GRANVILLE STUART
AND THE MONTANA VIGILANTES
OF 1884
Richard K. Mueller
A THESIS
Presented to the Departirient of History
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
JUNE 1980
o
An Abstract of the Thesis of
Richard K. Mueller for the degree of Master of Arts
in the Department of History to be taken June 1980
Title: Granville Stuart and the Montana Vigilantes of 1884,
Approved:
Richard M. Brown
In the summer of 1889, Granville Stuart, pioneer gold-miner,
trader, merchant, politician, rancher, and man of letters led one of
the most deadly vigilante episodes in American history. Like the
leaders of the 1862 Bannack-Virginia City vigilantes, Stuart was a Mason.
He entered into the booming range cattle industry in 1879 by becoming
the manager of the DHS ranch in east central Montana Territory. But
by 1884, the ranges were becoming overcrowded, calf increase was down,
and stockmen were becoming increasingly concerned with the depredations
of rustlers. As part of a general understanding among cattlemen,
Granville Stuart led a secret vigilante campaign which claimed the
lives of from nineteen to twenty-three alleged horse thieves. Sub
sequent operations probably pushed the number of victims as high as
thirty-five. The success of the Montana vigilantes may have inspired
Wyoming cattlemen during the Johnson County War in 1892.
VITA
NAME OF AUTHOR: Richard Kirk Mueller
PLACE OF BIRTH: Laramie, Wyoming
DATE OF BIRTH: September 28, 1955
UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED;
University of Oregon
DEGREES AWARDED:
Bachelor of Arts, 1978, University of Oregon
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
American West
History Education
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University
of Oregon, Eugene, Spring, 1979; Fall, Winter, Spring, 1979-
1980
M': 'Uf: ^
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Approval Page
Introduction and Acknowledgments.
PART I
GRANVILLE STUART: THE BACKGROUND
Chapter
I. "Mr. Montana:" . The First Forty Years 7
II. "The Beef Bonanza"
III. The Cattle King
PART II
GRANVILLE STUART: THE VIGILANTE
IV. A Word About Sources
V. Vigilantes!
VI. Aftermath: Rumors and Repercussions
VII. Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
LIST OF MAPS
East Central Montana, 1884
Route of the Vigilantes
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Granville Stuart
Vigilantes at James' Woodyard.
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INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the summer of 1884, the rugged country of east central Montana,
its rolling plains dotted with thousands of cattle, punctuated here
and there with small mountain ranges, and at once severed and woven
together by the Missouri River and its tributaries, was breathlessly
alert. From rude log cabins along the river bottoms and from scattered
trading posts nestled in groves of poplar or aspen, carried by wandering
prairie travelers and by steamboats chugging up the river, came the
word of grim proceedings. There was talk of bands of cowboys, organized
and deadly serious, of riders who came with the quiet of night or
unexpectedly with the sunrise. They carried Winchesters and horse
hair ropes and their work was quick and sure. The details were few
and often conflicting and not many cared to pursue them. But when it
was over, this much was clear: Granville Stuart, pioneer gold-miner,
trader, merchant, politician, rancher, and man of letters had led
perhaps the bloodiest single vigilante campaign in American history.
His war against horse thieves constituted a "human roundup which
claimed from 19 to 35 lives.
Stuart's campaign is an important part of the growth and decline
of the open range cattle industry on the northern Great Plains and a
central chapter in the American vigilante tradition. Yet we knovj very
little about the events of 1884. We have Granville Stuart's own
account, vague and impersonal, the authenticity of which is disputed.
We have a handful of written statements by participants and contem
poraries, some of them taken down more than thirty years after the
events. We have the correspondence of those in the neighborhood whose
letters home to loved ones are full of frontier exaggeration. We have
the newspapers of the time which printed news as rumor and rumor as
news or which adhered to the general facts at the expense of details
(the sparse "There's seven more good Indians" style of frontier under
statement). "Eastern Montana is rapidly reducing the number of horse
thieves," ran one account. Then, too, there is a missing diary, the
typescript copy of which indicates that all names had been erased.
There is the letter-press book of Granville Stuart with key pages torn
out. And there is a key article by amateur historian Oscar 0. Mueller,
a member, like Granville Stuart, of the Masonic Order, whose interviews
with the last of the participants and sympathy for their cause repre
sents the last official word on the subject: an account tight but un-
confirmable. The job of studying the events of 1884 is as much to
determine what happened as to decide what it means.
But what does it mean? Why, in a territory with full judicial
machinery and regular law enforcement officials, was it necessary for
cattlemen to take the law into their own hands? Why were leading
citizens, members of the Territorial Legislature, so willing to resort
to extralegal action when legal avenues seemed so readily at their
disposal? Why was nothing done about the horse thieves in the first
place? Why was nothing done about the vigilantes in the second? We
can perhaps understand why the citizens of Bannack and Virginia City
wild and wide-open mining towns of the 1860s, rose up against the
corrupt Sheriff Plunmier and his gang of murderous road agents. But
what possessed the cattlemen of central Montana, twenty years later,
with civilization firmly entrenched and statehood just around the
corner, to role up their sleeves and lynch common criminals (and some
who weren't)? How much force is a citizen entitled to use to protect
his or her property? The instinct for citizens to take matters of law
and order into their own hands is a characteristic uniquely American
and surprisingly resiliant. A Miami, Florida scout master was recently
tried for manslaughter after a rifle, rigged as a booby trap to protect
his home from burglars, discharged and killed a fourteen-year-old boy.
The issues of 1884 are in many ways the issues of today.
