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Montana Vigilantes

Joseph A. Slade was arrested in the Pfouts building after carousing up and down Virginia City streets. He may have had his last drink in the Olive Branch just below Pfouts. Credited rightly or wrongly with many killings, he was hanged for a misdemeanor.

Bummer Dan must not have known how to court Lady Luck. By leaving earlier he might have made it; instead he chose to leave on the first Virginia City-Bannack stage to be robbed. His chances wouldn't have been any better had he waited. That robbery was the first in a calculated campaign of lawlessness that finally ended in vigilante action.

The vigilante episode in Alder Gulch history has been written about more often than any other, including the discovery itself. It poses more problems than any other facet of the camp's history. The literature ranges from worship of the vigilantes to articles condemning them as worse than the men they hanged.

The first book written an the subject, "The Banditti of the Rocky Mountains" prompted the second book, "Vigilantes of Montana" by Thomas J. Dimsdale. Since then scores of others have been written, but in almost every case they have been based on Dimsdale. Both books were written within a short time after the events they describe; Dimsdale began his as a series of articles in the Montana Post, the territory's first newspaper, in 1865.

Dimsdale, editor of the Post, opened his series by saying "The object of the writer in presenting this narrative to the public, is two-fold. His intention is, in the first place, to give a correct history of an organization administering justice without the sanction of constitutional law; and secondly, to prove not only the necessity for their action, but the equity of their proceedings."

And on the second page of that issue an announcement of the first article stresses the determination to avoid error, " ... trusting that the genuine and unbiased statement of events as they really occurred will find greater favor with the public . . ." He adds that his opinion was strengthened by the work called "The Banditti of the Rocky Mountains" which, he claims, " ... is compiled on the opposite principle."

The argument begins here: Obviously a book written to prove the necessity of an action is not going to stress the possibility of a lack of judgment, much less the possibility of error; on the other hand, how many historians have had to straighten out the record after a hack writer dresses it up for a sensational article?

Dimsdale was an educated man; an Englishman who emigrated to Canada when forced by finances to leave Oxford, he came to Alder Gulch in 1863. He was an anachronism in a rough, materialistic world. The book and his Montana Post articles betray a wide-eyed astonishment at the life around him. But his lack of understanding is not the worst fault of the book; he was a poor newspaperman. Trying to form a logical sequence of events from his book is next to impossible.

Virginia City With the arrest and execution of the five road agents in January, 1864, Virginia City calmed down a little. There were incidents to be sure; it was still a comparatively young camp with plenty of rough edges. One of these rough edges was Joseph A. Slade. Already a legend when he arrived in Alder Gulch during the summer of 1863, Slade was known as a tough, competent man who got things done - his way. His famous exploit of killing Jules Reni in Colorado, then cutting off his victim's ears to carry with him as souvenirs was widely known then as it is now. Slade probably traded on his reputation as did many men in the old west but he proved his mettle more than once. In the fall of 1863 he brought a wagon-train of freight from Milk River through uncharted and dangerous country; he was probably a Vigilante - Dimsdale hints at this. Well-liked and admired, apparently, while sober, Slade was avoided like the devil when he wasn't. With liquor the veneer dropped away and he became a hell roaring madman, from all accounts. Usually the townspeople let him go until he wore himself out then had his friends take him to the ranch where his good-looking wife would nurse him back to health. His last party, in March, 1864, was a lulu. Breaking up a performance at the People's Theatre by demanding that the leading lady "take it off," he antedated Minsky's by 50 years. He broke several store windows by backing his horse into them, he defied a writ issued by the sheriff and shoved his pistol in the judge's face - in short, he raised hell. Slade's time had run out. Although his Virginia City friends tried to stave off the inevitable, the Nevada City Vigilantes marched into town and voted death for Slade. He was hanged March 10 to a livery stable corral gate, near the corner of Cover and Van Buren streets. The Vigilantes received more blame for this than for any of their other actions; Slade's friends in Virginia City were sure he would have seen the light but the majority of miners decreed otherwise. It could have been worse; one of the drinking partners on the binge had been Bill Fairweather who was threatened with hanging also. It would have looked fine on the record to have hanged the man who figuratively gave birth to the gulch. According to legend the good-looking wife rode into town in a frenzy, cussed every man in sight and hauled off her man to pickle him in alcohol until spring so she could take him to Salt Lake for burial. As I say, there were incidents: That summer in Nevada City one Jim Brady took a shot at a fellow named Murphy, hitting him but not killing him. Captured, Brady was identified by his victim whose attending doctor said Murphy was not long for this world. Brady was tried the next morning and hanged; Murphy, however, defied the doctor and recovered. North-South feuds broke out now and then. On July 4, 1864, some patriotic citizens decided to raise a flagpole and run up the Stars and Stripes to commemorate the day. Threats from the "secesh" crowd delayed the ceremony until Sanders once more came to the rescue. Jumping up on a block he shouted he didn't fear a man who had run 1,500 miles to avoid a fight. Why it was any less patriotic to run 1,500 miles from the Confederate Army than from the Union Army is hard to say but Sanders was a hard man to beat in this department and the flag went up.

