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Vigilantes

Kansas And The Black Hills

Elsewhere in the mountain region and in the Great Plains, vigilante activities were frequent, although less formally organized than in California and Montana. Men in the Black Hills during the gold rush knew how to tie a noose about the neck of a horse thief or a stagecoach robber. Nebraskans used lariat ropes on those who stole cattle and horses, and in 1875 along the Platte River near Sidney, they let sway in a coulee a thief who had killed a cattleman. About nine years later, vigilantes in the upper Elkhorn country were said to have executed eleven horse thieves.

Kansas had a large number of vigilante hangings. The Kansas State Historical Society has found evidence of 206 between 1856 and 1932, but probably it missed some. Horse stealing was responsible for 93 and murder for 37. Little is known about some of these early executions. In 1864 the Lawrence Tribune reported tersely, "A gentleman from Franklin County said eleven horses were stolen, six men arrested, two shot, two hanged, and two dismissed. At Rising Sun, four stock thieves were dropped from the same limb, and a few days later two more joined them."

Widespread horse thieving in Kansas in the early 1870's led to the formation of vigilante groups in several communities. In the spring of 1870, after a large band of horse thieves had trailed 250 stolen mules to Texas, citizens of Winfield organized and began detective work. In the fall, they surrounded four agents of the thieves in a house at a crossing of the Walnut River near Douglass. Three who refused to surrender were shot. The other was strung from a nearby tree.

A few weeks later about seventy-five vigilantes captured four stock thieves near Douglass and hanged them in the woods near Olmstead's mill. When they published the names of other members of the band, several left the county. Near Cherokee, an assassin who had killed a cattleman was caught by witnesses to the crime and strung from the nearest tree.

Caldwell, just above the point where the Chisholm Trail entered Kansas, had vigilante executions in 1872 and 1874. Similar work was found by committees in Ellsworth, Dodge City and other cow towns. In 1884 citizens in Medicine Lodge put to death four men from Caldwell who tried to hold up their bank and had killed its president. Two of the four were the Caldwell marshal and his assistant.

Texas

Early Texas, which attracted a large sprinkling of desperadoes along with its decent, upright pioneers, also had many informal executions. In 1841, during the period of the republic, citizens living near the Nueces River caught a notorious horse thief. Later his body was found on the prairie, pierced with five rifle balls. After the Civil War, when outlawry became worse, vigilante activity increased. At Richmond, in 1869, citizens hanged a horse thief from the iron bridge being built across the Brazos River. In Denton, the Monitor reported that horse stealing there had become unpopular: "Horse thieves have been strung to limbs whenever caught, and cow thieves have not been slighted."

Other Texas towns took similar steps. At Denison, in 1874, vigilantes caught a horse thief one night and let him swing from a tree west of the slaughterhouse. In nearby Preston a few weeks later, citizens fought a gun battle with horse thieves, killing one and wounding another. In the Texas sheep country that year, vigilantes executed five Mexicans who had killed a ranchman and his wife. In Grayson County, in 1877, cowmen strung three rustlers from a limb near Goose Pond. They left a card with the bodies: "Cattle Thieves' Doom." Later that year, three horse thieves were hanged in Red River County.

Texas' most active and effective vigilance committee was organized at Fort Griffin. This frontier town on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, west of Fort Worth, was on the western cattle trail and served as the principal outfitting point and hide market for buffalo hunters. Its saloons, gambling rooms, dance halls and bordellos made it one of the wildest towns on the frontier.

Since Fort Griffin's wild boys were not above stealing a horse now and then, a jury selected from them could hardly be expected to convict a horse thief. Men of property protected themselves by forming a vigilance committee early in 1876. In April they caught a man stealing a horse and left him hanging from a pecan tree. Below, they placed a pick and shovel for anyone who might want to dig his grave. "So far, so good," wrote the correspondent of the Dallas Herald. "As long as the committee strings up the right parties, it has the well wishes of every lover of tranquillity."

Later that month the committee fought a gun battle with a gang of horse thieves who had been disguising themselves as Indians to fool their victims. The citizens shot two and hanged three. On the fifth body they pinned a card: "Horse Thief No. 5 that killed and scalped that boy for Indian sign. Shall horse thieves rule the country? He will have company soon." In the next two months, the Fort Griffin night riders strung up three more horse thieves.

Those executions led to an exodus of most of the stock thieves from the area, but two years later the Fort Griffin vigilantes had to act again. John M. Larn, a fugitive, had arrived in Fort Griffin about 1870. He found a job as a cow hand on a ranch and later married the daughter of his boss. He was elected sheriff of Shackelford County, taking office in April, 1876.

As sheriff, Larn was satisfactory at first, but he came under suspicion soon after he contracted to provide the military garrison at the fort with three beeves a day. Neighbors noticed that they lost three fat steers a day, while Larn lost none from his herd. As a result, Larn resigned in March, 1877, but cattle continued to disappear. The situation became worse when two of the cow hands who worked for Larn vanished without explanation.

Ranchmen and farmers who lived near Larn began to keep a close watch on him. One nester discovered that the hides of stolen cattle, with telltale brands, had been dumped into a deep water hole of the Clear Fork near Larn's slaughter pen. He fished some of them out with grappling hooks and reported what he found. For his inquisitiveness he was shot and wounded by Larn and his partner.