* * * * * * *
In only a short time I have become indebted to a number of people
whose aid and advice have greatly contributed to this thesis. My
thanks and appreciation go to the hard working staffs of the following
libraries and archives: Montana State Historical Society Library;
Montana State University Library and Special Collections; University of
Montana Library and Archives; Division of Records, Meagher County
Court House, White Sulphur Springs, Montana; University of Wyoming
Library and Western History Research Center; and the University of
Oregon Library. In particular I would like to acknowledge the helpful
assistance of State Archivist Brian Cockhill and Dave Walter of the
Montana State Historical Society; Minnie Paugh, head of the Special
Collections section of the Montana State University Library; Dale
Johnson, archivist at the University of Montana Library; Kenneth
Pwichel, Clerk of Courts, Meagher County Court House, IxThite Sulphur
Springs, Montana; Larry Remele, Editor of North Dakota History, and
Janet Nesu of the State Historical Society of North Dakota; Emmit
Chisum, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming Library;
Joanne Halgren and Becky Bragg of the Interlibrary Loan Department and
Shirien Stevens, Main Desk Supervisor, University of Oregon Library.
My thanks also to Dr. Richard B. Roeder of Montana State University
and Dr. Leland Everett Stuart, on leave from Fort Lewis College, for
sharing their impressions of Granville Stuart with me. My very special
thanks go to Dr. Richard Maxwell Brown, a supportive adviser and
inspiring teacher. It was he who brought the 1884 Montana vigilante
episode to my attention and his provocative scholarship which gave
direction to my study. His delicate suggestions and patient corrections
have greatly improved this thesis. For the remaining flaws, I alone
am responsible.
Finally, my thanks to two good friends, Manville Jennings and
Victor Settje, for their companionship on the road to Montana and for
finding time, between camping trips and other diversions, to help me
with my research.
PART I
GRAHVILLE STUART: THE BACKGROUND
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CHAPTER I: "MR. MONTANA:" THE FIRST FORTY YEARS
There was something about Granville Stuart's remarkable life that
inspired even more remarkable and sometimes exaggerated eulogies. He
was born in Virginia, but left with his family at the tender age of
four.^ Yet in the introduction to Stuart's Diary & Sketchbook, Carl
Schaefer Dentzer wrote, "Stuart was a Virginian, which in the 19th cen-
2
tury, meant that he was a special breed of man." Stuart had few close
brushes with death and was not especially distinguished as a pathfinder,
warrior, or leader of men. Yet Edgar Paxson called him "the Daniel
3
Boone of Montana." Stuart did take part in several civic affairs and
served two generally uneventful terms in the Territorial Legislature.
But his most thorough biographer, Paul Robert Treece, wrote,
Granville Stuart was the most important single figure
in the general development of Montana from the early 1869's
until his death.^
It is not easy to account for such a legacy. Stuart's life on the fron
tier was exciting and full. But Stuart never appealed to contemporaries
the way he appealed to historians. By the end of his first forty years
there was little to suggest the fame that would be his after his second
forty.
The Stuart family, as Granville wrote, "seem always to have been
pioneers." His grandfather had been trading with the Indians as early
as 1793. His father, Robert Stuart, was a restless man who worked at
a variety of professions in the frontier settlements of Virginia.
Iowa and Illinois. Though he tried his hand at fanning, surveying,
land speculating, and trading with the Indians, Robert Stuart never
CH.'
.
achieved any real success. He had troubles with his creditors and
with Granville's mother from whom he was divorced in the late 1850s.
His first son, James, was bom in 1833 followed a year later by
Granville.
The Stuart boys grew up on the frontier and often had Indian
children for playmates. They learned early how to hunt game with
Kentucky flint-lock rifles. Their father was frequently absent for
long periods of time which had the effect, perhaps, of making Granville
especially close to his older brother.^ Though they received little in
the way of formal education, Granville described living in one settle
ment in which they could skate up a frozen river to school. "James did
the skating," he wrote, "and 1 just squatted down and held to his coat
tail."^ Their education was supplemented in the home. Paul R. Treece
writes that Robert Stuart owned more than the usual number of books
and frequently read to his family. It was Granville who was most
influenced by this exposure to learning. He became the more scholarly
and thoughtful of the two brothers. In the introduction to Stuart's
Forty Years on the Frontier, Paul C. Phillips described Granville as
...a dreamer and philosopher. He was a student of
books and of nature, a lover of all creation. He was a
seeker-after knowledge, and reflective by both nature and
habit.
In 1849, Robert Stuart left his family behind in Iowa and, like
thousands of others, set out for the gold fields of California. He
returned two years later by traveling via steamship to Nicaragua,
9
across Central America and up the Mississippi. He spent a listless
winter in Iowa, but before it was time for spring planting, he was
ready to set out for California again. This time James insisted that
he and Granville be permitted to go along. In May of 1852, Granville
Stuart, nearly eighteen years old, set out across the Great Plains to
search for gold in California.
Robert Stuart did not remain for long with his sons in California
before returning to Iowa. This was apparently the last time they saw
their father. Knowing "absolutely nothing about mining," James and
Granville began working the various creeks and streams which flowed
into the Sacramento River in northern California. They made their
headquarters in a little village up the west branch of the Feather
River. The village had "the well deserved name of Dog Town," wrote
Granville, "for although there were only ten houses, there were sixteen
fully developed dogs." The Stuarts met with sporadic luck in their
"diggings," but success always seemed to slip away from them. On one
occasion they abandoned a good site prematurely, on another they failed
to file a legal claim. But Granville held the prospecting profession
in high esteem. Years later he wrote that there were "no finer speci
mens of mankind" than the California forty-niners. "Only the courageous
determined man crossed the plains and reached the land of gold."
Treece suggests that the Stuarts probably enjoyed the search for gold
12
as much as actually finding it.
One day, in 1853, Granville opened the door of their cabin in
Dog Town to find a man, weak, pale and "shaking with ague." His name
was Rizen (later Reece) Anderson. He had come from Illinois to Califor
nia and almost immediately become desperately ill. A physician in
Sacramento sent Anderson to Dog Town suggesting that the climate might
help. In Dog Town he had been referred to the Stuart's cabin by a man
who thought they, too, were from Illinois. The Stuarts could not refuse
to take him in though, as Granville wrote, "...he looked so feeble that
13
I feared he would not live more than a month or two." But Anderson's
health gradually returned, and he became a lifelong friend of the
Stuarts. When they moved to Montana, he accompanied them. When
Granville went into ranching, he became the foreman. And when Granville
sent his cowboys on the trail of horse thieves, Reece Anderson was
often in the lead.