This does not alter the fact life in the pioneer mining camps was precarious under the best of conditions. Under the conditions that existed in Bannack and Alder Gulch, hundreds of miles from any government, life was more than precarious, it was downright dangerous.

In the 12 years since miners had begun flooding the California gold camps, the west had had a chance to fill up with some prime specimen of dishonest or irresponsible men. Some came to "see the elephant" as the phrase went - just to see what was going on; some came because they couldn't stay where they were; others came frankly to pick up what they could without working too hard for it.

With the law hard-pressed to cover a wide territory and facing an attitude even on the part of honest miners which frowned on too much interference with an independent life, conditions were ripe for the outlaw.

Of course the error was compounded in these new camps because the law proved to be the honest man's worst enemy. Henry Plummer was the sheriff; his California career included at least one murder, a term in San Quentin, several shootings, and in his travels to Washington, Nevada and Idaho Territories he often left a town by necessity rather than by choice. With a sheriff like that who needs outlaws?

For the full story of the organization Plummer formed and the actions taken to destroy it, one should read either Dimsdale or some of the other books now available. It has been covered so well there's no point in repeating it all here.

Briefly this is the story: It may read like a movie script, in spots, but the facts are vouched for by more than one authentic written account of those days.

Shortly after the discovery in Bannack, several bad apples turned up in the barrel. George Hilderman, Tex Crow, Haze Lyons, Frank Parish, Charlie Reeves, George Shears, Cy Skinner and Buck Stinson all seemed to have an affinity for being where there was trouble. Some of the men in the mines had known one or more of them in the last camp and noted they weren't the best citizens.

A man's past, however, was his own damn business in the early west. These men began hanging together more and more; in some cases they had known each other before somewhere. There were shooting scrapes and fights, but apparently no organization existed; and they seemed to keep to one part of the camp. At least Mrs. Emily Meredith noted that with only two saloons on Yankee Flats it was ". . . the quietest residence district in camp."

Plummer arrived in Bannack during the middle of the first winter. He and a friend, Jack Cleveland, had been up north on the Sun River near Fort Benton staying at the Indian Agency there. According to most stories they both courted the same girl, the sister-in-law of the agent, Electra Bryan.

Within a month Plummer had shot Cleveland. He successfully pleaded self-defense to the crowd that saw the shooting. This, however, lead to another scrape that left some doubts: fearing that Cleveland had babbled to Sheriff Hank Crawford before he died, Plummer allegedly marked him for death, also. This feud ended in a shooting in which Crawford potted Plummer in the arm from a vantage point across the street. Having won the battle but being leery of the war, Crawford left town.

Other trouble is recorded during that winter. Charlie Moore and Billy Reeves were tried by a miners' court for starting a fracas with Indians camped on a nearby bluff. Scared to death of Indian trouble in the first place, the miners were quick to banish the two. They were just as quick to forget; Moore and Reeves were back by spring.

