Thomas J. Dimsdale - The Vigilantes of Montana: Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains

First published 1866

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2014

All rights to any and all materials in copyright owned by the publisher are strictly reserved by the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Anthony Morais

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-680-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-175-1

Printed in the United States of America

The object of the writer in presenting this narrative to the public, is twofold. His intention is, in the first place, to furnish 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.

Having an intimate acquaintance with parties cognizant of the facts related, and feeling certain of the literal truth of the statements contained in this history, he offers it to the people of the United States, with the belief that its perusal will greatly modify the views of those even who are most prejudiced against the summary retribution of mountain law, and with the conviction that all honest and impartial men will be willing to admit both the wisdom of the course pursued and the salutary effect of the rule of the Vigilantes in the Territory of Montana.

It is also hoped that the history of the celebrated body, the very mention of whose name sounded as a death-knell in the ears of the murderers and Road Agents, will be edifying and instructive to the general reader. The incidents related are neither trivial in themselves, nor unimportant in their results; and, while rivaling fiction in interest, are unvarnished accounts of transactions, whose fidelity can be vouched by thousands.

As a literary production, the author commits it to the examination of the critical without a sigh. If any of these author-slayers are inclined to be more severe in their judgment than he is himself, he trusts they will receive the reward to which their justice entitles them; and if they should pass it by, he cannot but think that they will exercise a sound discretion, and avoid much useless labor. With all its imperfections, here it is.

T HOS . J. D IMSDALE .

The teeth that bite hardest are out of sight. P ROV .

The end of all good government is the safety and happiness of the governed. It is not possible that a high state of civilization and progress can be maintained unless the tenure of life and property is secure; and it follows that the first efforts of a people in a new country for the inauguration of the reign of peace, the sure precursor of prosperity and stability, should be directed to the accomplishment of this object. In newly settled mining districts, the necessity for some effective organization of a judicial and protective character is more keenly felt than it is in other places, where the less exciting pursuits of agriculture and commerce mainly attract the attention and occupy the time of the first in habitants.

There are good reasons for this difference. The first is the entirely dissimilar character of the populations; and the second, the possession of vast sums of money by uneducated and unprincipled people, in all places where the precious metals may be obtained at the cost of the labor necessary to exhume them from the strata in which they lie concealed.

In an agricultural country, the life of the pioneer settler is always one of hard labor, of considerable privation, and of more or less isolation, while the people who 6eek to clear a farm in the wild forest, or who break up the virgin soil of the prairies are usually of the steady and hard-working classes, needing little assistance from courts of justice to enable them to maintain rights which are seldom invaded; and whose differences, in the early days of the country, are, for the most part, so slight as to be scarcely worth the cost of a litigation more complicated than a friendly and, usually, gratuitous, arbitrationsubmitted to the judgment of the most respected among the citizens.

In marked contrast to the peaceful life of the tiller of the soil, and to the placid monotony of his pursuits are the turbulent activity, the constant excitement and the perpetual temptations to which the dweller in a mining camp is subject, both during his sojurn in the gulches, or, if he be given to prospecting, in his frequent and unpremeditated change of location, commonly called a stampede. There can scarcely be conceived a greater or more apparent difference than exists between the staid and sedate inhabitants of rural districts, and the motley group of miners, professional men and merchants, thickly interspersed with sharpers, refugees, and a full selection from the dangerous classes that swagger, armed to the teeth, through the diggings and infest the roads leading to the newly discovered gulches, where lies the object of their worshipGold.

Fortunately the change to a better state of things is rapid, and none who now walk the streets of Virginia would believe that, within two years of this date, the great question to be decided was, which was the stronger, right or might?

And here it must be stated, that the remarks which truth compels us to make, concerning the classes of individuals which furnish the law defying element of mining camps, are in no wise applicable to the majority of the people, who, while exhibiting the characteristic energy of the American race in the pursuit of wealth, yet maintain, under every disadvantage, an essential morality, which is the more creditable since it must be sincere, in order to withstand the temptations to which it is constantly exposed. Oh, cursed thirst of gold, said the ancient, and no man has even an inkling of the truth and force of the sentiment, till he has lived where gold and silver are as much the objects of desire, and of daily and laborious exertion, as glory and promotion are to the young soldier. Were it not for the preponderance of this conservative body of citizens, every camp in remote and recently discovered mineral regions would be a field of blood; and where this is not so, the fact is proof irresistible that the good is in sufficient force to control the evil, and eventually to bring order out of chaos.

Let the reader suppose that the police of New York were withdrawn for twelve months, and then let them picture the wild saturnalia which would take the place of the order that reigns there now. If, then, it is so hard to restrain the dangerous classes of old and settled communities, what must be the difficulty of the task, when, tenfold in number, fear less in character, generally well armed, and supplied with money to an extent unknown among their equals in the east, such men find themselves removed from the restraints of civilized society, and beyond the control of the authority which there enforces obedience to the law.