Law and order had not long to wait before the arrival of the notorious Henry Plummer and his band from Florence.Plummer was already known as a bad man, but was not yet recognized as the leader of that secret association of robbers and murderers which had terrorized the Idaho camps.He celebrated his arrival in Bannack by killing a man named Cleveland.He was acquitted in the miners' court that tried him, on the usual plea of self-defense.
He was a man of considerable personal address.
The same tribunal soon assembled once more to try three other murderers, Moore, Reeves, and Mitchell, with the agreement that the men should have a jury and should be provided with counsel.
They were all practically freed; and after that the roughs grew bolder than ever.The Plummer band swore to kill every man who had served in that court, whether as juryman or officer.So well did they make good their threat that out of the twenty-seven men thus engaged all but seven were either killed or driven out of the country, nine being murdered outright.The man who had acted as sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly hounded by Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on him.Plummer was the best shot in the mountains at that time, and he thought it would be easy for him to kill his man and enter the usual plea of self-defense.By good fortune, however, Crawford caught Plummer off his guard and fired upon him with a rifle, breaking his right arm.Plummer's friends called in Dr.Glick, the best physician in Bannack, to treat the wounded man, warning him that if he told anything about the visit he would be shot down.Glick held his peace, and later was obliged to attend many of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairs with firearms.
Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted, and of the stern ways in which retribution overtook the desperadoes of the mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P.Langford, a prominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland expedition of 1862 and took part in the earliest life of Montana.His work, "Vigilante Days and Ways," is an invaluable contemporary record.
It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these scenes, although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil War."Life in Bannack at this time," says Langford, "was perfect isolation from the rest of the world.Napoleon was not more of an exile on St.Helena than a newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakes and mountains.All the great battles of the season of 1862--Antietam, Fredericksburg, Second Bull Run--all the exciting debates of Congress, and the more exciting combats at sea, first became known to us on the arrival of newspapers and letters in the spring of 1863.
The Territory of Idaho, which included Montana and nearly all Wyoming, was organized March 3, 1863.Previous to that time western Montana and Idaho formed a part of Washington Territory, of which Olympia was the capital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territory of Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri.Langford makes clear the political uncertainties of the time, the difficulty of enforcing the laws, and narrates the circumstances which led to the erection in 1864 of the new Territory of Montana, comprising the limits of the present State.The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admitting States are milestones in the occupation of this last West.On the eve of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, the Territories of Colorado, Nevada, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana were organized, and Nevada was admitted as a State.Immediately after the war, Nebraska was admitted and Wyoming was organized as a Territory.In the Centennial Year (1876) Colorado became a State.In 1889 and 1890 North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were admitted as States.In the latter year Oklahoma was carved out of the Indian Territory.Utah with its Mormon population was kept waiting at the doors of the Union until 1896.Oklahoma became a State in 1907; Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912.
In Montana as elsewhere in these days of great sectional bitterness, there was much political strife; and this no doubt accounts for an astonishing political event that now took place.
Henry Plummer, the most active outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with the enforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of enforcing the laws.He married, settled down, and for a time was thought by some of the ill-advised to have reformed his ways, although in truth he could not have reformed.
By June, 1863, the extraordinarily rich strike in Alder Gulch had been made.The news of this spread like wildfire to Bannack and to the Salmon River mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercest of all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City.Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains.This made travel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the rich Last Chance Gulch on which the city of Helena now stands attracted a tremendous population almost at once.The historian above cited lived there.Let him tell of the life.
