John White should be one of the most famous men in the history of Montana, for he discovered the fabulously rich placer gold mines on Grasshopper Creek in Beaverhead County. It was his discovery in the summer of 1862, that started the rush to Bannack and made the Beaverhead the cradle of Montana history. Instead he is almost forgotten, relegated to a footnote at best, lost in the melodramatic semi-fiction of writers about the Vigilantes and Sheriff Henry Plummer. Picture in your mind the landscape of what is now Montana, but try to imagine what it looked like in the spring of 1862. It was still pretty much Indian country, with the Blackfeet undefeated in the North, the Crows and the Sioux in the East, the Shoshonis in the Southwest, and the Flatheads in the Bitteroot. There were a few white men, mostly traders and stockmen like Robert Dempsey, the Stuart brothers, Granville and James, or Johnny Grant of Deer Lodge. By the summer of 1862, there were at least two white women, Mrs. Martha Vail, and her 20-year-old single sister, Electa Bryan. They had arrived by steamer, landing at Fort Benton on June 17, 1862. Electa later became Mrs. Henry Plummer in one of the first wedding ceremonies performed in the territory (June 20, 1863). However, the big influx of whites had to await the exciting strike by John White on July 28, 1862. In 1861 some rich gold strikes had been made in the north central Idaho region -- Florence, Salmon River, Pierce -- and there were miners coming up from Colorado and others from California heading to these strikes. Those coming by way of the Lemhi in Idaho found an impenetrable wilderness in front of them when they came upon the Salmon River, and some turned east over what is now Chief Joseph Pass into the Big Hole basin. The Lott brothers hit pay dirt in the Big Hole basin in July, and sent a party back across to Fort Lemhi to bring in wagons. This party of wagons, perhaps the first to enter the Big Hole basin, passed right by Grasshopper without finding pay dirt. John White was a "Colorado man," as opposed to a "California man," having come up from the south. He had heard about the strike in the Big Hole, and was searching for the Lott diggings when he panned dirt from the Grasshopper, finding rich colors. News travelled fast, and by the end of August there was a sizable camp named Bannack, or Bannack City. The first big gold rush into Montana was on, and John White had led the way. In his HISTORY OF SOUTHERN MONTANA, Al Noyes writes the following about the White discovery: On the old records, of White's District, we find the following: John White has recorded one discovery claim, known as the first discovery on Grasshopper Creek. Said claim is situated at a point known as Cedar Tree Point, August 30th, 1862. Discovered July 28. R. T. HARRIS, Recorder. And in THE HISTORY OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY, Dr. Dale Tash adds the following information: However, Bannack's history was not to really begin until almost 55 years after Lewis and Clark, when John White and party discovered gold, July 28, 1862. White staked his claim on a sandbar a few miles upstream from the point at which Grasshopper Creek empties into the Beaverhead River. White, who was looking for Mort Lott's Pioneer Creek discovery, filed the first recorded mining claim. Unaware of the Creek's previous name [Willard Creek], they christened it "Grasshopper Creek" because of the dense 'hopper population in the area. Like many "original" gold strike discoverers, White did not benefit from his find and was killed by road agents several months later. The term "road agent" as used by Dr. Tash and most other Montana historians is a code word for "member of the Plummer gang," so that one is led to believe that Henry Plummer, the elected sheriff of Bannack, was somehow involved in the murder of John White. However it is easy to demonstrate that Sheriff Plummer was not involved in White's death. This fact can be proven by establishing the date and location of the death of John White, and the name of the killer. We will also see that the so-called "Plummer gang" had all been lynched by the Vigilantes by the time John White was murdered. Fortunately there are Probate Court records from Madison County (still in Idaho Territory at the time) which shed light on these matters. Noyes quotes from the original Madison County court records: The first matter for probate was the petition of Maria V. Slade, on April 14th, 1864, for the probating of the will of J. A. Slade. Mrs. Slade did not appear, having left the Territory, taking the will with her and probably $7,000.00 or $8,000.00 in valuables. The second matter was the estate of John White, the discoverer of Grasshopper, April 29th, 1864. Henry Coppock, being duly sworn, deposes and said: I know John White, by sight. I went with Mr. Temple to White Tail Deer Creek, to bring his body to Virginia City, for burial. We found the body, he had died from effect of wounds. We brought his body from where we found it, to my camping place, and kept it there about four days. I saw his body searched for papers, and other things. No will was found on his person, and no property of any value, or money. John Temple, sworn and says: I was well acquainted with John White in his lifetime. I saw him at Virginia City, about the first of February, last. After I heard of his death, I went with Coppock to bring in his body for burial -- found the body and recognized it. While at Virginia City, he boarded, and was out prospecting, at the time of