Panning Gold Out of Sagebrush
I Am Innocent
Good-bye, Boys
Henry Plummer: Rumor vs. Reality in the West

Panning Gold Out of Sagebrush

As the threat of Indian attack abated, miners in what is now Montana created a chaotic world of Wild West violence all their own. Though never as large as the rushes to California and Colorado, the Montana excitement had a unique intensity, coming as it did in the midst of the Civil War, when gold was desperately needed, while many western mining men had temporarily given up the chase to fight for the blue or the gray. Nonetheless, there were plenty of adventurers, scoundrels, and hard-core prospectors ready to follow the cry of gold, and it was in the rich placers of Montana that they came closest to their dream of finding a new California.

In July 1862-the same month Connor's volunteers marched across Nevada-a group of Colorado miners on their way to the gold fields of Idaho stopped to prospect under the vast, arching sky northeast of the continental divide, amid broad mountain basins draining toward the Missouri. In a glistening creek that ran into the Beaverhead River, a miner named John White found enough "color" to cause considerable excitement. Unaware that Lewis and Clark had named the stream almost 60 years earlier, White and his companions dubbed it Grasshopper Creek for the pests that dogged their every footstep. Drawing miners already in the area, a town quickly rose along the creek, in the higher country about 12 miles up from White's initial find. They called it Bannack, a misspelled tribute to the local Bannock Indians, who were culturally related to the Paiute and Shoshone.

At first the banks of Grasshopper Creek were so rich that a man could find a dollar's worth of gold by pulling up a sagebrush and shaking the dirt from its roots into a pan, and "panning gold out of sagebrush" became a running joke among the excited prospectors. By the following spring, however, the golden sand and gravel had begun to play out, and a group of men organized a prospecting party up the Yellowstone River.

The main party men left Bannack on April 9, but seven others who had intended to join them missed their connection-and it was these men who would ultimately find the gold. Trying to catch up to the larger group, the seven prospectors were captured by Crow Indians, who considered killing them, until one of the prospectors, a tall prankster from New Brunswick named Bill Fairweather, pulled live rattlesnakes out of his shirt and hit a medicine man with a bush. Another prospector, a half-breed who acted as interpreter, explained that the Indians thought Fairweather was crazy, and that harming him would release the evil spirit that made him so. The half-breed decided it would be safer to stay behind with the Crow, while the other six men headed back for Bannack, fighting off another Crow attack along the way, near the present site of Bozeman.

Fearing further Indian troubles, they decided to leave the regular trail and follow the course of the Madison River until they turned west and cut across the Tobacco Root mountain range, finally reaching a creek in a narrow gulch lined with alder. On the evening of May 26, four of the men went up the creek to prospect, while Bill Fairweather and Henry Edgar watched the horses and decided to do a little prospecting of their own. Edgar described the moment in his diary:

Bill went across to a [gravel] bar to see or look for a place to stake the horses. When he came back to camp he said, "There is a piece of rimrock sticking out of the bar over there. Get the tools and we will go and prospect it." Bill got the pick and shovel and I the pan and went over. Bill dug the dirt and filled the pan. "Now go," he says, "and wash that pan and see if you can get enough to buy some tobacco when we get back to town."

To the men's delight, there was more than enough to buy tobacco; as it turned out, there was enough in that gulch to buy whatever their hearts desired. By the time the other four prospectors returned, Fairweather and Edgar had over $12 worth of gold, finding as much as $5 in a single pan. Over the next two days, the men staked claims and panned almost $200 worth before heading back to Bannack. Though they tried to keep the find a secret, the signs were obvious: The men ate an expensive meal of bacon and eggs, bought new suits of clothes, and replenished the supplies they had lost to the Crow. When they tried to slip out of town on the morning of June 2, a crowd of 200 prospectors followed them down the Beaverhead.

Alder Gulch, as Edgar named it, quickly developed into one of the richest mining districts in history. By 1900, this single gulch would yield over $85 million worth of gold, with at least $30 million coming in the first few years. By late summer 1863, there were some 10,000 men working for 17 miles along the creek, harvesting gold faster and easier than anyone had harvested it since the halcyon days of California. It was an irresistible magnet for mayhem, according to one contemporary chronicler, attracting "the greatest aggregation of toughs and criminals that ever got together in the west....deserters from the Union and Rebel armies, river pirates and professional gamblers and sharpers." He didn't mention stagecoach robbers and cold-blooded murderers, but they came, too.

I Am Innocent

By October 1863, the prospect of a long, cold winter was already tangible in the crisp mountain air. Some of the Alder Gulch prospectors decided to return to the "states" with their new-found riches. One of them was "Bummer Dan" McFadden, a colorful character who, depending upon the story, received his nickname for his lazy habit of "bumming" handouts from fellow miners or because he had been an officer's aide, or "bummer," in the army. In any case, Dan had struck one of the richest claims in the gulch, and he was nervous about the rough characters who were filtering into Virginia City. He took every precaution he could to protect his gold, suspending the sacks of dust on leather thongs and hanging them inside his pants, while stuffing more sacks into his pockets. Fearful lest he be noticed leaving Virginia City on the stage, Dan walked 20 miles to a remote station before finally boarding the stagecoach for Bannack, from there to Salt Lake City and the states.

