Henry Plummer--_A Northern Bad Man_--_The Head of the Robber Band in the
Montana Mining Country_--_A Man of Brains and Ability, but a
Cold-Blooded Murderer_.
Henry Plummer was for several years in the early '60's the "chief" of
the widely extended band of robbers and murderers who kept the
placer-mining fields of Montana and Idaho in a state of terror. Posing
part of the time as an officer of the law, he was all the time the
leader in the reign of lawlessness. He was always ready for combat, and
he so relied upon his own skill that he would even give his antagonist
the advantage--or just enough advantage to leave himself sure to kill
him. His victims in duels of this sort were many, and, as to his victims
in cold-blooded robbery, in which death wiped out the record, no one
will ever know the list.
Plummer was born in Connecticut in 1837, and, until his departure as a
young man for the West, he was all that might be expected of one brought
up under the chastening influences of a New England home. He received a
good education, and became a polished, affable, and gentlemanly
appearing man. He was about five feet ten, possibly five feet eleven
inches in height, and weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, being
rather slender in appearance. His face was handsome and his demeanor
always frank and open, although he was quiet and did not often talk
unless accosted. His voice was low and pleasant, and he had no bravado
or swagger about him. His eye was light in color and singularly devoid
of expression. Two features gave him a sinister look--his forehead,
which was low and brutish, and his eye, which was cold and fish-like.
His was a strong, well-keyed nervous organization. He was quick as a cat
when in action, though apparently suave and easy in disposition. He was
a good pistol shot, perhaps the best of all the desperadoes who infested
Idaho and Montana at that time. Not even in his cups did he lose control
of voice and eye and weapon. He was always ready--a cool, quiet,
self-possessed, well-regulated killing machine.
At the date of Plummer's arrival in the mining country, the town of
Lewiston, Idaho, was the emporium of a wide region then embraced under
the name of Idaho Territory; the latter also including Montana at that
time. Where his life had been spent previous to that is not known, but
it is thought that he came over from California. Plummer set up as a
gambler, and this gave him the key to the brotherhood of the bad.
Gamblers usually stick together pretty closely, and institute a sort of
free-masonry of their own; so that Plummer was not long in finding,
among men of his own profession and their associates, a number of others
whom he considered safe to take into his confidence. Every man accepted
by Plummer was a murderer. He would have no weaklings. No one can tell
how many victims his associates had had before they went into his
alliance; but it is sure that novices in man-killing were not desired,
nor any who had not been proved of nerve. Plummer soon had so many men
that he set up a rendezvous at points on all the trails leading out from
Lewiston to such mines as were producing any gold. One robbery followed
another, until the band threw off all restraint and ran the towns as
they liked, paying for what they took when they felt like it, and
laughing at the protests of the minority of the population, which was
placed in the hard strait of being in that country and unable to get out
without being robbed. It was the intention to seize the property of
every man who was there and who was not accepted as a member of the
gang.
One killing after another occurred on the trails, and man after man was
lost and never traced. Assaults were made upon many men who escaped, but
no criminal could be located, and, indeed, there was no law by which any
of them could be brought to book. The express riders were fired upon and
robbed and the pack trains looted. No man expected to cross the mountain
trails without meeting some of the robbers, and, when he did meet them,
he expected to be killed if he made resistance, for they outnumbered the
parties they attacked in nearly all instances. The outlaws were now
indeed about three times as numerous as those not in sympathy with them.
Rendered desperate by this state of affairs, a few resolute citizens who
wanted law and order found each other out at last and organized into a
vigilance committee, remembering the success of the Vigilantes of
California, whose work was still recent history. Plummer himself was
among the first to join this embryonic vigilante movement, as was the
case in so many other similar movements in other parts of the West,
where the criminal joined the law-loving in order to find out what the
latter intended to do. His address was such as to disarm completely all
suspicion, and he had full knowledge of facts which enabled him to
murder for vengeance as well as for gain.
