Electa Bryan | Sun River Farm | The Courtship

ELECTA BRYAN

In the ten years Electa Plummer spent as a widow, the thought may have crossed her mind more than once that if her husband had not met her, he would not have been killed by vigilantes. She had come west with her older sister, Martha Jane, Martha's husband, James Vail, and their two small children: Mary, four years old, and Harvey, only two. Vail, a twenty-four-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, had accepted a position as manager of Sun River government farm, set up to "civilize and Christianize" the Blackfeet, Piegan, and Blood Indians, by providing them agricultural equipment and instruction in farming. Just six days before the family's departure for the wilderness, Electa Bryan celebrated her twentieth birthday. [1]

The Vails were to take the new ship route being used by the gold stampeders, following the Missouri River all the way to its head of navigation at Fort Benton, when its depth was sufficient to permit navigation. Their ship was the Emilie, a luxuriously equipped steamer, and the first sidewheeler to attempt the course. With the American flag fluttering in the breeze at the bow and smokestacks puffing black clouds astern, the Emilie began her three-thousand-mile voyage not on the Missouri, but on the Mississippi, leaving St. Louis on 14 May 1862 under the able command of Captain Joseph La Barge, known as the greatest steamboatman on the river. The ship's cargo was three hundred tons of general merchandise, mining tools, mules, horses, wagons, and what were labelled "Indian goods," which included supplies and equipment James Vail would need on the farm as well as supplies promised as an annual annuity to the tribes for having signed a peace treaty. Aboard were eighty-five cabin passengers, charged one hundred dollars per person, and on deck, fifty-three more passengers, charged a lesser price. James Vail and his family were fortunate enough to be among the cabin passengers only because the government was footing the bill. They were a decided minority among the fortune hunters flocking to the Northwest in search of gold.[2]

Because of their unusual mission, the Vails, who were of the cut who lays up treasure in heaven rather than on earth, attracted considerable attention from their fellow passengers as well as from the press. Neither of the two interested groups seemed to put much stock in the family's curious mission to the heathen; one passenger wrote home that in his judgment, "sympathy and sentiment are wasted" on the Indians. A news item composed about James Vail's assignment expressed a similar opinion, closing with the wry comment, "We have little faith in the success of the enterprise."[3] But it was not only Vail's unusual calling that attracted notice to him; he was bringing with him persons rare to the wilderness, white women and children, and Electa, being single, respectable, and attractive, was especially noticeable. The family soon befriended one of the single males aboard, a gold seeker from Massachusetts named Francis Thompson, who had hired on as part of an exploration party for a large mining firm, and Thompson as well as two other passengers kept an account of the eventful trip up the Missouri to Fort Benton.

The outcome of this attempt to bring passengers and needed supplies all the way up the Missouri was of considerable significance to the continuing development of the Northwest. Steamers had been trying to accomplish the feat since the spring of 1859, but with little success, most giving up somewhere along the way due to shallow waters. The previous spring not a single steamer had reached its destination. One that had gotten as far as the mouth of the Milk River was lost when crew members, sneaking to the hold to steal whiskey, upset a candle and started a fire that exploded gunpowder in the cargo. All the passengers of the Emilie felt the excitement of the risky endeavor, but probably none more than the two sisters, Martha Vail and Electa Bryan, whose experiences up to that moment had been mainly limited to those connected with having been born and brought up on a farm in central Ohio. Any trip up the Missouri was a hazardous one, and it was necessary for the steamer to tie up every night to avoid running aground on shallows or becoming snagged on a bar. Another danger was severe winds that frequently drove the ship to one bank to wait out a storm. Passengers sometimes took advantage of an unscheduled stop to disembark and make a little side excursion ashore. On one such occasion the Vails' new friend, Francis Thompson, entertained the entire shore party by attempting to break a wild jackass into a gentleman's riding pony, but Thompson, not being much of a cowboy, was thrown and had to spend the next few days limping about his cabin.

