The Vigilantes of Montana: 1864 Revisited

The truth about Myth 1

The first actual record of Plummer being in what is now Idaho comes in July 1862, his signature on the register of the Luna House, the best hotel in Lewiston.

On page 176 of Hanging the Sheriff is a photocopy of the Hotel register of the Luna House in Lewiston. It clearly shows Henry Plummer's signature, and lists his residence as Nevada, California. The date of the register is Wednesday, July 24, 1862.

Mather and Boswell go on to say:

The account [of the myth] concludes with the death of one member of the notorious gang, Cherokee Bob, who was shot in Florence for his part in Plummer's seduction of red-haired Cynthia, the woman brought as his wife to the Luna House on his arrival in Lewiston. So goes the myth that has been passed down as history. In reality, Plummer spent not two years, but less than two months in what is now Idaho. Both his arrival and departure from the area are easily documented. If, as claimed by Langford, Dimsdale, and others, a gang with "designs of plunder and butchery" terrorized the Lewiston countryside for a period of two years beginning with the spring of 1861, Plummer, who spent 1861 at Nevada City, could not have had a part in the action. As noted earlier, his activities that year were closely followed by Nevada City newspapers.

Though the exact date of Plummer's recuperation and consequent departure from Carson City is not known, one thing that is certain is he did not spend the winter of 1861 and spring of 1862 operating as a road agent near Lewiston. In fact, there is good reason to believe no agents were working the roads leading from the northern Idaho mines during this period. The winter of 1861-62, one of the worst on record in the history of the Northwest, left most camps lying beneath as much as ten feet of snow from December 1861 through May 1862, nearly starving inhabitants unable to get out until late spring, and then usually on snowshoes. Under such severe weather conditions, little transport of gold and resulting road agent activity could have taken place.

The limited records of Plummer's actual activities during the few weeks he spent in northern Idaho show that he arrived in Lewiston on 24 July 1862, signing the Luna House register as "Henry Plumer" and correctly listing his former residence as Nevada City, even though he had been invited to leave. He did not bring with him, as his wife, red-haired Cynthia. As the hotel register shows, the guest who signed on the lines directly above Plummer's name did have "a companion" with him, but Plummer did not.

The claim that Cynthia left behind in Walla Walla a "fond husband and three helpless children" to "mourn her loss" could not have been accurate anyhow since she already resided in Lewiston, being married to one of the more respectable citizens there. At some point, Cynthia, who had no connection to Plummer whatsoever, decided to leave her respectable husband and take up with Bill Mayfield and Cherokee Bob, but by the time she attended the famous ball in Florence that resulted in the shootout causing Bob's death, Plummer was gone. Early residents of Montana also disagree with the idea that Plummer followed the gambler's trade in Lewiston, arguing that he was so poor at the gaming tables he could not possibly have ever been a professional.

What Plummer actually did after his arrival, rather than gambling and organizing crime, was to join in the feverish rush to secure a claim at the fabulous diggings at Florence, situated on a mountain top south of Lewiston. With the spring thaw that liberated the snowbound, Florence's five log houses, three stores, and two whiskey mills had blossomed into a bulging metropolis, boasting nine thousand citizens. In August, as evidenced from the same hotel register, Plummer again checked into the Luna House to spend a weekend in the city, this time in the company of five other miners from Florence: Charles Reeves, Jim Harris, L. A. Payne, James Wheeler, and Charles Ridgley. Shortly after their arrival, a guest destined soon to cross paths with Plummer, Reeves, and Ridgley, also signed in at the hotel, a Pat Ford, who had moved from Walla Walla to set up a string of saloons and dance halls in the camps.

