1864 Revisited
|
|
The Vigilantes of Montana: 1864 Revisited |
This myth was alive and well in 1991, when the book Montana, A History of Two Centuries, by M. P. Malone, R. B. Roeder, and W. L. Lang, U. of Wash. Press, was published. From page 79:
The 1862-63 gold rushes to Bannack and Virginia City brought a large, turbulent population to a remote area where the federal government exercised almost no authority. From mid-1862 until the end of 1863, anyone who traveled this area literally risked life and limb. Most of the disorder arose from a violent gang of road agents who followed the gold rush over the Bitterroots from the mining camps around Lewiston, Idaho. Their leader was Henry Plummer [see truth about Myth 1], one of the most amazing of western outlaws. Still a young man in 1862, the handsome Plummer combined in one unstable personality qualities of charm and intelligence and also psychotic viciousness. His career of murder and lawlessness took him from California and Nevada to Idaho and eventually to Montana. Amazingly enough, the engaging Plummer was elected sheriff of Bannack, and in 1863 his authority extended to newborn Virginia City. His henchmen, who identified one another by a special knot of the tie and cut of the beard and by the password "I am innocent," received intelligence from Sheriff Plummer and preyed on gold shipments, stagecoaches, and individual travelers. In its brief career, the Plummer Gang may have murdered over a hundred people.