The first sight of the immense herds of buffalo calmly feeding in the grassy valleys alongside brought nearly everyone onto the deck, and on rounding a bend in the river, the ship suddenly encountered directly in its pathway hundreds of the shaggy beasts swimming to the opposite bank, huge bulls and young calves diligently paddling in the wake formed by a mother's body. Captain La Barge quickly ordered that the ship be brought to a halt to prevent damaging its wheels on the massive black horns of the animals, and several sporting men, seizing on the opportunity to display their skills, rushed below to collect rifles and then shot game meat for the next meal, hoisting the heavy carcasses on board and dressing out one prized bull of nearly twelve hundred pounds. An animal lover on board tugged a young calf onto the deck, hoping to take it along as a pet, but Captain La Barge had to order it shot when it aggressively charged one of the passengers.

The trip up the Missouri had been compared to running a gauntlet through the unfriendly Indian villages situated on each bank, and at one point on their journey some braves who had been refused permission to come aboard commenced shooting arrows into the ship. The captain was forced to fire up the two small cannons on the forward deck in order to discourage any further attack. At other more peaceful villages, inhabitants took but little notice of the intruders, continuing about their daily chores as though they were not being scrutinized by the inquisitive whites. Passengers gazed on in amazement as an Indian widow, beneath the elevated platform bearing the body of a dead warrior, slashed herself and stood with blood dripping from her arms while she wailed the sorrow of losing a courageous husband. If Electa Bryan had not been such a staunch Christian, she could have interpreted this image of a widow's grief as a bad omen of what might lay in store for her. A second eerie sight came days later, the remnants of Fort Clark, now completely abandoned but littered with traces of the Mandan tribe literally destroyed by smallpox introduced by the whites: rotting and tumbled-down scaffolds, leg bones, and human skulls, more images of death to be contemplated by those less cheerful and optimistic than Electa Bryan.

Their route took the impatient gold seekers and lone missionary family through miles of badlands, stunted pine trees, and waxy-blossomed prickly pear; then, as the river that carried them narrowed and swiftened, the scenery became strangely beautiful: red sandstone cliffs carved by the wind into graceful, ornate towers, alternating with lush green bottomland where grizzly bears nibbled at tender roots; where elk, antelope, and mountain sheep grazed; and where wild roses and gooseberry bushes bloomed.

As they reached the swift rapids that marked the point other steamers had been unable to pass, the Emilie shuddered ominously, barely able to make the slightest forward progress, but valiantly struggling onward. Conquering the last of the rapids, the ship was greeted by a welcoming party of nearly one hundred Indians who had heard of the momentous event and gathered to escort the passengers and crew the rest of the journey. Francis Thompson marvelled at the "old battlescarred warriors," riding alongside them "in conscious dignity" and performing "masterly feats of horsemanship."[4]

On 17 June 1862, after spending more than a month on the river, the Emilie docked at Fort Benton, a small adobe fort huddled on one bank of the Upper Missouri at a break in the walls of protective, gray bluffs lining the river. Benton, an old fur trading post during the heyday of the trappers, was designated as the Blackfeet Indian agency at the 1855 signing of Lame Bull's Treaty, by which Indians were to permit safe passage through their lands in exchange for several tons of supplies. With the ongoing rush to the gold fields of the Clearwater regions, via the Missouri River and Mullan Road route, Fort Benton was rapidly developing into an important river port and supply center. Still, one of the Vails' fellow passengers was not duly impressed with what he saw when they disembarked, writing home that the fort was occupied by nothing more than Indians, half-breeds, horses, and wolf-dogs, and that any livery stable back home would surely be a more pleasant and desirable place to live.[5]

Anxious to reach their destination, James Vail and family, accompanied by Francis Thompson's group, left the foul-smelling fort and began a sixty-mile trek across the newly completed Mullan Road, nothing more than a rough trail heading westward from Benton, rising to barren clay bluffs and finally reaching grassy plains dotted with small lakes. On the second day the party arrived at the Indian mission, set at the rope guide ferry of the Sun River, and the family took a first look at their wilderness home. In late June the Sun was a wide, green-bordered river meandering through a broad valley that ascended in a series of plateaus on each side, like giant stairsteps to the distant blue mountains beyond. Herds of deer and elk rested on the river banks in the shade of cottonwood trees and others grazed far out on the surrounding plain as far as the eye could see. On the near bank of the Sun, entirely enclosed within the defense of a stake fence, sat several small farm buildings, all constructed of hewn cottonwood logs. The farm was notable only for being one of the few patches of cultivated earth in the new territory, its single industry being placer mining.