During this weekend in Lewiston, Plummer is credited with preventing a lynching in the streets, standing up before an assembled mob to dissuade them from punishing suspected criminals without benefit of a trial. "My friends," Plummer said, "we must not in the beginning of this city do the very thing which we are gathered to prevent. These men may be guilty of the crime of murder, but we shall not be less guilty if we take the government in our own hands and put them to death other than by due process of law. Do not, I beseech you, take any steps that may bring disgrace and obloquy upon the name of our rising young commonwealth." Though it is possible the speech is as fictional as much of the rest of the Idaho account, it is believable for the reasons that Plummer expressed similar ideas while at Bannack and that he had the habit of keeping the peace in the rowdy camps.

True or not that Plummer disbanded the vigilantes, Pat Ford, the new arrival from Walla Walla, held the former marshall responsible and retaliated a few days later by ordering Plummer, Reeves, and Ridgley out of his newly opened Spanish dance hall at Oro Fino, accusing them of making a "rough house," that is, breaking tumblers and upsetting tables. Though the three men promptly left the hall, Ford followed after them to the feeding lot where they had stabled their horses, and as they were mounting, fired eleven shots at them from the revolvers he held in both hands. Ridgley was shot twice through the leg, as was Plummer's horse, which later had to be destroyed. Ford was killed in the return fire of the three men, though Plummer, who was probably considered the best shot of the group, is usually blamed for Ford's death.

An account of the Pat Ford incident, written up by a news correspondent and submitted to his paper, provides interesting information about Plummer's days in Idaho:

I have been a resident of Washington Territory for over twelve months, and Henry Plumer or W. Mayfield were never arrested on any charge in Lewiston, Lillooet, or Florence. True, at Oro Fino, Plumer killed Ford, and had Plumer been caught at the time, the people might have executed him. Since that time, however, the true circumstances have been developed, and all unite in bearing testimony that Plumer acted on the defensive.... All reports that either Plumer or Mayfield are hung, or have ever been arrested for robbery are base lies, circulated for the purpose of injuring men who by the force of circumstances, have become fugitives from their country. I do not attempt to justify Plumer or Mayfield in any acts they may have done in California, for I am not acquainted with the circumstances.

Though during the few weeks Plummer spent in northern Idaho there are no reports of gang activity, the month after he had left, a politically motivated incident did occur at Florence that was reported by the press as follows: REBEL OR ROBBER RAID INTO FLORENCE CITY ON OCTOBER 6 -- Raid into that city at 9 o'clock P.M. of that day being a gang of several hundred desperadoes headed by Bill Mayfield, the murderer of Blackburn of Nevada Territory, that made their entrance hurrahing for Jefferson Davis and the Southern Confederacy, and then proceeded to plunder the hotels, stores, saloons, and restaurants."

Of course Plummer, who had left three weeks earlier and who was not a rebel anyhow, did not participate in the raid; by 6 October he had already reached Fort Benton, but this incident at Florence mentioned by the Sacramento reporter is undoubtedly the source of later rumors of the existence of a road agent gang near Lewiston. Though the news item specifically named Mayfield as the leader of the attack, with time Plummer's name evidently supplanted Mayfield's, not only because of their previous association in Carson City, but because after the Bannack hangings Plummer's name was better known than Mayfield's. Because of his known leadership ability, Plummer also seemed a more likely candidate as the rebel's projected Emperor of the West.

Plummer had left northern Idaho three weeks before the raid in the company of Charles Reeves, on 15 September to be exact, less than two months after his arrival at the Luna House on 24 July, and the Stuart brothers noted his appearance on the other side of the mountain in their diary, explaining how somewhere in the timbered mountain range between Elk City and Beaver Dam Hill, he had broken his shotgun and how they had mended it for him. After spending four days at Gold Creek with the Stuarts, Plummer decided against going on to the Grasshopper, and parting with Reeves, moved on towards the headwaters of the Missouri, planning to return East. At Fort Benton he met James Vail, who was searching for men to come back and help him protect his family against a feared attack by the Blackfeet. Following his natural bent as a law officer, Plummer agreed to return to the Sun River mission to help Vail defend the four women and children stranded there. But that story has already been told.

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