of the first five hundred after leaving the lake. The
shores for most of the distance are barren rock, always precipitous,
often inaccessible from the river, and frequently engorged by lofty
mountains and rocky cañons which shut its inky surface from the light of
day. The scenery, though on the most tremendous scale, is savage,
unattractive, and frightful. Its waters lash the base of the three
Tetons, so celebrated as the great landmarks of this portion of the
continent. As they approach the Columbia they break into frequent
cataracts, the largest of which, the great Shoshone Fall, with a
perpendicular descent of two hundred and fifty feet, presents many
points of singular interest.
On the river, twelve miles above its mouth, at a point accessible from
the Columbia by small steamboats, stands the little village of Lewiston,
which, at the time of which I write, was the capital of all the vast
Territory that had been just organized under the euphonic name of Idaho.
This Territory then included Montana and Wyoming, which had not been
organized. Lewiston, being the nearest accessible point by water to the
recently discovered gold placers of Elk City, Oro Fino, Florence, and
Warner Creek, grew with the rapidity known only to mining towns into an
emporium. In less than three months from the time the first immigrants
commenced to establish a settlement there, several streets of more than
a mile in length were laid out, thickly covered on either side with
dwellings, stores, hotels, and saloons, chiefly constructed of common
factory cotton. A tenement of this kind could be extemporized in a few
hours. The frame was of light scantling or poles, and the cloth in most
cases fastened to it with tacks. Seen from a distance, the town had the
appearance of being built of white marble, but truly
“’T is distance lends enchantment to the view,”
for upon entering it the fragility of the material soon disabused the
vision and the admiration of the beholder. At night, when lights were
burning in these frail tenements, a stranger would think the town
illuminated. The number of drinking and gambling saloons was greatly in
excess of stores and private dwellings, and to nearly all of these was
attached that most important attraction of a mining town, the
hurdy-gurdy. The sound of the violin which struck the ear on entering
the street, was never lost while passing through it, and at many of the
saloons the evidence of the bacchanal orgies which were in progress
inside was often apparent in the eagerness exhibited by the crowd which
surrounded the building without. The voices of auctioneers on the street
corners, the shouts of frequent horsemen as they rode up and down the
streets, the rattle of vehicles arriving and departing for the miners’
camps, troops of miners, Indians, gamblers, the unmeaning babble of
numerous drunken men, the tawdrily apparelled dancing women of the
hurdy-gurdys, altogether presented a scene of life in an entirely new
aspect to the person who for the first time entered a mining town. It is
a feature of modern civilization which cannot elsewhere be found, search
the whole world over. The thirst for gold is shared by all classes.
Those who are unwilling to labor, in their efforts to obtain it by less
honorable means, flock to the mines to ply their guilty vocations. Hence
there is no vice unrepresented in a mining camp, and no type or shade of
character in civilized society that is not there publicly developed. The
misfortune is, as a general thing, that the worst elements, being most
popular, generally preponderate.
Our Civil War was raging at the time that Lewiston became a mining
emporium. Sympathizers with each party fled to the mines, to escape the
possible responsibilities they might incur by remaining in the States.
They carried their political views with them, and identified themselves
with those portions of society which reflected their respective
attachments. Loyalty and Secession each flourished by turn, and were the
prolific causes of frequent bloody dissensions. There was no law to
restrain human passion, so that each man was a law unto himself,
according as he was swayed by the evil or good of his own nature. The
temptations to evil, not so numerous, were much more powerful than were
ever before presented to a great majority of the immigrants. Gambling
and drinking were made attractive by the presence of debased women, who
lured to their ruin all who, fortunate in the possession of gold, could
not withstand their varied devices.
In the Spring of 1861, among the daily arrivals at Lewiston, was a man
of gentlemanly bearing and dignified deportment, accompanied by a woman,
to all appearance his wife. He took quarters at the best hotel in town.