Thompson and companions continued on to the Pacific Coast, leaving behind the Vail family, armed with one small cannon and a considerable amount of faith, to commence a mission not unlike that of the Spaldings and Whitmans in Oregon country, and certainly no less difficult or dangerous.

SUN RIVER FARM

The first summer at the Indian farm may have been a period of disillusionment for its new manager for a variety of reasons. Though considerable land had been cultivated and several dwellings for the Indians constructed, the project did not show prospects of further advancement under his direction. The Blackfeet were hunters, known for their cleanliness and fine horsemanship, but were also feared for their savagery and warlike nature, so that those living within the area they roamed, even other Indian tribes, were in constant danger of attack. James Vail must have been continually haunted by the fate met by the Whitmans, who had been killed by Indians in 1847, his own staff inadequate to provide his family protection from similar attack. His assistants were only two: Joseph Swift, a teenage hired hand from Philadelphia, and Iron, an Indian assigned to provide meat since the Piegans considered the buffalo their exclusive property and would have taken offense at a white man disturbing the herds.[6]

Despite his worry over the precarious situation, a man as concerned with spiritual values as Vail would have found his contact with Indian culture a rewarding one. One of the Blackfeet religious ceremonies that most fascinated the white man was the annual ritual offering homage to the sun. According to the Blackfeet myth, Tailfeathers Woman was the first human being to communicate with the Divinity of the Sky, who commanded her to oversee the construction of sacred lodges to be used for intricate rituals. Then each year when the prairie grass turned deep green and the cow parsnips grew high, the members of the tribe would paint their faces, don headdress and bells, and perform a series of prescribed acts and prayers to the beat of the tom-toms in celebration of the renewal of life by the sun, the source of all power. The performance of the Sun Dance not only renewed the individual's spirituality in preparation for the next year, but also united him to the heritage received from his ancestors, just as the center pole of the sacred lodges linked earth and heaven into a cosmic whole. The Blackfeet tribes referred to their ceremony dedicated to the sun as experiencing vision. But though they had such close ties to the forces of nature, they followed a nomadic pattern of life and had an aversion to cultivating the soil, since doing so would lower them to the status of "diggers." MONTANA

Another source of concern was the psychological pressure placed on the family, who suddenly found themselves -- and so soon after the pleasant social life aboard the steamer -- in the midst of a vast, uninhabited space where loneliness proved overwhelming. Keeping up good spirits under such conditions required ingenuity. The women tried to make the best of the situation, finding time to take the two children for outings in the government ambulance, but still the isolation was foreign to all of them. Martha and Electa, born at the tail end of a large family, were used to living among relatives -- aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, nieces, and nephews. True, the last years at home had not been the most pleasant, but still they had never been lonely. Their father, James Bryan, in the company of relatives, had migrated in 1832 from Pennsylvania to Hancock County, Ohio, chopping down oak, elm, walnut, maple, hickory, sycamore, and wild cherry from dense forests, calling in neighbors for a log rolling and burning, and then commencing to farm the land. When his wife died, leaving him with small children, he married a second time to Mary Johnson, a native of Vermont, who became the mother of Martha and Electa. James was civic-minded, riding for miles to vote in the presidential election between Jackson and Clay and banding together with three other families to build a log schoolhouse and hire a teacher.[7] Both James and Mary were themselves educated people, who kept a library in their home and encouraged their children to attend the academy later established in town. While their father was healthy and their mother still alive, the Bryan children led an idyllic life. The farm provided nearly everything needed for both food and clothing: wool, grain, meat, milk, butter, eggs, fruit, and vegetables. The women regularly took to town as much as twenty pounds of butter and dozens of eggs to apply against their store bill for the few items required: crocks for food preparation, salt for preserving meat and cooking, sugar and syrup for sweetening, coffee and tea for rounding out a meal, paper and envelopes for writing home, nails for building and repairing, and tobacco for the men's evening leisure hours. But the major portion of the store bill was run up by the yards and yards of fabric needed to clothe a large family of girls -- lots of calico, some muslin, a bit of silk and ribbon.