After Oro Fino was worked out as a placer field, the prospectors located
other grounds east of the Salmon River range, at Elk City and Florence,
and soon Lewiston was forsaken, all the population trooping off over the
mountains to the new fields. This broke up the vigilante movement in its
infancy, and gave Plummer a longer lease of life for his plans. All
those who had joined the vigilante movement were marked men. One after
another they were murdered, none knew by whom, or why. Masked robbers
were seen every day along the trails leading between one remote mining
camp and another, but no one suspected Henry Plummer, who was serving
well in his double rôle.
Meantime, additional placer grounds had been discovered a hundred and
fifty miles south of Florence, on the Boise river, and some valuable
strikes were also made far to the north, at the upper waters of the
Beaverhead. All the towns to the westward were now abandoned, and the
miners left Florence as madly as they had rushed to it from Oro Fino and
Elk City. West Bannack and East Bannack were now all the cry. To these
new points, as may be supposed, the organized band of robbers fled with
the others. Plummer, who had tried Elk City, Deer Lodge, and other
points, now appeared at Bannack.
One after another reports continued to come of placers discovered here
and there in the upper Rockies. Among all these, the strikes on Gold
Creek proved to be the most extensive and valuable. A few Eastern men,
almost by accident, had found fair "pay" there, and returned to that
locality when they found themselves unable to get across the
snow-covered mountains to Florence. These few men at the Gold Creek
diggings got large additions from expeditions made up in Denver and
bound for Florence, who also were unable to get across the Salmon River
mountains. Yet others came out in the summer of 1862, by way of the
upper plains and the Missouri river, so that the accident of the season,
so to speak, turned aside the traffic intended to reach Florence into
quite another region. This fact, as events proved, had much to do with
the later fate of Henry Plummer and his associates.
These Eastern men were different from those who had been schooled in the
mines of the Pacific Slope. They still clung to law and order; and they
did not propose to be robbed. The first news of the strikes brought over
the advance guard of the roughs who had been running the other camps;
and, as soon as these were unmasked by acts of their own, the little
advance guard of civilization shot one of them, Arnett, and hung two
others, Jernigan and Spillman. This was the real beginning of a
permanent vigilante force in Montana. It afforded perhaps the only known
instance of a man being buried with a six-shooter in one hand and a hand
of cards in the other. Arnett was killed in a game of cards, and died
with his death grip thus fixed.
The new diggings did not at first prove themselves, and the camp at
Bannack, on Grasshopper Creek, was more prosperous. Henry Plummer,
therefore, elected Bannack as his headquarters. Others of the loosely
connected banditti began to drop into Bannack from other districts, and
Plummer was soon surrounded by his clan and kin in crime. George Ives,
Bill Mitchell, Charlie Reeves, Cy Skinner, and others began operations
on the same lines which had so distinguished them at the earlier
diggings, west of the range. In a few weeks Bannack was as bad as
Lewiston or Florence had ever been. In fact, it became so bad that the
Vigilantes began to show their teeth, although they confined their
sentences to banishment. The black sheep and the white began now to be
segregated.
Plummer, shrewd to see the drift of opinion, saw that he must now play
his hand out to the finish, that he could not now reform. He accordingly
laid his plans to kill Jack Crawford, who was chosen as miners' sheriff.
Plummer undertook one expedient after another to draw Crawford into a
quarrel, in which he knew he could kill him; for Plummer's speed with
the pistol had been proved when he killed Jack Cleveland, one of his own
best gun-fighters. Rumor ran that he was the best pistol shot in the
Rockies and as bad a man as the worst. Plummer thought that Crawford
suspected him of belonging to the bandits, and so doomed him. Crawford
was wary, and defeated three separate attempts to waylay and kill him,
besides avoiding several quarrels that were thrust upon him by Plummer
or his men. Dick Phleger, a friend of Crawford, was also marked by
Plummer, who challenged him to fight with pistols, as he frequently had
challenged Crawford. Phleger was a braver man than Crawford, but he
declined the duel. Plummer would have killed them both. He only wanted
the appearance of an "even break," with the later plea of
"self-defence," which has shielded so many bad men from punishment for
murder.
Plummer now tried treachery, and told Crawford they would be friends.