Twice, while in California, the Stuarts found occasion to take arms
against Indians. The first instance was in July, 1853. A group of
Chinese miners near Dog Town were attacked by Indians (apparently mis
taking them for another tribe) and two of the Chinese were killed.
This "excited much feeling against the Indians," and a party of whites
including James Stuart, went after the culprits. The party sighted and
attacked a group of Indians who they guessed were the guilty ones. Two
Indians were killed and several others injured. The Chinese were very
grateful, but Granville wrote later that most of those involved felt
14
"ashamed of the raid after it was over."
The next altercation with Indians came in the spring of 1855.
Having heard reports of a significant gold strike to the north, the
Stuarts moved to the area around Yreka. On June twentieth they were
prospecting along the Klamath River with a small party of men when
they were fired upon by Indians armed with muzzle loading rifles. The
group escaped alarmed but uninjured. This was the Stuarts' first
encounter with the hostilities growing out of the Second Rogue River
War, a dispute between the increasing number of whites in the area and
the Indians living around Tule Lake. It was a regretable conflict in
which a number of atrocities were committed by both sides. Joel Palmer,
the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon Territory, wrote that the
trouble grew out of the overexcitement of miners and settlers "...goaded
on by reckless and lawless miscreants..." He went on, "History will
prove that this war has been forced upon these Indians against their
will.. Their prospecting plans disrupted by the hostilities, the
Stuarts and Reece Anderson heard that a volunteer regiment called the
First California Mounted Riflemen was forming and promising to pay
three dollars a day. They "enlisted promptly. At one point, in
this brief soldiering career, James Stuart and another man were sent to
Shasta Valley for supplies. On the way they came upon two Indians with
a number of horses and, assuming the animals to be stolen, Stuart and
18
his companion killed the Indians. The role of the Stuarts and
Anderson in the Rogue River War was insignificant but unfortunate.
James' execution of the two Indians demonstrates a contempt for them
which is echoed in Granville's account of the conflict (though Granville
makes no mention of James' encounter).
In the spring of 1857 the Stuarts decided to return to Iowa to
visit their parents. They had been in California for five years and
success was still eluding them. That they had not taken work in any
of the variety of occupations spawned by the gold rush which might
have delivered a more reliable or lucrative income can perhaps be
explained by their impulsive youth and the lure of riches. But the
reluctance to find steady work was a tendency which would recur,
especially in Granville who seemed to inherit his father's restlessness.
His experiences in the gold rush, in fact, seemed to aggravate this
tendency. One is compelled to agree with Treece that "the sum of
Granville Stuart's California experience was to render him temporarily
19
unfit for regular employment for decades."
In June of 1857 the Stuarts, Reece Anderson and a party of eight
others set out for the east. By July they were in Utah Territory on
the Hudspeth Cutoff headed for the Oregon Trail. It was here that
Granville became seriously ill with "Mountain Fever." The rest of the
party went on leaving James and Reece Anderson to tend to Granville.
It was seven weeks before the fever broke and not, wrote Stuart, "until
20
it brought me nigh to death's door." By now the men had lost valuable
time. With winter fast approaching their chances of making it through
South Pass and across the plains were not good. There was some danger
from Indians given the now small size of their party. They had also
been hearing reports of trouble between Mormons and gentiles and of an
impending "Mormon War." (Only later would they hear of the Mountain
Meadows Massacre in which Indians and Mormons besieged and killed one
hundred and twenty emigrants in southern Utah.) "We now found ourselves,"
wrote Stuart, "in a very dangerous situation."21
It was the Stuarts' good fortune to befriend a trader, Jake Meek,
who suggested that the men travel north with him to spend the winter in
the Beaverhead River Valley in present day western Montana. Meek, who
had previously been a freighter for the Hudson's Bay Company, was
trading ponies and buckskin clothing to travelers along the Oregon
Trail in exchange for their worn out cattle and horses. In the fall
he drove the stock north to winter them in the Beaverhead Valley and
there to let them grow healthy and fat and ready to re-sell for a
profit. The Stuarts and Anderson agreed to accompany him and thus,
largely by accident, Granville Stuart entered Montana late in 1857.
During his first years in Montana, Granville Stuart began the two
enterprises for which he would be best remembered. The Stuarts spent
their first winter in the Bitter Root Mountains until a scarcity of
game forced them down into Deer Lodge Valley. Here, though lacking
proper equipment, they passed time by prospecting for gold. In May,
1858, in a bread pan into which they had shoveled some sand, they
22
discovered about ten cents worth of the precious metal. They were
not the first to find gold in the area. Francois "Benetese" Findley
had found gold in almost the same place in 1852 as had the Hereford
23
party in 1856. But letters from Granville and James to acquaxntances
in Colorado arrived at about the time that the Pikes Peak rush was
24
going bust and a number of miners left there for Montana. It was
probably for this reason that Granville Stuart is given credit for the
first significant discovery of gold in the region. Over the next
several years the word spread, and the mining boom in Montana began.
By 1862 the settlement of American Fork was established and full of
25
miners, Stuart wrote, "Our little settlement... has begun to take on
the lively bustling appearance of a new placer camp."26
During these years, too, Stuart began raising cattle, trading
worn out steers and oxen for healthy ones along the Oregon Trail,
wintering them in the valleys of southwest Montana, as Meek and others
were doing. In 1861 he had a few horses, fifteen oxen and over sixty
27
head of beef including three bulls.
In September, 1862, in a ceremony in American Falls, Granville
Stuart was sworn in as Missoula County commissioner and James took the
oath as sheriff. But even before this, James had been called upon to
act in a sheriff's capacity. In August three men had arrived in town
and were winning a great deal of money playing monte in the saloon.
