SOCIETY IN LEWISTON
Towards the close of the Summer of 1862, the band organized by Plummer
having increased in numbers, he selected two points of rendezvous, as
bases for their operations. These were called “shebangs.” They were
enclosed by mountains, whose rugged fastnesses were available for refuge
in case of attack.
One was located between Alpwai and Pataha creeks, on the road from
Lewiston to Walla Walla, about twenty-five miles from the former, and
the other at the foot of Craig’s Mountain, between Lewiston and Oro
Fino, at a point where the main road was intersected by a trail for pack
animals. The location of the latter was upon ground reserved by treaty
to the Nez Percés Indians, and near a military post established for its
protection. The chief of the tribe complained to the resident agent of
the Indians, of the aggression. He laid the complaint before the
commandant of the post, who treated it with neglect. The robbers
occupied the spot without molestation, and when they abandoned it, it
was of their own accord.
There were several smaller stations nearer to Walla Walla and Lewiston,
which were occupied only as occasion might require. A close
communication was established between these localities, by which the
operations of each were speedily known to all. Plummer, meantime, while
secretly directing the affairs of the shebangs and issuing orders
continually to the men, contrived to ward off suspicion from himself,
and preserve the appearance of a harmless and inoffensive citizen of
Lewiston. His notoriety as a gambler was shared by so many better men,
and by a great majority of the miners themselves, that it really
protected him in his character as a robber. While, therefore, he was
prying into the financial condition of those with whom his profession
brought him in daily contact in town, he was at the same time informing
his confederates at the shebangs of every departure which boded success
to their enterprise.
Such of the population as were not, to a greater or less degree,
involved in the gambling operations of the community, although perfectly
cognizant of the designs of the robbers, were too insignificant in
numbers to offer any active opposition. Being without organization, they
hardly knew each other. Such was the state of feeling that, if a gambler
or rough desired to possess any of the articles on sale by merchants or
grocers, he entered a store, selected for himself the best the
assortment afforded, and took it away with a request that it should be
charged, or stated that some day when he was in luck he would pay for
it. Rather than risk an affray, the dealer submitted to the imposition.
Payment was generally made, the gamblers entertaining, among themselves,
a standard of honor in such matters which it was considered disgraceful
to violate.
The two roads upon which the shebangs were located were the only
thoroughfares in the country, and not a day passed that they were not
traversed by people in going to and returning from the interior mining
camps, and in coming into and departing from the country. The number of
robberies and murders committed by the banditti will never be known.
Mysterious disappearances soon became of almost weekly occurrence. The
danger which every man incurred of being robbed or killed was
demonstrated by numerous escapes made by horsemen who had been assaulted
and fired upon, and escaped by the fleetness of their horses. It was
fully understood that whoever passed over either of these roads would
have to run the gantlet in the neighborhood of the shebangs, and people
generally went prepared. Crime was fearfully on the increase all through
the secluded districts which separated the river from the distant mining
camps. The country itself, about equally made up of mountains,
foothills, cañons, dense pine forests, lava beds, and deep
river-channels, was as favorable for the commission of crime as for the
concealment of its perpetrators.
The two shebangs swarmed with ruffians. On one occasion a party of half
a dozen, while riding in the vicinity of Craig’s Mountain, were stopped
by a volley from the shebang, which, being harmless, was returned. A
number of well-mounted robbers started in pursuit. The party escaped by
hard spurring, one of the number, to lighten his burden, throwing
several large bags of gold dust into the grass. They were afterwards
recovered. A butcher by the name of Harkness, of Oro Fino, was also
assaulted, and fired upon, who owed his deliverance to the fleetness of
his horse. Owners of pack trains never attempted to pass without force
sufficient to intimidate the robbers.