When winter broke other desperadoes arrived: Boone Helm, Jack Gallagher, "Clubfoot" George Lane and Ned Ray drifted in with the incoming miners, promptly as sociating themselves with the outlaws, or "Road Agents" as they soon were called.

Plummer was elected sheriff in May. Either he had been able to convince people he was a victim of circumstances or, as Langford claims, only the bad element voted. Probably a deciding factor was that Plummer was one of the few who wanted the job since most of the men were busy mining.

Just how shrewd Plummer really was is hard to say. He had an ingratiating manner, obviously; several of the women of the camp writing about him later always referred to his courtly, polished ways as well as his handsome face. His smoothness has distorted the story to such an extent some writers invest him with almost superhuman powers, wrapping him in a cloak of mystery. Many writers refer to a lack of physical description: true, he seems to have avoided the few photographers of the day, but when the clerk at San Quentin added Plummer's name to the guest list he recorded a description just as he did with any other guest:

Henry Plummer: Maine; murder of second degree; age, 27; occupation, clerk; 5 foot, 81/2 inches; light complexion; gray eyes; light brown hair.

Confusion also exists about his birthplace; some writers contend Illinois, some claim Kentucky and make an issue of his southern sympathies. He, naturally, could have told the clerk at San Quentin anything, but he did say Maine. There's additional evidence: William Dalton, who arrived in Bannack in 1862, saw Plummer in California, previously, and again in Bannack. Dalton said he had known him since he was a boy in Maine. As a matter of fact, as Dalton's daughter wrote later, they had lived near the Rial Plummer family on Wisconsin River, after Ed and Rial Plummer had moved to Wisconsin from Maine. Dalton said Rial was Henry Plummer's father.

A mystery has grown out of the fact that sometimes his name appeared in print in California as Plumer instead of Plummer. In a day when spelling was so haphazard, the addition or deletion of one "m" was a small matter. But he was shrewd enough to get out of San Quentin after serving less than six months of a 10 year sentence. His pardon, granted in August, 1859, mentions the recommendation of the Physician and the Superintendent of the State Prison, "imminent danger of death." Living the life he did he was always in "imminent danger of death," however, it was another four years and five months before death caught up with him, and then it wasn't a natural one.

Plummer's shrewdness shows up particularly in his organizational ability. Apparently he was beginning to bring some cohesiveness to the loose ranks of the outlaws even before his election as sheriff. One of his first actions afterward was to appoint as deputies, Stinsan, Ray and Gallagher in spite of the odorous backgrounds each possessed. J. W. Dillingham, the fourth deputy, apparently was honest. Therefore the three "bad" deputies took it upon themselves shortly after to get rid of the "good" deputy.

Tried for shooting Dillingham in Virginia City, Lyons, Stinson and Charles Forbes faced an irate mob of miners in the loose form of local government known as a "miners' court." Forbes, being eloquent, was turned loose, but Stinson and Lyons were sentenced to be hanged. Some ladies present, who afterward claimed they acted in fair play as Forbes was as guilty as the others, began weeping loudly at the sentence. In the ensuing confusion the vote was changed half a dozen times before the miners, tiring of the game, turned the defendants loose with instructions to "high-tail it" out of the gulch.

Alder Gulch kept growing. Richard Todd, who had been elected sheriff June 9 was replaced in September by J. B. Caven who resigned shortly thereafter and was in turn replaced by Plummer. Plummer still had his winning ways, apparently. By this time the organization was a tight one. With a somewhat childish enthusiasm they had secret meetings, invented an ironic password - "I am innocent" - and adopted a particular knot for their kerchiefs. But along with the immature games, they were developing a system of communications that kept them in touch with "any development of interest." What would be of interest, of course, were shipments of gold, plans by prospectors to take a trip home, or anything else that might reap a quick, dishonest profit.

With fall coming on, some miners were beginning to think about returning to "the states." Many of them who had done pretty well were dreaming of the comforts back home. Things got busy for the road agents; probably busiest of them all was Clubfoot George whose shoe repair stand was in Dance and Stuart's store. A popular meeting place as well as one where quantities of gold were stored, it was a promising spot for the desperadoes.