James Stuart lost three hundred dollars to them but managed to win two
hundred back. On August 24 he recorded in his diary, "Our monte sharps
are about to take the town. Getting decidedly obstreperous in their
28
conduct." The following afternoon two men arrived from Elk City
saying they were in pursuit of some monte players who were accused of
stealing horses, and they requested assistance in apprehending them.
James accompanied the two men and arrested one of the monte players,
C.W. Spillman, in the general store. The other two, William Arnett and
B.F. Jermagin, were playing cards in the saloon when the arresting
party confronted them, weapons drawn, and ordered them to "throw up
their hands." Arnett reached for a Colt navy revolver but was killed
by a shotgun blast before he could use it. Jermagin surrendered
29
without resistance.
On August 26 a "trail" was held. Jermagin testified that he had
only recently met Spillman and Arnett and knew nothing of the horse
stealing incident. Spillman confirmed his story and Jermagin was
given six hours to leave town. Spillman "made no defence" with respect
to his own situation but bravely faced his accusers. He was accordingly
found guilty and sentenced to death. At twenty-two minutes past two
o'clock, August 26, 1862, James Stuart presided over the first execution
30
in what IS now Montana.
The Spillman incident seems an unfortunate one in many respects.
Though James Stuart was acting in the capacity of Sheriff, it would be
two weeks before he would take the oath. There are no details of the
trial, but it seems clear that little time was wasted on due process.
The fact that many people in the town had lost money to the monte players
raises some question concerning the partiality of the jury. Treece
reminds us that the crime was committed in another county and therefore
31
the trial did not belong in American Fork in the first place. James
Stuart observed that Spillman did not seem "a hardened criminal" and
Granville expressed regret that he did not plead for his life. "I now
think," wrote Stuart years later, "that he was so stunned...that despair
32
seized him and he thought it useless to try to escape death." Had
more time been given for the trial process, Spillman might have been
able to collect himself and arrange a defense. As events turned out,
he was hanged less than twenty-four hours after the arrival of the men
from Elk City.
But Granville Stuart was generally impressed by the quick trial.
He admitted that the punishment of hanging for stealing a horse might
seem "severe beyond proportion," but observed that the nearest jail
or court was hundreds of miles away and that small frontier communities
rarely had the resources "to indulge in costly criminal persecutions "
Therefore it was "advisable" as he wrote, "to inflict such punishment
as would strike terror to the minds of the evil doers, and exercise a
restraining influence over them." Quick trials also served that purpose.
Wrote Stuart,
Justice was swift and sure in those days. There
was no moving for a new trial or any of the thousand other
clogs upon the wheels of justice which but too often render
the execution of the law a mockery.
This was not the last time Stuart would use such logic to excuse a
hanging.
It was also in 1862 that Granville Stuart took a Shoshone Indian
woman (a "woman" aged twelve years) as his wife. Awbonnie Tookanka made
a good and loyal wife, bearing Granville's nine children and raising
James' two children after his death. In the early years on the Montana
frontier, it was quite common for a white man to take an Indian wife
and with no fear of ridicule. But Montana was rapidly growing more
civilized and in the years to come, Granville Stuart would have frequent
occasion to regret becoming a "squaw man." Yet he remained unwilling
to abandon his family and this, Treece suggests, hampered him socially,
34
politically, and economically. His bond to Awbonnie was also a bond
to thfi frontior. It no doubt mfXusncsd his dscision in latsr years
to leave the more civilized regions of western Montana for the more
remote cattle ranges in the central part of the state.
Stuart took good care of his children while their mother was
alive. He looked after their education and when they moved to the
range, he worked to set up three schools for children in the area and
personally interviewed teachers. In 1888, Awbonnie died after giving
birth to her last child. Within a year Stuart married Allis Fairchild,
a school teacher. The new Mrs. Stuart did not have as much affection
for the children as she had for Granville. She apparently did not
approve of half-breeds and did not hide her contempt. There were often
bitter quarrels and following one of them, sixteen-year-old Lizzie was
"kicked" out of the house. Lizzie went to live with the family of
Charles ("Teddy Blue") Abbott, a cowboy of Stuart's and his son-in-law.
Teddy Blue has as much comtempt for the new Mrs. Stuart as he had
respect for Granville. He wrote in his diary.
I pity Granville Stuart I could not believe it
at first, he will bitterly repent ever marrying her
ere long I am disgusted with him yet I will help
him but her never I feel ashamed of him tonight.
Though consistently a gentleman in his reminiscences,* Teddy Blue
refers to the new Mrs. Stuart in his diary with such words as "Hag" and
"Bitch. Granville Stuart's sympathy seems to have been entirely
with his wife during these difficulties. Lizzie's departure left four
We Pointed Them North; Recollections of a Cowpunchef, by E.G. ("Teddy
Blue ) Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith.
young children living at home. Stuart placed them in the St. Ignatius
Catholic mission school on an Indian reservation near Missoula and
never again had anything to do with them.37
Though the Stuarts were in a large way responsible for the gold
rush in Montana, they did not have much to show for their efforts.
Most of their energy went into other business ventures like running
the Stuart and Company general store in Deer Lodge or becoming members
of a quartz mining partnership with pioneer Montana businessman,
Samuel T. Hauser. Through the 1860s and '70s, Granville worked as a
gunsmith, a butcher, and blacksmith's helper; he also worked in a bank
and managed a lumber yard. Throughout he continued to own cattle. In
1866, Stuart traveled back to Iowa via stage, steamboat, and horseback
and kept a sketchbook and journal of his advantures. Parts of it were
printed in the Virginia City Montana Post. He also authored the first
history of the region, Montana As It Is, assuring for himself the reputa
tion as the area's first "man of letters Stuart helped found the
Historical Society of Montana and wrote several articles for local
newspapers. He collected books avidly and had one of the largest
39
private libraries in all Montana. In 1871 he served as a member of
the Territorial Legislature.