All the time he was hunting a chance to kill him. At length he held
Crawford up in a restaurant, and stood waiting for him with a rifle. A
friend handed Crawford a rifle, and the latter slipped up and took a
shot from the corner of the house at Plummer, who was across the street.
The ball struck Plummer's right arm and tore it to pieces. Crawford
missed him with a second shot, and Plummer walked back to his own
cabin. Here he had a long siege with his wound, refusing to allow his
arm to be amputated, since he knew he might as well be dead as so
crippled. He finally recovered, although the ball was never removed and
the bone never knit. The ball lodged in his wrist and was found there
after his death, worn smooth as silver by the action of the bones.
Crawford escaped down the Missouri river, to which he fled at Fort
Benton. He never came back to the country. Plummer went on practising
with the six-shooter with his left hand, and became a very good
left-hand shot. He knew that his only safety lay in his skill with
weapons.
Plummer's physician was Dr. Glick, who operated under cover of a
shotgun, and with the cheerful assurance that if he killed Plummer by
accident, he himself would be killed. After that Glick dressed the
wounds of more than one outlaw, but dared not tell of it. Plummer
admitted to him at last that these were his men and told Glick he would
kill him if he ever breathed a word of this confidence. So the knowledge
of the existence of the banditti was known to one man for a long time.
As to Bannack, it was one of the wildest camps ever known in any land.
Pistol fire was heard incessantly, and one victim after another was
added to the list. George Ives, Johnny Cooper, George Carrhart, Hayes
Lyons, Cy Skinner, and others of the toughs were now open associates of
the leading spirit, Plummer. The condition of lawlessness and terror was
such that all the decent men would have gone back to the States, but the
same difficulties that had kept them from getting across to Florence now
kept them from getting back East. The winter held them prisoners.
Henry Plummer was now elected sheriff for the Bannack mining district,
to succeed Crawford, whom he had run out of the country. It seems very
difficult to understand how this could have occurred; but it will serve
to show the numerical strength of Plummer's party. The latter, now
married, professed to have reformed. In reality, he was deeper in
deviltry than ever in his life.
The diggings at Gold Creek and Bannack were now eclipsed by the
sensational discoveries on the famous Alder Gulch, one of the phenomenal
placers of the world, and the most productive ever known in America. The
stampede was fast and furious to these new diggings. In ten days the
gulch was staked out for twelve miles, and the cabins of the miners
were occupied for all of that distance, and scattered over a long, low
flat, whose vegetation was quickly swept away. The new camp that sprung
up on one end of this bar was called Virginia City. It need not be said
that among the first settlers there were the outlaws earlier mentioned,
with several others: Jack Gallagher, Buck Stinson, Ned Ray, and others,
these three named being "deputies" of "Sheriff" Plummer. A sort of court
was formed for trying disputed mining claims. Charley Forbes was clerk
of this court, and incidentally one of Plummer's band! This clerk and
these deputies killed one Dillingham, whom they suspected of informing a
friend of a robbery planned to make away with him on the trail from
Bannack to Virginia City. They were "tried" by the court and freed.
Hayes Lyons admitted privately that Plummer had told him to kill the
informer Dillingham. The invariable plan of this bloodthirsty man was to
destroy unfavorable testimony by means of death.
The unceasing flood of gold from the seemingly exhaustless gulch caused
three or four more little camps or towns to spring up; but Virginia City
now took the palm for frontier reputation in hardness. Ten millions in
"dust" was washed out in one year. Every one had gold, sacks and cans of
it. The wild license of the place was unspeakably vitiating. Fights with
weapons were incessant. Rude dance halls and saloons were crowded with
truculent, armed men in search of trouble. Churches and schools were
unknown. Tents, log cabins, and brush shanties made the residences.
"Hacks rattled to and fro between the several towns, freighted with
drunken and rowdy humanity of both sexes. Citizens of acknowledged
respectability often walked, more often perhaps rode side by side on
horseback, with noted courtesans, in open day, through the crowded
streets, and seemingly suffered no harm in reputation. Pistols flashed,
bowie-knives flourished, oaths filled the air. 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 part of it, and to
forget that they had ever been aught else. Judges, lawyers, doctors,
even clergymen, could not claim exemption."