The other shebang was used as a receptacle for stolen horses. It was
under the superintendence of a noted horse-thief by the name of Turner,
who had been a partner in the business with Bill Bunton. Any member of
the band, whose claim to recognition was founded upon success in any
thieving or bloody enterprise, could leave his jaded steed here in
exchange for a fresh one. A single incident will illustrate the manner
in which many of the horses were obtained. A gentleman riding a
beautiful young mare, on his way from Oregon to Oro Fino, while she was
drinking from the stream near by, was suddenly confronted by a man, who
claimed her as his property. Several persons were witnesses to the
meeting. Drawing a bill of sale of the mare, from his pocket, which he
had obtained five hundred miles away, he dismounted, and was about to
prove his ownership, when the ruffian jumped into the saddle, and,
seizing the bridle, rode rapidly away. The wayfarer called upon the
by-standers to assist in the recapture of the animal, instead of which
they knocked him down, stripped him of everything in his pockets, and
told him to leave. He entered Lewiston utterly destitute.
No occupation in the northern mines tested the courage and honesty of
men more severely than that of the Express riders. Their duties, in
riding from camp to camp, frequently for hundreds of miles, where there
was not a dwelling, carrying large amounts of treasure, made them
objects of frequent attack. Tried men were selected for this
business—men as well known for personal bravery as for their adroitness
in the use of weapons in personal encounter. The notoriety of this class
was sufficient as a general thing to protect them from attack, unless it
could be made under every possible advantage. It is a remarkable fact,
and speaks as little in favor of the courage of the desperadoes as in
praise of the daring nobility of these early Express riders, that few of
the latter were interrupted in the discharge of their dangerous duties.
They were ever upon the alert. It was the work of an instant only, when
attacked, for them to draw and discharge their revolvers, with deadly
effect, and follow up the smallest advantage with the no less fatal
bowie-knife. One man has been known in an encounter of this kind to kill
four assailants and escape unharmed.
Tracy & Co., of Lewiston, had a pony express route from that town to
Salmon River, a distance of seventy-five miles. Their messenger, whom we
only know by the name of Mose, was a man of great intrepidity, and
perfectly familiar with all the risks of his business. In single
encounter he was understood to be more than a match for any man in the
mountains. Some time in the early Fall of 1862 a plan was laid by
Plummer and his associates to capture Mose. The place selected for the
purpose was the trail crossing of White Bird Creek, at a distance of
sixty miles from Lewiston and eighteen from Salmon River. At this point
the creek runs between very abrupt banks densely covered with
cottonwoods, rendering both descent and ascent tedious and difficult.
The robbers, in anticipation of the arrival of Mose, as usual on a keen
lope, after darkness had set in had felled a tree across the trail at a
sufficient height to admit the passage of the horse, and at the same
time strike the rider in the chest, and throw him suddenly from the
saddle. They then intended to kill him and rob his cantinas, which it
was supposed would contain several thousand dollars in gold dust. At
Chapman’s ranche, near the crossing, Mose was told that several
suspicious characters had been prowling in the neighborhood during the
afternoon, and with that keen sense which had been educated to scent
danger from afar, he at once comprehended the whole plot. Carefully
descending the bank, he discovered the snare, and turning to the left
avoided it, hurried through the creek, and ascending the opposite bank
cast a look of derision back upon the foiled highwaymen. This fearless
messenger continued in service long after this event, but his future
trips were made under the escort of well-armed assistants.
Winters are nowhere more dreary than among the miners. Frost and snow
bring their labors to an end, and for three or four months they either
remain in their camps in a state of listless inactivity, or seek for
occupation and enjoyment in the excesses of the nearest populous
settlement. Hundreds of them actually squander during the season of
winter all that they have obtained by the most severe toil during the
rest of the year. With the terrible example before him, he must be a man
of resolute will who can long refrain from embracing vice in all its
forms.
Gambling becomes a favorite occupation, and whiskey a common beverage.
The society of abandoned women lures him on, until every moral, social,
and virtuous resolution is broken down, and the experience of a few
months of such a life wholly unfits him for a return to his earlier
pursuits. This is the experience of three-fourths of the young men who
seek for fortune among the gold mines. Most of this class who had been
occupied in placer digging during the summer and fall, at the first
approach of cold forsook their mines, and crowded into Lewiston to spend
the winter, bringing with them the hard earnings of their toil.