Such a list of activities is not unimpressive, yet, as Treece
observed, what is really striking is Stuart's inability to concentrate
40
on any single vocation long enough to establish himself at it. He
was a persistent teetotaler, a dedicated gun and book collector, but
undisciplined, as his father had been, in selecting his life's work.
During the same years, James Stuart divided his time between
adventures. He traveled extensively and led two exploring expeditions
into the Yellowstone country. One of the expeditions, in 1863, was
plagued with Indian trouble and three of the party were killed in
skirmishes. But James' bravery and presence of mind saved the party
from annihilation and the survivors, wrote Treece,
...felt they owed their lives to Stuart's leader
ship, courage, knowledge about the character of the
Indians, and experience as a mountaineer and as a
Great Plains traveler.
When bad financial investments threatened to ruin the brothers, James
obtained an appointment as a post trader at Fort Browning, hoping to
raise funds trading buffalo robes and supplies with the Indians. For
the next two years he served as a trader, doctor, and agent for the
Sioux and Assiniboine Indians on the reservation. There were many,
including Sam Hauser, who looked to James to be, in the future, an
42
important political and business figure in the state. But James'
life was cut short when, in September, 1872, after surviving numerous
brushes with death, he succumbed to a liver ailment. He was forty-two
years old.
At the time of his brother's death, Granville Stuart's life was
but half over. In his first forty years he had established a solid
reputation as a businessman, scholar and community leader. But his
reputation was dwarfed by James'. Paul C. Phillips described James as
...a man of action. He was an aggressive gold seeker,
and he managed the mercantile business with daring and skill.
He was the first sheriff of a Montana County, a
desperate fighter of criminals. He led the Yellowstone
expedition of 1863, and was active in the search for a
direct route from the East to Montana. He was a man of
tremendous energy and of violent impulses. He was a
gambler, a fighter and a prince of good fellows. He
showed marked political ability and was a man to whom
pioneers looked for advice and action.
At that point in his life, Granville Stuart would not have received such
an eulogy. It was James who held the respect and confidence of a great
many early Montanans. His younger brother especially looked up to him,
and the image of Granville holding on to James' coat tail (p. 8) is a
revealing one. In 1872, it was James Stuart, not Granville, who fit
most impressively the figure of a frontier hero. Had Granville died in
the same year it is unlikely he would have been remembered except,
perhaps, as James' brother. Certainly no one would have named him, as
the Great Falls Tribune did later, "Mr. Montana.
But Granville Stuart did not die in 1872. He lived out the nine
teenth century and in the second decade of the twentieth he finished
two volumes of memoirs. Forty Years on the Frontier. Granville Stuart
never won the esteem of his contemporaries the way James did. But he
achieved three important distinctions which would win him fame among
historians. When Granville Stuart died in 1918, he was a survivor, an
author, and a vigilante.
No loss before or since would hit Granville as hard as the death
of his brother James. Three months after the funeral, he wrote in a
letter to his mother, "I feel like my life was shipwrecked, shattered,
& that all our toilings & struggling had been in vain since he is taken
from us. Granville Stuart was a long time recovering, and when he
did, he turned his back on the newly civilized communities in the
western part of the territory. Late in the 1870s he moved to a new
frontier: the remote cattle ranges of central Montana.
iSSV
7^
■k .
h
CHAPTER II: "THE BEEF BONANZA"
"...the cattle kingdom is the
most logical thing that has happened in
the Great Plains.
-Walter Prescott Webb
Ironically it was the emigrants, crossing the Great Plains on
the Oregon Trail, who stimulated the growth of an industry seemingly
tailor-made for the region. In the 1850s, the area west of the ninety-
eighth meridian and east of the Rocky Mountains was popularly referred
to as the "Great American Desert," a land devoid of timber and water,
2
barren and unsuitable for human habitation. The caravans of emigrants
whose wagons rolled out of the Missouri settlements, their hearts set
on the lush valley of the Willamette or the streams of California gold,
regarded the rolling plains and jagged buttes as simply so many miles
to cross and hardships to endure. But accompanying the western
travelers, as the prairie sparrow accompanied the buffalo, sometimes
perched on its back to peck insects from the matted mane, was the
frontier trader. The role of the trader in the process of western
3
expansion is frequently overlooked or misunderstood. Yet their role
was often a vital one. It was the emigrant who brought the first
cattle onto the Great Plains. It was the trader who became the first
Great Plains cattle rancher.
As the wagons rolled along the North Platte River into eastern
Wyoming, through South Pass and into Utah or southern Idaho, the rigors
of the trail began to take a toll. It was here that profit—minded
frontiersmen provided important goods and services. When provisions
ran low or spoiled, Oregon Trail emigrants were glad to find a trading
post where they could replenish supplies of coffee, bacon, flour,
powder and shot. Where heavy travel had depleted forage for grazing
animals, they welcomed the sight of a "road ranch" Coften little more
than a tent, a hay rack, and a corral) where hay, cut from along the
river banks, could be purchased. Where treacherous rivers needed to
be crossed, a toll bridge was often a convenience. Trade with the
Indians had been going on for years at places like Fort Bridget and it
was necessary only to increase supplies to do business with the
emigrants. With the fur trade played out (the last rendezvous, a
dismal one, was held in 1840), a retired mountain man could make a fair
living at his own trading post. Frontier traders kept pace with the
demands and by 1866, General Sherman wrote to a friend, "...you are
never out of sight of a train or a ranch.
But perhaps the most significant barter along the Oregon Trail
was in cattle. The long trek from eastern settlements onto the plains
often left the family cow or work steer footsore and weak. For a
shrewd trader, here was an opportunity. One fat steer could be traded
for two trail-weary, underweight equivalents. After a year or two of
grazing on the nutritious prairie bunch grass, the same two steers
would be fat and healthy and ready to trade for four others.^ Jesuit
missionaries like Father Pierre Jean De Smet, who brought not only
religion but wheat, potatoes, and cattle to the Flathead Indians in the
1840s, had demonstrated the suitability of the valleys of western
Montana for cattle raising. In the 1850s, men like Richard Grant and
his sons began collecting cattle along the Oregon Trail and driving
them north into the Beaverhead Basin and the Bitter Root River Valley
to fatten during the winter. By 1856, they had six hundred head of
cattle.^ Jake Meeks and Granville Stuart were only two of several men
engaged in such operations. In describing his trip across the country
in 1859, Horace Greeley wrote of meeting some old mountaineers who had
gone into the cattle business.