his death. I don't think he left a will. If he had, I should have known it. I understand he was a married man, but don't know them (presumably the family). John M. Fletcher sworn and says: I was well acquainted with John White for the last four years. He had a wife and child living in Illinois. The child is about five years old. He had, at the time of his death, two horses. He had a one-third interest in a mining claim, in Bannack. I should say his interest was worth $100.00. I heard him say he also had a quartz lode in Bannack. He had no relatives in this country, or part of the country. The horses are worth $75.00 each. He owned lode claims in Colorado, in Park county. Don't know what they are worth. Know of no other property. Of interest in the Noyes quote is Temple's sworn statement that he saw John White "about the first of February, last." That is about February 1, 1864. The first vigilante lynchings took place on January 4, 1864, Henry Plummer was hanged on January 10, and by January 26, twenty men had been hanged. There only remained a weak and sick Bill Hunter, hiding in Gallatin County, who was found and hanged on February 3. John White was still alive when the vigilantes finished off their 21 suspected road agents. The truth about the murder of John White is not nearly as romantic as Dr. Tash leads us to believe. Instead of being "killed by road agents several months later," he was murdered over 18 months later, and not by road agents, but by an itinerant criminal who thought he could get away with murder and robbery. Nathaniel Langford in VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS, published in 1890, tells the story in great detail. John White and a friend had first helped a young traveller named Kelley, but when it was discovered he was a horse thief, they decided to go after him. They succeedeed in capturing Kelley but he broke loose, grabbed John White's gun, and shot both White and his companion. Kelley then escaped. Langford, however, cannot refrain from blaming this on Henry Plummer, even though Plummer had already been dead for over a month. Here is what Langford says: This was one of the earliest and most brutal tragedies in the newly discovered gold regions; and, happening when they were populated mostly by Eastern people, and before Plummer and his band of ruffians had been arrested in their grand scheme of wholesale slaughter, it produced a profound sensation throughout the country. There are two main sources for events that occurred during the early days of the Montana gold camps: VIGILANTES OF MONTANA, by Dimsdale, written first as a series of newspaper articles starting in August of 1865, and published as a book in 1866; VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS, by Langford, published in 1890. Both of these books are available in electronic form on the web site http://montana-vigilantes.org. Dimsdale and Langford were writing to justify the bloody spree of vigilante lynchings that started on January 4, 1864, with a secret interrogation, and secret hanging of the first two victims, Red Yeager and George Brown, two young men who may or may not have been guilty of association with criminals. The first flush of hangings was over by February 3, 1864, but lynchings continued until at least 1867. Some were positively bizarre. For example one victim was lynched for murdering a man who was not even dead, but only injured in a fight. Dimsdale was paid to write the articles justifying the extra-legal actions of the vigilantes, and was, in all probability a vigilante himself. The threat of legal action against the vigilantes was always present after Montana became a territory on May 26, 1864, when federal judges arrived. Author Art Pauley provides the following information about attempts to hold vigilantes responsible for their actions: This was true of the residents in my home town [Deer Lodge] after Bill Bunton was hung on the gate frame in front of the Demorest home. An early day editor of the New Northwest, a local paper, called some executions diabolic, and at the time Justice George Symes, who replaced Justice Lyman E. Munson, threatened to impanel a grand jury to indict some of the vigilantes on a charge of murder. By then it was 1870; many of those who would have been charged had left the territory. Others who had long since abandoned the organization, denied they had ever been participants or members of the so-called "Dark Lantern Clique" and so the threat never materialized. To this day, Montana historians glorify the bloody-thirsty and extra-legal activities of the vigilantes while relegating a true pioneer like John White to a mere footnote. In this they are following Dimsdale, who only mentions John White once, in Chapter V, of his book: This town [Bannack] originated from the "Grasshopper Diggings," which were first discovered in the month of July, by John White and a small party of prospectors, on the Grasshopper Creek, a tributary of the Beaver Head. The discoverer, together with Rudolph Dorsett, was murdered by Charley Kelly, in the month of December, 1863, near the Milk Ranche, on the road from Virginia City to Helena. We see that even in this brief mention of White, Dimsdale was wrong. White was alive and well "around the first of February" (1864), and his body was found on a trail on White Tail Deer Creek, not on the road from Virginia City to Helena. Presumably Dimsdale had access to the probate court records at the time, but he was concerned more with demonizing Sheriff Plummer than with accuracy.