It was all for naught-as the tired horses pulled the stage through a narrow defile, two men wrapped in blankets with hoods over their heads stopped the stage and forced the driver to search the passengers. When he came to Dan, the driver found the sacks in his pockets and moved on, but one of the masked men ordered him to take the sacks under Dan's pants as well. The outlaws knew what they were looking for and they got it.

Bummer Dan's was the first stage robbed between Virginia City and Bannack, but it wasn't the last. The true extent of the great Montana "crime spree" remains in doubt. "One hundred and two people had been certainly killed by those miscreants...," wrote one imaginative writer of the time. "All that was known was that they started for various places and were never heard of again." Modern historians point out, however, that during a 14-month period before and after the founding of Alder Gulch, there were 18 documented murders and 11 robberies, and most of the murders had more to do with whiskey, Indians, or women than with stealing gold. Yet, whatever the numbers, the citizens of Alder Gulch were clearly troubled. They had no local government-the town of Virginia City would not be incorporated until January, while the Territory of Montana would be formed the following spring-and the only local law was a branch office of Sheriff Henry Plummer, who worked and lived in Bannack, over 80 miles away.

In December, a young German immigrant named Nicholas Tbalt was found near the Bannack road, frozen stiff with a bullet in his head and lariat marks around his neck. The man who found him, William Palmer, owned a saloon in Nevada City, just down the gulch from Virginia City; he brought the body back in a wagon and displayed it in front of his saloon-which proved good for business and bad for the outlaws. That afternoon, Palmer led two dozen horsemen back down the road, and they returned with several suspects, including a tall, blonde fellow named George Ives, who was already suspected in the robbery of a mail coach bound for Salt Lake City.

Now the citizens galvanized their resistance and the man who led the charge was a young lawyer named Wilbur Sanders who didn't drink and sang too loudly in church, both suspect behaviors on the hard-scrabble frontier, but who proved a brave, if bombastic prosecutor. The trial of George Ives was held in the snowy streets of Nevada City, with two wagons providing seats for the prisoners, their lawyers, and witnesses, while a semicircle of benches formed a jury box and a big bonfire provided heat for participants and onlookers alike.

After three days of long orations, a 24-man jury convicted Ives of the murder of Nicholas Tbalt. One juror believed that he was innocent of the murder, but Sanders jumped up on a wagon and made a motion that the crowd ignore the dissenting vote and accept the verdict of the majority. When the crowd roared its approval, Sanders made a second motion that Ives be hung right then and there. Again the crowd approved. After a third motion to take Ives's property in order to pay the expenses of trying and killing him, the condemned man was led over to a wooden box where a noose dangled from the beam of an unfinished building. With the noose around his neck, just before the box was kicked out from under him, Ives said, "I am innocent of this crime; Alex Carter killed the Dutchman."

George Ives's death by hanging marked the beginning of Montana vigilante justice. Wilbur Sanders and five others formed a secret Vigilance Committee, swearing to rid the mining regions of the criminal element, unfettered by the constraints of due legal process. Others quickly joined them, and on December 23, two days after the hanging of George Ives, a self-appointed posse of 24 men rode out of Virginia City to apprehend Alex Carter, the man Ives had named as the killer. When they couldn't find Carter, they seized a good-natured cook named Red Yeager, who had given Carter a letter of warning; Yeager admitted delivering the letter, but said a local bartender had actually written it, so the vigilantes decided to hang them both for interfering with "justice."

Good-bye, Boys

If the stories are true, Red Yeager faced his demise with extraordinary good humor, shaking the vigilantes' hands with the noose around his neck, saying "Good-bye, boys; God bless you, you are on a good undertaking." Moments earlier, however, before he stepped into the noose, Red allegedly decided to spill the beans, describing a well-organized, secret criminal organization in which the members recognized each other by several signs, including the password, "I am innocent." He supposedly provided a detailed list of men, including himself, who belonged to the organization. The chief and criminal mastermind was none other than Henry Plummer, the duly elected sheriff of both Bannack and Virginia City.

Despite the freezing weather, four men rode to Bannack and organized the locals into a committee to hang the sheriff and two of his deputies. By the cold evening of Sunday, January 10, 1864, over fifty men had joined the vigilante movement. They took the deputies first, one from the cabin he shared with his wife, the other passed out on a gambling table. Then they went for Plummer, who was sick and resting at the home of his sister-in-law. Under the pretense of discussing another criminal, the vigilantes drew the sheriff outside, where Plummer was herded toward a gallows he had built himself on the edge of town. Wilbur Sanders drove the men on, shouting, "Company! Forward march!"