...(they) have large herds of cattle which they are
rapidly increasing by a lucrative traffic with the emigrants
who are compelled to exchange their tired, gaunt oxen and
steers for fresh ones on almost any terms. H.D., whose tent
we passed last evening, is said to have six or eight hundred
head, and knowing the country perfectly, finds no difficulty
in keeping them through summer and winter by frequently
shifting them from place to place over a circuit of thirty
or forty miles.^
Having started with nothing, one of the old mountaineers had, over some
twenty years, accumulated fifty horses and up to four hundred head of
neat cattle. If, as historian Ernest Staples Osgood writes, such
Q
operations were the first ranches in the Northern ranges, then this
may represent one of the first success stories of the Great Plains
cattle industry.
In the late 1850s, the infant cattle industry profited from another
migration, this time one which brought people to the plains instead of
across them. The discovery of gold at Pike's Peak coincided with the
Panic of 1857 and brought the first great waves of miners to the Great
Plains. By 1859, twenty-five thousand people were either scouring the
territory for gold or on their way. Strikes at Deer Lodge and American
Fork by the Stuarts attracted many busted Pikers into Montana. In 1862,
gold was found in the area of Virginia City, Montana and by 1864, com
munities like Last Chance Gulch (Helena) and Bannack were booming.
Miners had big appetites and as Osgood writes, "beef of any quality was
9
at a premium."
The mining boom gave at least one famous rancher his start in the
cattle business. Conrad Kohrs, a Danish immigrant who had followed a
"kaleidescopic" career mostly in California mining fields, arrived in
Montana in the late 1850s looking for work. He was hired by Hank
Crawford, the first sheriff of Bannack. Crawford was supplementing his
income by selling meat to miners and put Kohrs on as a butcher. But
the sheriff soon fell into badbooks with one Henry Plummer and prudent
ly left town. Kohrs inherited the meat business and worked it into a
sizeable enterprise. He then went into ranching and became one of
Montana's first and most famous "Cattle Kings." Henry Plummer inherited
the office of sheriff and worked it into a sizeable enterprise also.
But that's another story.
The mining boom significantly stimulated traffic across and onto
the Great Plains. The railroads began nosing their way west, and
numerous new military installations came under construction to protect
the growing population. Thus the market for beef continued to expand.
By the end of the 1860s, cattle ranching on the plains had become
firmly established, and "herds of considerable size" were appearing.
The range cattle industry in America did not originate on the
nothern ranges of the Great Plains. It began in the diamond shaped
Nueces Valley in the southern tip of Texas. In this region Spanish
and Mexican ranchers had for years raised cattle. But with the coming
of the Texas Revolution in 1836, they abandoned their stock and left
the area. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, the first Texans began
rounding up the Mexican stock and driving them east to sell in New
Orleans. The cattle, descended from the herds of Coronado, were wild
and boney and sported long, pointed horns. The Texans found that the
best way to manage the longhorns was on horseback with a rope and a
six-shooter (for these beasts were truly wild). The cattle were marked
with brands, then allowed to graze freely on the miles of unfenced
public lands until it was time for the roundup and drive to market.
Thus the American "cowboy" and the "open range" system of cattle
raising came into existence in this region of southern Texas. It was a
system uniquely suited for the American Great Plains and different from
12
any other in the world.
There were miles and miles of land and cattle in Texas, but almost
no native market. Only after cattle had been driven up the trail to
railheads in Missouri and shipped north and east could beef on the hoof
become money in the bank. Few events have become the subject of as
many songs, stories,and films as the great Texas cattle drives. They
made good stories for the hazards of trailing cattle hundreds of miles
from Texas to Sedalia or Abilene were many: the terrain was rough, the
outlaws many, and there was often a lack of water and forage. The
trail drives b.egan in earnest when entrepreneur Joseph G. McCoy
coordinated with eastern purchasing agents in 1866 to create a safe
railhead further to the west than any already existing, a point where
cattle raiser and cattle buyer could meet and exchange product and
capital. In a deal with the Kansas Pacific, the town of Abilene,
Kansas was selected and for a time it became the hub of all that was
romantic and real about the cattle industry. Historian Walter Prescott
Webb described it:
Abilenel Abilene may be defined. It was the point
where the north-and-south cattle trail intersected the
east-and-west railroad. Abilene was more than a point.
It is a symbol. It stands for all that happened when
two civilizations met for conflict, for disorder, for the
clashing of great currents which carry on their crest
the turbulent and disorderly elements of both civil
izations - in this case the rough characters of the plain
and of the forest. On the surface lurid, and awful.
But the dance hall, the saloon, and the pistol shots
were but the superficialities which hid from view the
deeper forces that were working themselves out round
the new town. If Abilene excelled all later cow towns
in wickedness, it also excelled them in service, - the
service of bartering the beef of the South for the money
of the North.
But even with the new railhead there were difficulties getting
Texas steers to market. Quarantine laws in Kansas and Missouri,
restrictions on crossing Indian lands, and the growing presence of the
farmer in mid-western states forced the cattle trails to bend more
towards the north and west. Colorado was the first to feel the effect
of what would be called the "Texas Invasion" as Denver became a lively
new railhead for Texas stock. By 1869, there were a million head of
cattle in Colorado Territory, more than half of them between Denver
and the Wyoming border,1 4 Osgood suggests that the progress of Texas
stock onto the northern plains followed in an east to west direction
with the development of new railheads. The first herds left Schuyler,
just west of Omaha, in 1870. In following years. Fort Kearney, North
Platte, Ogallala, and Sidney, Nebraska became shipping points for east-
bound stock, followed by Rock River, Wyoming.