The Bryans' farm continued to do well. The livestock increased yearly -- horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens -- and wheat and corn harvests were bountiful. There was no need for hired help, the two sons still at home worked the fields with their father, the women tending to yard and household chores. Other than the traveling shoemaker who boarded out in one home after another, making a new pair of shoes for each member of the family, the Bryans were nearly self-sufficient economically as well as socially. Their brand of family life met most of their needs for companionship. Though independent from the rest of society, they were quite dependent on each other; a younger member of the family, such as Electa, could develop a lifelong emotional dependency upon an older sibling. Those who married into such a family usually discovered they were not quite so essential as a member related by blood, one who had always been there.

The season of harmony in the Bryan household came to an abrupt end with the death of Mary Bryan, and James found himself alone with seven children to care for: Daniel, James Junior, Sarah, Mary, Martha Jane, Electa, and Cornelia. No longer well enough himself to work in the fields, James Senior gradually turned the farm over to Daniel and James Junior, both in their twenties. Though he never remarried, when Martha was eleven and Electa eight, their father brought to live with them a stepmother of a sort, a forty-six-year-old woman named Mary Ann, nearly the same name as their real mother.

As difficult as the family situation was during the first six years Mary Ann lived with the Bryans, it became worse when James Senior died. In the winter of 1855, his condition had deteriorated rapidly, and though a doctor was called in repeatedly, he died in early January, complicating matters by not leaving a will. His estate had accumulated debts against it during his long illness: a four-year doctor bill amounting to $65, and a general merchandise bill at the store of $13.99 above the value of butter and eggs delivered. In addition, there was the $10 owed for a coffin and services.[8] James Junior was appointed executor of the estate, and trying to be fair to his common-law stepmother, he selected out first of all the household goods Mary Ann would need in rearing his two youngest half sisters, Electa and Cornelia. He set aside for her a parlor stove, a cooking stove with cooking utensils, four beds with bedding, a table and six chairs, six plates, six knives and forks, twelve spoons, one sugar dish, all the books, two spinning wheels, all the cloth and yarn, and several looking glasses.

In addition, he alloted her six hundred fifty pounds of pork, one barrel of salt, one hundred bushels of corn and wheat, one cow, one calf, eleven sheep, three herds of hogs, and $100, reminding again that the above-mentioned property was for the express purpose of Mary Ann's support of the two small children. The rest of the personal property, James disposed of at public auction to pay off debts against his father's estate.

Mary Ann, dissatisfied with her stepson's settlement, insisted she should have more, but the Bryan children disagreed, believing that since their father had never married her, she had no right to his real estate. Mary Ann went off to town in a huff, hired a lawyer, and sued the Bryan children for seizing their father's property. In the lengthy suit that followed, the court found in Mary Ann's favor, ruling she should be given, in addition to the personal property already granted her, one-third of the land and houses. Naturally, resentment ran so high that eventually the Bryan household completely dissolved.

On 9 April 1857, Martha married James Vail, also from Hancock County, and they set up housekeeping near his former home. The youngest Bryan daughter, Cornelia, came to live with Martha and James, and Electa also found a home with relatives. But Martha, not one to hold a grudge for long, soon permitted her stepmother to join the Vail household rather than being left at the farm alone.[9]

James Vail, a nineteen-year-old newlywed with an instant family of four to support, found a job teaching school. Soon after, he and Martha had their first child, a daughter whom Martha named for her mother, Mary Bryan. Harvey was born two years later.

Though within his first years of marriage James Vail had accumulated personal property valued at $400, a teacher's salary was insufficient to permit him to buy a house and land. When Reverend Reed, pastor of the Methodist church the Vails attended, received an appointment as Indian agent to the Dakota Territory, he offered James Vail a position managing the experimental farm. James and Martha, enthused at the prospects of doing missionary work in the wilderness, accepted his offer and commenced preparations for the journey west. It is quite possible that Electa was invited along not only to keep Martha company and help her with the children, but also because James hoped eventually to establish a school where she could teach Indian children.[10]

Neither the Vails nor Electa were complainers, and they had no intentions of giving up, but they could not have predicted the intense homesickness they would feel nor the hardships they would have to endure. Items that had been staples on the farm in Ohio -- tea, sugar, salt -- were now luxuries and had to be used sparingly, usually only when serving guests. It was for several good reasons that travelers to and from Fort Benton were received with such a warm welcome at the Vail farm.