Following in their wake came the professional gamblers and sports, and,
mingling with the common mass, were the wretches who had reached the
lowest depths of human depravity. A letter from one of the early
settlers of Lewiston, written at the time, says: “Late in 1862 a large
number congregated here to pass the winter. About seventy-five per cent
of these were cut-throats, robbers, gamblers, and escaped convicts.
Honest men were in a fearful minority, and dared not lisp of the arrest
and punishment of criminals; the villains had their own way in
everything.”
I record the following as an incident which will better illustrate the
condition of society than anything I can write. A gambler named Kirby
borrowed of another a revolver. Secretly withdrawing the charges from
it, an hour later he returned it, and requested the owner to lend him a
few ounces of gold dust, which request was declined. Knowing that he had
the money, Kirby, enraged at the refusal, put the muzzle of a loaded
revolver to the temple of the other, and blew out his brains. No arrest
was attempted. The cold-blooded, mid-day murderer walked the streets of
the town during the entire winter, mingled in the sports, and escaped
unwhipped of justice. Three years afterward he was arrested in Oregon,
and turned over to the Idaho authorities, upon the requisition of
Governor Lyon, but no witnesses appearing against him he was suffered to
go at large.
In a state of society where the majority of the people depend upon
vicious pursuits for a livelihood, want and destitution are the natural
elements. Increase of crime in all its forms follows. All through the
Winter of 1861–62, and until returns began to come in from the mines the
following Spring, Lewiston was daily and nightly a theatre where the
entire calendar of crime was exhibited in epitome. Murders were
frequent; robberies and thefts constant; gambling, debauchery,
drunkenness, and all their attendant evils, openly flaunted in the face
of day in defiance of law. Money and food were so scarce that robbery
with the sporting community became an actual necessity. How to protect
themselves against it sorely taxed the wit and tried the courage of the
unfortunate property holders. Canvas walls offered slight resistance to
determined thieves, and life was not protected by them from murderous
bullets. An exemplification is furnished in the following incident:
A German named Hiltebrant kept a saloon in a large canvas building in
the centre of the town. It was the principal rendezvous for the Germans,
and a popular retail establishment. Hiltebrant was known to possess a
considerable amount of coin and gold dust, which the roughs resolved to
appropriate. The barriers in the way involved only the possible murder
of the owner and two friends who occupied a large bed in the front of
the saloon. Between twelve and one o’clock in one of the coldest nights
of the first week of January, the door was suddenly broken from its
hinges, and a volley of balls fired in the direction of the bed.
Hiltebrant was instantly killed. His two companions, after returning the
fire of the ruffians, seized the treasure and escaped. One of the
villains was wounded in the finger. When the firing ceased, the robbers
coolly entered the building, lighted a candle, and proceeded to search
for the money. Finding none they departed, uttering curses upon their
ill-fortune, not, however, until several citizens appeared upon the
scene, and witnessed the enormity of their crime. The murderers passed
fearlessly and unconcernedly through the crowd, no effort being made to
arrest them, lest a rescue might be attempted, which would prove fatal
to all concerned, and possibly result in the burning of the town. The
next day, however, a meeting of the citizens was held, for the avowed
purpose of punishing the murderers, and devising measures to arrest the
further progress of crime.
This was the first effort at self-protection made by the people. The
moment was a trying one. All knew that the roughs were in the majority,
and no one was bold enough to recommend open resistance to their
encroachments, for fear of consequences. Henry Plummer took an active
part in the proceedings, depicting with fervid eloquence “the horrors of
anarchy” and solemnly warning the people to “take no steps that might
bring disgrace and obloquy upon their rising young city.” Known as a
gambler only, and suspected by few of any darker associations, his
winning manner had the effect to squelch in its inception the initiatory
movement, which at no distant period was to burst forth and whelm him,
with hundreds of his bloody associates, in its avenging vortex.
The brother of the murdered Hiltebrant was in business at this time at
the Oro Fino mines. Hearing of the murder, he openly avowed the
intention of going immediately to Lewiston to bring the authors to
justice. The banditti sent him a message that he would not live to get
there, which had the effect to daunt him from his purpose, and the
assassins, for the time, escaped punishment.