Lane seems to have kept the boys well informed. Hardest hit were individuals or small parties who left the diggings to make the trip home alone. Figuring they could outwit the system by travelling light and fast, they quite often traveled into oblivion. Newspapers of the camp for several years carried anxious messages inquiring about "Uncle Joe," "Cousin Pete," or some other relative known to have gone to the gold fields but never returned.

Minding their own business (as the average man is wont to do even today) the miners let the deadly situation go on into December. Although several seem to have been talking about the conditions that existed, the one man needed to whip them into shape had not appeared, or spoken, as yet.

But when things did start to happen they happened with a rush. Sometime in early December a young German disappeared while on an errand for his employers, Burtchey and Clark. When he didn't return with the mules he was to bring in, the two men began asking up and down the gulch for information. Then, about Dec. 17, toward noon, William Palmer, a saloon-keeper in Nevada City, brought young Nicholas Tbalt home. Although the boy's body was frozen stiff it was still easy to make out the bullet wound over the left eye and, worse to the many sightseers, the lariat marks around his throat indicated he had been dragged to the place where the body was hidden.

Standing around that afternoon talking, with frequent looks at the body in the wagon (which Palmer, with an eye for business, left in front of his saloon) the crowd grew restless. When a group of horsemen rode dawn from the upper end of the gulch, several Nevada City men joined the posse. They set out for the place where the body had been found, with no real idea of whom they were after.

Palmer guided them to the spot where he had found the body. At a ranch nearby they found several men sleeping. Among them was the man who had told Palmer he'd not help him load Tbalt's body into Palmer's wagon saying such things were too commonplace for him to go out in the cold.

Having been callous with Palmer, the man weakened when confronted by the two dozen horsemen. He accused George Ives who was brought back to Nevada City and tried. This effort might have ended as did the other so-called "trials" were it not for the arrival of the one man for whom the honest miners were waiting.

Wilbur Fisk Sanders, lean, lanky and intelligent, had arrived in Bannack that fall with Sidney Edgerton, his uncle. A lawyer, he was asked by the posse to act as prosecutor since the friends of Ives had rounded up all the other known lawyers for the defense. Finally agreeing, Sanders took charge and with the help of a legally-trained miner named Charles Baggs conducted the prosecution skillfully during the two-day trial.

This is the key to the Alder Gulch vigilante movement. Although the Vigilantes themselves claimed they did not organize until after the trial, it was Sanders' courage during the trial and the nerve he displayed facing men who had terrorized the camp for months that turned the trick. Ives was convicted by a 24-man jury; Sanders kept the initiative by immediately demanding the death penalty. On the evening of December 21, 1863, Ives was hanged by the neck until dead.

Either during the trial or just after, several men including Sanders, formed the Montana Vigilantes. Whether it was in Virginia City (where some say it took place in Kinna & Nye's store), in Nevada City at Lott Brothers' store or in any one of a dozen other places has always remained a matter for conjecture. Before the month was over the first Vigilance party left Nevada City to round up the other men who had been with Ives when he was captured. At this time they may have known about Plummer, but records don't indicate they did.

Meeting a fellow called "Red" Yeager on the way, they were told the men they sought were holed up in Deer Lodge. Reaching that point they found the suspects had been warned and had escaped; comparing notes they also found Yeager had given different stories to each group of the Vigilantes as he met them along the trail. Mad and cold - the temperature was about 30 degrees below zero - the Vigilantes started back, detouring on the way in hopes of catching Yeager. They found him at Rattlesnake ranch. Questioned he finally broke down, not only confessing his own part in the organization but implicating others. Sheriff Henry Plummer headed his list.

With this information to follow the Vigilantes moved swiftly. On January 10, 1864, Henry Plummer, Ned Ray and Buck Stinson were hanged at Bannack (on a scaffold Sheriff Plummer had built). The next day, in the only example of mob violence connected with these Vigilantes, Joe "The Greaser" Pizanthia was not only hanged, but his body was burned on the pyre of his own cabin. That same day "Dutch" John Wagner was tried and hanged.