It was not just Wyoming and Nebraska ranchers who took advantage
of the new Union and Northern Pacific railheads. By the early 1870s,
Montana had developed an excess of cattle beyond the demands of the
local market. In 1868, drovers pushed the first herds of Montana
cattle south into Wyoming to sell to crews working on the railroad.
Many other Montana herds followed as Granger, Pine Bluffs, and Cheyenne,
Wyoming became popular new shipping points. Conrad Kohrs even joined
the Wyoming Stock Growers Association to insure rights and protection
from that powerful organization.^^
By the mid 1860s, cattle raising on the Great Plains, stimulated
by the Oregon Trail emigrants, spurred on by the growing population
created by the discovery of gold and the advance of the railroad, was
a healthy and growing industry. It awaited one last incident to turn
it into a booming one. The incident occurred in December, 1864. The
story is told by Joseph Nimmo in his Report to the Secretary of
Agriculture in 1885, of a government trader who was leading a wagonload
of supplies, drawn by several oxen, across the Wyoming prairie on his
was to Camp Douglas in Utah Territory.
...but on being overtaken on the Laramie plains by
an unusually sever snowstorm, he was compelled at once
to go into winter quarters.. He turned his oxen adrift,
expecting, as a matter of course, that they would soon
perish from exposure and starvation. But they remained
about the camp, and, as the snow was blown off the high
lands, the dried grass afforded them an abundance of
forage. When the spring opened they were found to be
in even better condition than when turned out to die
four months previously.
In the next few years the story was told and repeated with numerous and
varying details but the moral was always the same. Here was proof that
domestic stock could survive the bitter plains winters without the
laying up of winter feed or the building of shelters. Here was proof
that cattle turned loose in the fall would come back fat in the spring.
Here, it seemed, was proof that cattle could survive completely on
their ownl Such conclusions would eventually result in the greatest
disaster in the history of the cattle industry, but their immediate
effect was to revolutionize cattle raising on the Great Plains.
In September, 1871, the Cheyenne Leader reported, "immense herds
of cattle are constantly arriving from the east to be placed on the
rich grazing fields."1 8 The northern plains had become the home of a
new cattle kingdom. In Montana the industry was quickly outgrowing its
niche in the western portion of the territory and in 1869, Conrad Kohrs
established his ranch to the east, along the Sun River. In the follow
ing years, others did the same until east central Montana became the
center of the territory's cattle industry. Many new men entered the
business when they found how little expense was involved. The grass
was free, part of the public domain, and one need only pay wages to a
few cowboys, build a corral, purchase and brand a few head of stock,
and the Great Plains would do the rest. Remarking on the rapid growth
of the industry, one eastern stock journal reported, "Cotton was once
19
crowned king, hut grass is now..."
In 1877, the first of many get-rich-quick books appeared: Robert
E. Strahorn's Handbook of Wyoming and Guide to the Black Hills and
Big Horn Regions. In 1881, General James S. Brisbin published his book.
The Beef Bonanza or How to Get Rich on the Plains, promoting the mildness
of the climate, the certainty of herd increase and suggesting that a
20
modest 45 percent profit per annum could be realized. In 1885, the
Rocky Mountain Husbandman reported, "Large fortunes have been made...
within a comparatively brief period. Hundreds of men who embarked in
the business a few years ago with exceedingly limited means, are now
21
ranked as 'cattle kings'..." The rumors of quick riches prompted
frontier humorist Bill Nye to quip in the Laramie Daily Boomerang,
Three years ago a guileless tenderfoot came into
Wyoming leading a single Texas steer and carrying a branding
iron; now he is the opulent possesor of six hundred head of
fine cattle - the ostensible porgeny of that one steer.22
As the cattle industry spread like prairie fire, it was to Texas
that northern ranchers looked for new herds, and to northern ranges
that Texas ranchers looked for new grassland. The resulting flood of
southern herds onto notheim ranges in the 1870s and 1880s has given
rise to the notion that the Great Plains cattle industry is essentially
a Texas story. Walter Prescott Webb wrote that "the cattle kingdom
spread from Texas and utilized the Plains area, which would otherwise
have lain idle and useless."2 3 Webb acknowledges the existence of
cattle on the northern plains before the arrival of Texas stock, but
argues that these were domestic and not range stock, "cows, not cattle
1.24
But the evidence is to the contrary. The cattle industry on
the nothem plains developed along the Oregon Trail independently of its
Texas counterpart. There were sizeable herds of cattle on the northern
ranges years before the flood of longhorns. Though Nelson Story brought
the first Texas cattle into Montana in 1866, they remained a rarity
for many years to come in that state. In the early 1880s some of
Granville Stuart's cowboys saw their first longhorns in Miles City and
25
regarded them as an "interesting curiosity."
The method of working cattle on the open range system was developed
in Texas, as we have seen. But there were fundamental differences
between northern ranchers and Texans in their approach to the business.
Webb's description of northern stock as "cows, not cattle..." illustrates
one of the differences. Northern ranchers tended to be "she stockmen"
who were concerned with breeding and developing a higher quality of
beef. Texans were "steer men," who used the northern ranges to fatten
26
their animals before shipping them east. Prior to the Texas
invasion, nothem ranges were stocked with herds from Oregon,
California, and Utah, as well as those animals picked up from emigrants.
These herds were of the shorthorned variety; blooded, heavier, and
27
well bred, a combination milch cow and beef. The wild and gangly
longhorns had the virtue of being perhaps more hardy but their meat was
■
"course and stringy, 'teasingly tough.""9 P These Texas cattle were
something of a threat to these carefully bred northern herds. Montana
rancher Robert Coburn raised quality shorthorned Herefords and described
the honey longhorns as "all boms and bushy tails.