This was in 1863. At that time, the nearest capitals were Olympia, on
Puget Sound; Yankton, two thousand miles away; and Lewiston, seven
hundred miles away. What machinery of the law was there to hinder
Plummer and his men? What better field than this one, literally
overflowing with gold, could they have asked for their operations? And
what better chief than Plummer?
His next effort was to be appointed deputy United States marshal, and he
received the indorsement of the leading men of Bannack. Plummer
afterward tried several times to kill Nathaniel P. Langford, who caused
his defeat, but was unsuccessful in getting the opportunity he sought.
From Bannack to Salt Lake City was about five hundred miles. Mails by
this time came in from Salt Lake City, which was the supply point. If a
man wanted to send out gold to his people in the States, it had to go
over this long trail across the wild regions. There was no mail service,
and no express office nearer than Salt Lake. Merchants sent out their
funds by private messenger. Every such journey was a risk of death.
Plummer had clerks in every institution that was making money, and these
kept him posted as to the times when shipments of dust were about to be
made; they also told him when any well-staked miner was going out to
the States. Plummer's men were posted all along these mountain trails.
No one will ever know how many men were killed in all on the Salt Lake
trail.
There was a stage also between Bannack and Virginia City, and this was
regarded as a legitimate and regular booty producer by the gang.
Whenever a rich passenger took stage, a confederate at the place put a
mark on the vehicle so that it could be read at the next stop. At this
point there was sure to be others of the gang, who attended to further
details. Sometimes two or three thousand dollars would be taken from a
single passenger. A stage often carried fifteen or twenty thousand
dollars in dust. Plummer knew when and where and how each stage was
robbed, but in his capacity as sheriff covered up the traces of all his
associates.
The robbers who did the work were usually masked, and although
suspicions were rife and mutterings began to grow louder, there was no
actual evidence against Plummer until one day he held up a young man by
name of Tilden, who voiced his belief that he knew the man who had held
him up. Further evidence was soon to follow. A pack-train, bound for
Salt Lake, had no less than eighty thousand dollars in dust in its
charge, and Plummer had sent out Dutch John and Steve Marshland to hold
up the train. The freighters were too plucky, and both the bandits were
wounded, and so marked, although for the time they escaped. George Ives
also was recognized by one or two victims and began to be watched on
account of his numerous open murders.
At length, the dead body of a young man named Tiebalt was found in a
thicket near Alder Gulch, under circumstances showing a revolting
murder. At last the slumbering spirit of the Vigilantes began to awaken.
Two dozen men of the camp went out and arrested Long John, George Ives,
Alex Carter, Whiskey Bill, Bob Zachary, and Johnny Cooper. These men
were surprised in their camp, and among their long list of weapons were
some that had been taken from men who had been robbed or murdered. These
weapons were identified by friends. Old Tex was another man taken in
charge, and George Hilderman yet another. All these men wanted a "jury
trial," and wanted it at Virginia City, where Plummer would have
official influence enough to get his associates released! The captors,
however, were men from Nevada, the other leading camp in Alder Gulch,
and they took their prisoners there.
At once a Plummer man hastened out on horseback to get the chief on the
ground, riding all night across the mountains to Bannack to carry the
news that the citizens had at last rebelled against anarchy, robbery,
and murder. On the following morning, two thousand men had gathered at
Nevada City, and had resolved to try the outlaws. As there was rivalry
between Virginia and Nevada camps, a jury was made up of twenty-four
men, twelve from each camp. The miners' court, most dread of all
tribunals, was in session.
Some forms of the law were observed. Long John was allowed to turn
state's evidence. He swore that George Ives had killed Tiebalt, and
declared that he shot him while Tiebalt was on his knees praying, after
he had been told that he must die. Then a rope was put around his neck
and he was dragged to a place of concealment in the thicket where the
body was found. Tiebalt was not dead while so dragged, for his hands
were found full of grass and twigs which he had clutched. Ives was
condemned to death, and the law and order men were strong enough to
suppress the armed disturbance at once started by his friends, none of
whom could realize that the patient citizens were at last taking the law
into their own hands. A scaffold was improvised and Ives was hung,--the
first of the Plummer gang to meet retribution. The others then in
custody were allowed to go under milder sentences.