THE COURTSHIP

In mid-September of the Vails' first year at Sun River, about the time the hot, dry season was finally drawing to a welcome close, Henry Plummer set out for Fort Benton, mulling over plans to leave the territories and the problems he had encountered there and return to the East. The prospects of the Civil War raging at home may have been more an incentive than a deterrent to a man who preferred action and constant opportunity to prove courage. Near Deer Lodge Valley, he and his companion, Charles Reeves, met the two brothers who are credited with discovering gold east of the Rockies, James and Granville Stuart, and the Stuarts jotted down the meeting in a diary they took turns keeping. "On our way to Hell Gate at Beaver Dam we met two fine looking young men. One of them said his name was Henry Plummer, the other was Charles Reeves.... They were from Elk City on Clearwater, and enquired about the mines at Gold Creek and at Beaverhead. They rode two good horses and had another packed with their blankets and provisions. We liked their looks and told them that we were going down to Hell Gate and would return to Gold Creek in a few days and asked them to return to Hell Gate with us and then we could all go up the Canyon together. They accepted our invitation."[11]

The first night back at Gold Creek, the men got up a friendly poker game in which James Stuart lost twenty-two dollars, though he did better the next night, losing only eighteen. Besides the poker losses, the Stuarts noted in their diary that they repaired Plummer's double-barreled shotgun, which he had broken off at the grip while crossing the mountains. Apparently uninterested in the scanty profits being made at Gold Creek, Plummer and Reeves moved on the morning of 21 September 1862 in the direction of the first major gold strike to be made on the eastern side of the Rockies, the Beaverhead mines, so-called because they were located on a tributary of that river. Though Reeves may have continued to Grasshopper Creek, Plummer and an old acquaintance from California named Jack Cleveland, who had been trailing behind, took the Mullan Road to Fort Benton, where they hoped to hire a mackinaw down the Missouri River. But on their arrival at the fort, they discovered that due to numerous reports that mackinaw passengers had suffered atrocities at the hands of Indians along the banks, boatmen were unwilling to attempt the trip. Plummer and Cleveland were stuck at Fort Benton where another steamer would not be arriving until the next spring.

Indian unrest had also caused alarm at the government farm, and fearing an attack on the palisade, James Vail rode to Fort Benton searching for men to assist him in defending his family. There he met Plummer and Cleveland and asked them to return with him to protect the farm until danger from the Indians subsided, offering them a small cabin inside the fort.[12]

At the farm, Electa Bryan and Henry Plummer met for the first time. Electa was shy and reserved, but Plummer, as well as Jack Cleveland, quickly took a romantic interest in her. Francis Thompson, in one passage of his reminiscences, refers to Electa as "pure," "unsophisticated," and "beautiful," though elsewhere he calls her only "pretty," a description that probably fits better.[13] After all, she was still single at age twenty in times when it was common for teenage girls, long since chosen for marriage, to be carrying small children in their arms.

Electa was now faced with deciding between the attentions of Plummer and Cleveland, who was supposedly crude and foulmouthed. Plummer, on the other hand, is almost universally described as handsome, meticulously clean, soft-spoken, intelligent, and polished. He looked to be about 5' 11", and to weigh around 150 pounds, had gray-blue eyes, light brown hair that glinted reddish tints in the sunlight, and a slender, athletic build. It is needless to say which of the two men would be more attractive to a young Christian woman. In addition to Electa, the farmhand Joseph Swift was also completely taken with Plummer.

The setting could not have been more conducive to romance: a deceptively peaceful Indian summer, cottonwood leaves turning yellow and dropping one by one along the Sun River banks, and emotions of those inside the fort heightened by the imminent danger outside, making each moment of life seem precious. It soon became apparent to everyone that Plummer's interest in Electa was serious, and when he had an opportunity to speak to her alone, he told her about his past problems in Washington and California, explaining that he was a peaceful man by nature, but that he had been forced to kill men to save his own life. His confession did not stop Electa from falling in love with him.