Before the close of the second day after his arrival his character as a
gambler was fully understood, and in less than a fortnight his
abandonment of his female companion betrayed the illicit connection
which had existed between them. Alone, among strangers, destitute, the
poor woman told how she had been beguiled, by the promises of this man,
from home and family, and induced to link herself with his fortunes. A
fond husband and three helpless children mourned her loss by a
visitation worse than death. Lacking moral courage to return to her
heart-broken husband and ask forgiveness, she sought to drown her sorrow
by plunging still deeper into the abyss of shame and ruin. Soon, alas!
she became one of the lowest inmates of a frontier brothel. This latest
crime of Henry Plummer was soon forgotten, or remembered only as one of
many similar events which occur in mining camps.
He, meanwhile, in the pursuit of his profession as a gambler, formed the
acquaintance of many congenial spirits. From their subsequent operations
it was also apparent that at his instigation an alliance was formed with
them which had for its object the attainment of fortune by the most
desperate means. Every fortunate man in any of the mining camps was
marked as the prey, sooner or later, of this abandoned combination.
Every gambler or rough infesting the camp, either voluntarily or by
threats was induced to unite in the enterprise; and thus originated the
band of desperadoes which, for the succeeding two years, by their
fearful atrocities, spread such terror through the northern mines.
Plummer was their acknowledged leader.
Professional gamblers everywhere, in a new country, form a community by
themselves. They have few intimates outside of their own number. A sort
of tacit understanding among them links them together by certain implied
rules and regulations, which they readily obey. Of the same nature, we
may suppose, was the bond which united Plummer and his associates in
their infernal designs of plunder and butchery. The honor which thieves
accord each other, the prospect of unlimited reward for their vicious
deeds, and the certainty of condign punishment for any act of treachery,
secured the band and its purposes against any betrayal by its members.
Nowhere are the conventionalities of social life sooner abandoned than
in a mining camp. To call a man by his proper name there generally
implies that he is either a stranger or one with whom you do not care to
make acquaintance. The gamblers were generally known by diminutive
surnames or appellations significant of their characters. I shall so
designate those of them who were thus known, in this narrative.
Prominent among the associates of Plummer at Lewiston were Jack
Cleveland, Cherokee Bob, and Bill Bunton. Cleveland was an old
California acquaintance, familiar with Plummer’s early history. He used
this fatal knowledge, as it afterwards proved, in a dictatorial and
offensive manner, often presuming upon it to arrogate a position in the
band which by common consent was assigned to Plummer.
Cherokee Bob was a native Georgian, and received his name from the fact
that he was a quarter-blood Indian. He was bitter in his hatred of the
loyal cause and all engaged in it. Before he came to Lewiston he had, in
an affray of his own plotting, killed two or three soldiers in the Walla
Walla theatre. He fled to Lewiston to escape the vengeance of their
comrades.
Bill Bunton was a double-dyed murderer and notorious horse and cattle
thief. He had killed a man at a ball near Walla Walla, was tried for
murder, and acquitted on insufficient evidence. He afterwards killed his
brother-in-law, and in cold blood soon after shot down an Indian, and
escaped the clutches of the law by flight. Possessing himself of a
ranche on Pataha Creek, he lived there with his Indian wife, under the
pretext of farming. It was soon ascertained, however, that his business
was secreting and selling stolen stock. The officers made a dash upon
his ranche, but the bird had again flown. Soon afterward, disguised in
the blanket and paint of an Indian, he entered Lewiston, and lounged
about the streets for several days without exciting suspicion. During
this time he became a member of Plummer’s murderous band.
There were several others whose names are unknown, that entered into the
combination formed for systematized robbery and murder at this time.
Around this nucleus a large number of desperate men afterwards gathered.
They became so formidable in numbers, and their deeds of blood were so
frequent and daring, that the mining camps were awed by them into tacit
submission, and witnessed without even remonstrance the perpetration of
murders and robberies in their very midst, of the most revolting
character.