The Vigilantes now organized with vigor and determination. One bit of
testimony was added to another, and one man now dared to voice his
suspicions to another. Twenty-five determined men set out to secure
others of the gang now known to have been united in this long
brotherhood. Some of these men were now fleeing the country, warned by
the fate of Ives; but the Vigilantes took Red Yager and Buck Stinson and
Ned Ray, two of them Plummer's deputies, as well as another confederate
named Brown. The party stopped at the Lorain Ranch, near a cottonwood
grove, and tried their prisoners without going into town. Red Yager
confessed in full before he was hung, and it was on his testimony that
the whole secret league of robbers was exposed and eventually brought to
justice. He gave the following list:
Henry Plummer was chief of the gang; 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; 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 Terwilliger, Gad Moore, were
roadsters.
The noose was now tightening around the neck of the outlaw, Henry
Plummer, whose adroitness had so long stood him in good stead. The
honest miners found that their sheriff was the leader of the outlaws!
His doom was said then and there, with that of all these others.
A party of the Virginia City law and order men slipped over to Bannack,
Henry Plummer's home. In a few hours the news had spread of what had
happened at the other camps, and a branch organization of the Vigilantes
was formed for Bannack. Stinson and Ray were now arrested, and then
Plummer himself, the chief, the brains of all this long-secret band of
marauders. He was surprised with his coat and arms off, and taken
prisoner. A few moments later, he was facing a scaffold, where, as
sheriff, he had lately hung a man. The law had no delays. No court could
quibble here. Not all Plummer's wealth could save him now, nor all his
intellect and cool audacity.
An agony of remorse and fear now came upon the outlaw chief. He fell
upon his knees, called upon God to save him, begged, pleaded, wept like
a child, declared that he was too wicked to die thus soon and
unprepared. It was useless. The full proof of all his many crimes was
laid before him.
Ray, writhing and cursing, was the first to be hanged. He got his finger
under the rope around his neck and died hard, but died. Stinson, also
cursing, went next. It was then time for Plummer, and those who had this
work in hand felt compunction at hanging a man so able, so urbane and so
commanding. None the less, he was told to prepare. He asked for time to
pray, and was told to pray from the cross-beam. He said good-by to a
friend or two, and asked his executioners to "give him a good drop." He
seemed to fear suffering, he who had caused so much suffering. To oblige
him, the men lifted his body high up and let it fall, and he died with
little struggle.
To cut short a long story of bloody justice, it may be added that of the
men named as guilty by Yager every one was arrested, tried, and hung by
the Vigilantes. Plummer for some time must have dreaded detection, for
he tried to cover up his guilt by writing back home to the States that
he was in danger of being hanged on account of his Union sympathies. His
family would not believe his guilt, and looked on him as a martyr. They
sent out a brother and sister to look into the matter, but these too
found proof which left them no chance to doubt. The whole ghastly
revelation of a misspent life lay before them. Even Plummer's wife, whom
he loved very much and who was a good woman, was at last convinced of
what at first she could not believe. Plummer had been able to conceal
from even his wife the least suspicion that he was not an honorable man.
His wife was east in the States at the time of his death.
Plummer went under his true name. George Ives was a Wisconsin boy from
near Racine. Both he and Plummer were twenty-seven years of age when
killed, but they had compressed much evil into so short a span. Plummer
himself was a master of men, a brave and cool spirit, an expert with
weapons, and in all not a bad specimen of the bad man at his worst. He
was a murderer, but after all was not enough a murderer. No outlaw of
later years so closely resembled the great outlaw, John A. Murrell, as
did Henry Plummer, but the latter differed in one regard:--he spared
victims, who later arose to accuse him.
The frontier has produced few bloodier records than Plummer's. He was
principal or accessory, as has been stated, in more than one hundred
murders, not to mention innumerable robberies and thefts. His life was
lived out in scenes typical of the early Western frontier. The madness
of adventure in new wild fields, the lust of gold and its unparalleled
abundance drove to crime men who might have been respected and of note
in proper ranks of life and in other surroundings.