The choice Electa and Plummer made at Sun River that fall reveals something about both of them. Electa was, as Thompson wrote, completely unsophisticated, in fact so much so that he did not consider her as a marriage partner for himself. Though Thompson had found her kind and likable in the many weeks he had spent with her on the steamer, he also realized she was not of the social background that would be suitable for a man with his career plans. Having spent her life on a farm tending livestock and laboring had left her with tastes a little too simple for him. The best dress in her wardrobe was one of brown calico which she had sewn herself. Even though she was educated, Thompson would not trust her as hostess to the guests he hoped to entertain in his home at some future date. Plummer, even more worldly-wise than Thompson and considered an excellent judge of character, could not have failed to make the same observations about Electa, and the obvious question is why he did not follow the same line of reasoning regarding her suitability. Wherever Plummer had gone, beautiful women had been attracted to him, and he had formed relationships with some who, as Dimsdale described, wore "the finest clothes money can buy," dresses "worth from seven to eight hundred dollars" each.[14] Certainly in Plummer's mind Electa could not compete with such women, and he also had to be aware how important religion was in her life. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that the very qualities that caused men such as Thompson to reject Electa were precisely the very ones that drew Plummer to her -- her wholesomeness and naivete. And surely he appreciated most of all her unshakeable belief in him. It is possible he felt no concern for what help she would be in his future career because he was confident he could succeed with or without her help, but more than likely, he saw in her a potential to be whatever she chose to become. It would be safe to say that Electa and Plummer had faith in each other.

(Click on image to see full size)
Sun River Crossing, Montana. At the Vail Farm, located on the left bank of the river, Plummer met and fell in love with Electa Bryan. (Photo by Boswell, 1986)

Thompson believed Electa fell in love with Plummer only because of her being "isolated in a palisaded log house with no companion of her own sex, excepting her married sister," and there is some truth to his statement.[15] Though she was a loved sister and aunt, firmly included in all activities of the Vail family, Electa was somewhat of an outsider looking wistfully in, made more aware of her aloneness and lack of fulfillment by helping Martha through the experiences of motherhood, constantly observing the relationship Martha and James shared. But this need for a relationship of her own does not completely explain the feeling she developed for Plummer. She had undoubtedly had previous chances for marriage and rejected them, and by every indication we are led to believe that Plummer was simply the man for whom she had been waiting. Apparently she felt no anxiety that he neither shared her strong religious convictions nor seemed to value close family ties as highly as she. There was something of the romantic in her nature, a flair for the exotic that made her believe she could never again love anyone else as much as the young desperado, who spoke so gently to her in an accent that sounded almost foreign to the ears of an Ohio farm girl. The trait which prompted her to love him so was the same one which had brought her all the way to this wilderness fraught with countless dangers. But despite her romantic tendencies, Electa's judgment of Plummer should not be taken lightly. She was not a starry-eyed adolescent, but a mature woman, sensitive and intelligent, and quite different from the average Victorian woman in her open-mindedness and acceptance. Also, Electa may have been the one person to hear what is lacking from any historical record: Henry Plummer's version of his life story. Her opinion deserves considerable weight in an evaluation of his character, and after listening to Plummer talk about his past, Electa firmly believed he was a good man.[16]

The courtship had taken place during a period of tense watching and waiting in the close environs of the fort, but with the approach of winter, James Vail concluded that danger had passed. Though he had to inform Cleveland and Plummer that he had not received expected funds from the Indian agent and therefore would not be able to give them any pay for their time, all parted as friends. With thoughts of settling down on his mind, Plummer abandoned his plans to return to the East, instead turning back toward the location he considered the land of greatest opportunity, the new mines rumored to contain the "purest" gold in the world, the diggings on the Beaverhead tributary nicknamed Grasshopper Creek. Plummer was an experienced miner, known for the good luck he had had in California and Nevada, and naturally his hopes were high. Before leaving the Sun River farm, he promised Electa he would come back to marry her in the spring.