"Indians are coming! Indians are advancing on the town to burn and massacre! Hurry our wives and children to places of safety!" -A COLORADO RANCHER GALLOPING THROUGH DENVER, JUNE 1864

All three men claimed their innocence, but as far as the vigilantes were concerned, the time for innocence was passed. Under the gallows, Plummer spoke of his beloved wife, who was away in the East, and asked to see his sister-in-law. He asked for a jury trial, for time to settle his affairs, for time to pray. But the night was freezing cold, and the men who surrounded him were in a hurry. So after watching his two deputies hanging in curse-filled agony, he made one last request: "Give me a high drop, boys." This they did, "as high as circumstances permitted," according to one account, "by hoisting him up as far as possible in their arms, and letting him fall suddenly. He died quickly and without much struggle."

The next morning, a mob went after the only Mexican in town, Joe Pizanthia, who they called "the Greaser." Although he had not been named as one of the gang, they were interested in "investigating his career in the Territory," and when he defended himself by killing one of the men in the mob, they hauled out a howitzer and blasted his cabin until it exploded in flames. Then they dragged Pizanthia, still half-alive, out in the street, strung him up from a pole and riddled his body with bullets. After hanging another man in Bannack, the vigilantes returned to the Virginia City area, where they hung five suspects on January 14. By early February, nine more had been strung up in the surrounding area, bringing the total to 22 executions in less than six weeks.

Though the pace of vigilante justice slowed after this initial onslaught, the vigilantes remained an organized force for several years. In late 1864, they hung a man in Bannack who had committed the "crime" of saying the "strangling" vigilantes had hung some "good men." In time, however, as the territorial government became established and a measure of civilization came to the Montana frontier, the citizens began to regard the vigilantes as being as dangerous as the alleged gang of criminals they had originally formed to combat. One disgusted citizens group posted a notice that any future hangings would be punished at a rate of five to one, a warning that tended to have a chilling effect on further vigilante activities.

Henry Plummer
Rumor vs. Reality in the West

THE LAWMAN WHO teeters on the edge of the law is a classic archetype of the Wild West, embodied most famously in the careers of Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp. Before these, however, there was Henry Plummer, an even darker archetype of a frightening breed: the bad sheriff.

The Plummer legend arises out of the complex, confusing period of vigilante justice during the early gold rush days of Bannack and Virginia City, Montana. The suave, smooth-talking sheriff of both towns, so quick with his revolver that "he could draw the pistol and discharge the five loads in three seconds," Henry Plummer allegedly led a sophisticated band of road agents, who knew each other by secret signs and tracked every shipment of gold, killing and robbing at least 102 men in a "reign of terror" that could be stopped only by the quick and final justice of the hangman's noose.

This story has been passed down for a century and a quarter; yet the original chronicler of the Plummer saga, a mining camp intellectual named Thomas J. Dimsdale, was an unabashed apologist for the vigilantes and didn't witness the events he described. It's only recently that two modern scholars, R.E. Mather and F.E. Boswell, have reexamined the evidence with a more objective eye.

While Dimsdale portrayed Plummer as a "wily seducer" and "a very demon," Mather and Boswell see him as an effective law officer and "gifted leader" who could never live down his unfortunate past. Originally, from Maine, Plummer had first come west in the rush to California, where as town marshal of Nevada City he gained a reputation as a "prompt and energetic" public officer, who "when opposed in the performance of his official duties,...became as bold and determined as a lion." While performing these duties, Plummer shot a man in what appeared to be self-defense; yet after a lurid, emotionally-charged case that went twice to the California Supreme Court, he was sentenced to San Quentin for second degree murder.

Suffering from tuberculosis, Plummer was released after six months; while he recovered from his illness, he never re-covered his reputation. Rumors of his questionable character set several prominent Bannack citizens against him, notably Sidney Edgerton, who would become the first governor of Montana Territory, and his nephew, Wilbur Sanders, the crusading lawyer who became the driving force behind the vigilantes. The conflict was exacerbated by political differences in the overheated atmosphere of the Civil War.

The evidence against Plummer was minimal at best: A teenage boy saw a flash of red when a hooded man opened his coat, a fact that seemed to match the bright red lining of Plummer's coat. And Red Yeager, one of the first men hung, supposedly identified Plummer as the outlaw leader before he died-though no one but the vigilantes heard Yeager's "confession." As for the gang itself, there were relatively few documented murders and robberies during Plummer's term of office, and crime in the mining region seems to have increased and become better organized after Plummer and the alleged gang members were executed.

Although they stop short of exonerating Plummer, Mather and Boswell make a strong case for the dangers of vigilante justice. "I don't know if Plummer was guilty or not," Mather says, "but the vigilantes didn't know, either."