Next it was Virginia City's turn. On the morning of January 14, Vigilantes strengthened by miners from up and down the gulch ringed the mining camp after consulting all night on the men to be picked up. As dawn broke they began moving in. They arrested Boone Helm, Haze Lyons, Jack Gallagher, George Lane and Frank Parish. One other man was arrested but was turned loose for lack of evidence. Tried in a building on the corner of Wallace and Jackson streets, the five men were marched up the street to an unfinished building on the corner of Wallace and Van Buren, lined up under an exposed beam and added to the tally.

Another party left about this time for Hellgate where Cy Skinner and some others had gone. On this trip the Vigilantes executed eight men, bringing the recorded total to 21. Not long afterward Bill Hunter was hanged on the Gallatin as the 22nd victim of the group. Supposedly this finished the work of the Alder Gulch Vigilantes; but they remained organized for a long time after. In the Montana Post of Sept. 23, 1865, appears a notice warning certain, unspecified people to watch out. And when the new Chief Justice of the Territory, Hezekiah L. Hosmer spoke to a crowd including known Vigilantes in December of 1864, he was told to take care of the civil cases, the Vigilantes would handle the criminal cases.

As an organization, however, they never functioned again as they had during those bloody and bitter two months of self-imposed law and order. Whether they were right or wrong is a long-standing debate over which historians and hack writers will continue to argue for years to come. Claims and counter-claims have been made, but the issue remains unsettled. That the conditions that existed in the camps were intolerable seems obvious. Just as obvious is the need for remedial action. There were no courts to rely on.

As it turned out there was no sheriff to rely on. Some criticize their secrecy - yet many of the Vigilantes had been in California where they had seen what happened time after time, when miners' juries made a mess of justice. This probably was a reason for deciding they would keep their activities secret and confined to only a handful of trusted men. They had had additional proof of the inefficiency of miners' courts in their own gulch during the farce in which Stinson, Lyons and Forbes were turned loose after killing Dillingham in plain sight.

It's easy to sit in a pine-panelled office today and criticize the actions of men on the frontier but at the same time ask a policeman, or any law enforcement officer, how much trouble he has trying to find witnesses to testify against a suspect. Even with the protection of the law, the average man is reluctant to "become involved." With absolutely no protection against a gang of mighty tough hombres, how many men today would have opened their mouths?

After most of the Road Agents had been hanged, there appeared ample evidence in their past to indicate full guilt. Boone Helm, for instance, had killed a cousin before heading west in 1850. His reason? The cousin backed out of a promise to go west with him. Other Road Agent names show up in Florence, Elk City and Oro Fino in Idaho, in Walla Walla and Carson City, in Denver and in other camps throughout the west, all with bad records.

George Ives seems to be an exception. Dimsdale mentions an episode where he supposedly was stealing government mules - but there is little mention of it elsewhere. As a matter of fact several men who had known Ives before - some of them leading Territorial citizens - said he had been a fine fellow at one time.

A staunch support of the early-day Ives came from Barney Hughes who had worked on a government survey with him. Years later Barney and Granville Stuart talked it over in Butte where the old prospector had come visiting Stuart. After discussing the Ives that had first come to the gold camps, Hughes remarked that it might have been Virginia City whisky that turned him bad. "A load of that whisky would lead a man to rob Christ on the cross," Hughes claimed, sadly.

Dick Pace. Golden Gulch. The Story Of Montana's Fabulous Alder Gulch. That Virginia City Whiskey. Published 1980.

The Vigilantes of Montana Gold, land, jealousy, and murder--all are elements of this classic tale of the Montana Territory, written in 1864 as a vindication of the actions of the Vigilantes who hanged Sheriff William Henry Handy Plumer of Bannack, Montana. Now beautifully reprinted with a foreword by R. E. Mather, prominent Western historian and co-author of Hanging the Sheriff, A Biography of Henry Plummer, readers can delve into the history behind Montana's rough beginnings for themselves and uncover the controversy behind the legend of the Vigilantes.

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