The wintry winds that ushered 1864 into youthful Idaho Territory foreshadowed equally chilling events. Across frozen streams and through deep snowdrifts, a determined death squad -- armed with shotguns, revolvers, and rope -- fought its way up the Stinking Water Valley, over the divide, and into Deer Lodge Valley. The vigilantes' grim, inexorable march would not end until February, leaving twenty-one dishonored, though untried, victims in its wake. This volume tells the stories of those victims and their hangings.
A study of the lynched men also provides fresh information about their executioners. For decades scholars have discussed the need to reexamine the period, the common cliche being that the jury on the Montana vigilantes is still out. Such a statement implies the possibility of reaching a consensus on the necessity of suspending due process of law during the turbulent mining camp days. But it does not seem likely that future jurors will reach a unanimous verdict. A national commission has already made a thorough analysis of American vigilantism, but their 1969 report did not bring unanimity. [1] Instead, it is left to the individual conscience to reflect upon the issue of one's unalienable right to life, and to the individual intelligence to calculate the probability of determining a suspect's guilt or innocence without first conducting an impartial trial.
Immediately after these lynchings, individuals expressed private decisions. In his 1894 history, poet Joaquin Miller concluded that the vigilance organization contained "some very good men and possibly some very bad men," and that they hanged "several very bad men, and possibly some very good ones also." Miller referred to the Montana hangings as "deplorable events," adding, "I will have no hand in the reciting or the glorification of these unhappy scene." [2]
In contrast to Miller, another early writer, Nathaniel Langford, touted the vigilantes as glorious empire builders. Yet Langford, who at one time served on the vigilantes' executive committee, admitted that some of his fellow members did perform unjustifiable lynchings. "For these persons I can offer no apology," Langford wrote, for "many of these were worse men than those they executed." [3]
Some modern historians believe that a definitive judgment rests on the amount of popular support the vigilance organization enjoyed during its time, or in other words, on whether the majority of early citizens agreed that conditions at the mines justified the summary executions. But then, as now, opinion was divided. Judge Lew Callaway explained that some initial sympathizers with the movement later became critics, while "some good people considered the Vigilantes themselves outlaws from the first." [4] Among those pioneers who dared to criticize the lynchings were freighter James Sheehan, attorney Alexander Davis, housekeeper Mrs. Pelky, and victim-to-be R. C. Rawleigh. The vigilantes' first and staunchest apologist, Thomas Dimsdale, admitted that the group encountered "popular dislike" and that he felt compelled to write Montana's first book in an effort to "exonerate them from guilt." [5]
From its inception, the movement was an emotional issue that engendered strongly held opinions. Though the present volume presents new facts about both victims and executioners, it is doubtful that it will alter deep prejudices. Our study will rely heavily upon samplings of early opinions, but that is not to suggest that such opinions provide resolutions to the questions raised by the controversial events of January and February 1864. Throughout early accounts, threads of rumor are firmly entwined with fact. For example, enthusiastic vigilante supporters accepted the false report that an organized gang of outlaws had robbed and murdered 102 people. In this instance, popular belief does not portray actual conditions, but it does reflect the social setting that allowed the "deplorable events."
The stories related in Part I will require the discarding of certain common beliefs. As we will discover, the victims were not all criminals; some were guilty of nothing more than associating with "roughs," while others were innocent of even that crime. Neither do previous claims as to who belonged to the powerful vigilance organization prove reliable. Surprising revelations in the stories, as well as Part II's discussion. reveal that the conflict was no simple struggle of "the good against the bad," as one Grasshopper Creek miner would have us believe. [6] Earlier storytellers such as Dimsdale and Langford assumed the onus of defending the executioners. In relating the death of one victim, Dimsdale wrote, "He was run up all standing -- the only really merciful way of hanging." [7] But since our study is not an apology, we will be spared the necessity of trying to convince the reader that slow strangulation was a merciful death. Yet neither will we need to defend the victims, thus making it unnecessary to present such crimes as Boone Helm's bizarre killings and cannibalism in a rosy light.