Sheriff William Cruger, who had succeeded Larn, was handed a warrant for the arrest of his predecessor. He gathered a posse and rode off at night to the Larn ranch near Camp Cooper. The posse captured Larn in his cowpen without a fight and took him to the flimsy jail in Albany. To prevent escape, the sheriff had a blacksmith rivet shackles to the prisoner's legs and posted a guard at the jail.

But these precautions did not satisfy the Fort Griffin vigilantes, especially after they heard that confederates of Larn planned to free him. Quickly they saddled their horses, put on their slickers and bandanas, and picked up their Winchesters. Riding fifteen miles south to Albany, they arrived just before midnight on June 23, 1877. Overpowering the jail guards, they ended Larn's career with a volley of rifle shots. In a little more than a year they had rid the county of nearly a score of stock thieves.

New Mexico And Arizona

Elsewhere in the frontier West, vigilante action was equally common. In New Mexico, in 1872, citizens executed two outlaws who had killed a Fort Union cavalry sergeant. In 1883 Albuquerque vigilantes, lacking a convenient tree or lamppost, built a scaffold for an outlaw by using a pile of ties on a railway flatcar.

In Arizona, vigilantes were at work in Yuma as early as 1866. Phoenix had a necktie party in 1873, when citizens dangled a Mexican from a tree for stealing a widow's cow. Four years later they killed a desperado who had shot a man through the window of a dance hall. In 1879, a Phoenix committee took charge of a bum who had knifed to death a saloonkeeper and a man who had killed a ranchman. Soon both were swaying from the limb of a cottonwood.

Bill Breakenridge, then a deputy sheriff, recalled that one of the bad men was merely strangled at first, without having his neck broken. The other, as a team started pulling the wagon from under the plank on which he stood, jumped into the air for a quick snap. "He knows just how to do it," remarked one man in the crowd. "He must have been hanged before."

Other Arizona towns also took the law in their own hands. In 1873 Tucson citizens tied four nooses to the same beam and used them for brutal killers. In 1877 Hackberry and Safford witnessed vigilante executions. In 1881 Saint Johns leaders put two murderers out of the way. The next year Globe citizens caught a pair who had killed a stagecoach express messenger and a doctor. As a church bell tolled the death knell, the two outlaws stretched hemp from a nearby sycamore.

Early in 1884 Bisbee and Tombstone citizens took charge of John Heath, leader of a gang that had robbed a Bisbee store and shot up the town, killing three citizens. They left him dangling from a telegraph pole. The next year Holbrook vigilantes weighted two ropes with a pair of killers.

Nevada And Colorado

In Nevada, where highwaymen were active, Egan, Hamilton, Treasure City and other towns organized protective associations with written rules. Aurora formed one in 1864 after about thirty citizens had lost their lives by violence in three years. The vigilantes caught four of the outlaws, built a scaffold in front of the armory and placed four nooses. When the governor heard what was going on and wired an inquiry, the United States marshal replied, "Everything quiet in Aurora. Four men to be hanged in fifteen minutes." Then, as a crowd watched, the four stretched rope. At Dayton, Carson, Virginia City, and elsewhere, vigilance committees remained at work for a decade or longer.

In Colorado, outlaws often were sent to the next world in economy-sized packages. Near Sheridan a committee strung four desperadoes from a railroad bridge. On the Denver and Cheyenne road to the north, seven bandits were dropped from another trestle. Denver miners formed a people's court in 1859 and hanged from a cottonwood a prospector who had killed another for his gold. The next year the same court strung up four killers. The most remembered was James Gordon, who had killed a man for refusing to drink with him at a bar. His hanging was witnessed by several thousand, whom the mounted Jefferson Rangers kept in order.

Most of the Colorado mining camps organized people's courts in the 1860's. One historian noted that such courts "were about the only ones thoroughly respected and obeyed." Their proceedings were open and orderly, he said. "They approached the dignity of a regularly constituted tribunal. The prisoner had counsel and could call witnesses if the latter were within reach."

Wyoming and Idaho

As railroad building brought desperadoes into Wyoming, citizens there found use for many ropes. Several bandits and killers were set swinging in and around Cheyenne and Laramie in 1868. Where trees were not available, a telegraph pole served for a scaffold. That was the case with the stringing up of Dutch Charley at Carbon and George Parrot ("Big Nose George") at Rawlins.

Idaho also attracted horse thieves, stagecoach robbers and killers who had to be eradicated. Vigilance committees at Payette and Boise did this with dispatch. The most notorious man strung up by the Boise group was David Updyke, leader of a desperado gang, who had been able to win an election for sheriff of Ada County. With Updyke and several of his men out of the way, the Idaho crime wave subsided.

Jay Monaghan. Necktie Parties. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

Vigilante Days And Ways: The Pioneers of the Rockies And the Makers And Making of Montana And Idaho Vigilante Days And Ways brings to life dramatic scenes of Montana in the 1860s when it was attractive to most of its newest residents only for the gold that lay waiting to be scooped from its streams. Nathaniel Langford depicts nightriders in full gallop on the trail of outlaws, and "trials" and executions that were hastily arranged and conducted. All the action Langford saw and heard he tells in a meaty Victorian prose style that leaves no doubt of its authenticity and substance. The Montana landscape exerts an ever-present influence on Langford's narrative. He recognizes and describes the beauty as well as the hazards of the mountains, gulches, plains, rivers, and streams in all seasons and their varied effects on newcomers to the territory. Long out of print, this new edition of a western classic will be enthusiastically welcomed by a whole new generation of readers and fans of the old west as it really was, the home of the famous and the infamous, the colorful and the notorious, the good and the bad.

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