There were differences between the northern cowboy and the Texan
as well, from the way they dressed to the way they worked cattle. When
it came to roping, the Texas method was superior to the Oregon style
which pervaded in the north. The method of dally welting the rope
could cost a thumb or a finger if not done just right. Historian
Helena Huntington Smith observed that to this day, "Montana and Wyoming
are ...full of cowboys with thumbs and fingers missing."3 0 The Texans
derisively referred to northern cowboys as "sagebrush men" or "God
damned knock-kneed Oregonians." The northern cowboys referred to Texans
as "rawhides" for their habit of fixing whatever was broken with a strip
or two of rawhide.
A more serious division between the two groups, however, was
caused by the seeming disregard of the Texas outfits for prudent use
of the grasslands. Montana historians Michael Malone and Richard Roeder
write.
Outfits like the XIT, the Mill lorn, and the Matador
Land and Cattle Company drove yearlings and two-year-olds
up north, double wintered them in Montana and Wyoming, then
marketed them as four- and five-year-olds. These steer
operators were generally more speculative than the older
Montana ranchers: they ran bigger herds, overcrowded the
range, and aimed for quick profit.
With the discovery that southern cattle often carried ticks and Texas
fever, northern ranchers opposed and defeated a proposed "national
cattle trail" which, would have created a federally endorsed trail from
33
Texas onto northern ranges.
By the late 1870s and early 1880s, the cattle boom was In Its
prime. The growing population In Europe and the United States, the
advance of the railroad and development of refrigerated cars, and
sadly, the shrinkage of Indian lands and extermination of the buffalo,
all made the Great Plains Into a cattle kingdom. This was the age of
the cowboy with his wry, understated humor and code of exclusive
masculinity. It was the age of spectacular trail drives and the
pageantry of the roundup. The lore and color appealed to many a
tenderfoot, among them Teddy Roosevelt and Owen Wlster. It was
captured for future generations on the canvases of Charles Russell,
Those who were not attracted by the Invigorating lifestyle some
times were attracted by the profits. Eastern Investments In the cattle
Industry reached a peak In the early 1880s. Between 1882 and 1886
there were ninety-three Incorporated cattle companies In Wyoming with
a total capitalization of $51,232,000. In Montana there were slxty-slx,
worth a total of $19,509,000. In New Mexico and Colorado the numbers
3 ̂
were even greater. Nor was absentee Investment and ownership limited
to native soil. In the 1880s, when a ranch of more than 10,000 head
was not uncommon, a number of English and Scottish owned cattle
companies were considerably larger. Including the Scottish owned Swan
35
Ranch with over 123,460 head.
In only a few years the cattle Industry had spread across the
ize the
1880 dear, elk
every ravine and
ana there were
cattle and wor
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fft A.X
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CHAPTER III: THE CATTLE KING
Verily, these are the Golden days of the Cattle Kings..."
-Fort Benton River Press
Jan. 2, 1884
Beginning in 1873 and for several years thereafter, the country
was under the cloud of economic depression. Missing his brother James
and plagued by financial reverses, Granville Stuart's spirits were low.
He was nursing some probably psychosomatic ailments and ordering
medicine through the mail for "heart diseases."^ Times were poor for
business ventures, and Stuart occupied himself by serving on the board
of trustees for the Montana Collegiate Institute and working to revital
ize the Historical Society. In 1876 he served in the lower house of
the Territorial Legislature. That same year he went to work for the
First National Bank of Helena and eventually became a member of the
board of directors. But Stuart found a banker's life tedious and in
letters to his brothers he discussed going to South America to look for
gold. To a friend Stuart wrote that he was "ready to strike out to any
2
country that promise(d) new gold fields & a warmer climate."
In 1879, Stuart's situation took a turn for the better. He was
serving another term in the Territorial Legislature as the economic
depression began to lift. Two of his associates, A.J. Davis and Samuel
T. Hauser were taking notice of a new business opportunity in the
eastern part of the territory. Since the defeat of General Custer in
1876, an intense effort had been mounted to bring the Indians to heel.
Crazy Horse and Lame Deer surrendered in 1877, and with the surrender
of Chief Joseph, Montaha finally saw the end of "its last real Indian
'resistance.'"^ This opened up new expanses of high plains country
for white settlement. The land was rich with timber, game, and grass,
perfect for cattle raising. The anticipated advance of the Union
Pacific into Montana made ranching prospects even more promising.
Davis and Hauser were able to pool $150,000 to invest in the beef
business. Granville Stuart, perhaps recalling his early years with
James in California, was enthralled with the prospect of a new frontier
and the vigorous lifestyle that would go with it. "Just think of it,
he wrote to his brother Thomas, "Why we would live about forty years
ii4
longer by going into the cattle business in a place like that."
Stuart lacked the kind of capital it took to become a full partner,
but he eagerly assumed the position of general manager of the DHS
(Davis-Hauser-Stuart) ranch.
In April, 1880, Granville Stuart began the career for which he
seemed best suited and for which he would be best remembered. Plans
were made to purchase four thousand head of Montana and Oregon cattle,
and Stuart set out to find a suitable location for their ranch. He
scouted the Yellowstone country and upper Tongue River region of
Wyoming before deciding upon the area south of the Missouri River
at the foot of the Judith Mountains in Central Montana. Here, wrote
Stuart, was "the very place we had been hunting for. He went on.
The whole country from here clear to the Yellowstone is
good grass country with some sage and all of this watered
and good shelter. There is an abundance of yellow pine
poles for fencing and building purposes at the foot of
Judith Mountains. This is an ideal cattle range.^
Stuart lay claim to the area by instructing his cowboys to place founda
tion logs at several strategic sites. In this manner he claimed 800
acres of choice land by "squatter's rights." This method was customary
although, as historian Donald MacMillan points out, it was "unenforce-
able in any court of law."
There were already some big ranching operations in the area.
Robert Coburn's Circle C Ranch was located on Flatwillow Creek, Conrad
Kohrs and John Bielenburg worked the south bank of the Sun River, and
T.C. Powers' Judith Cattle Company operated in the Judith Basin. At
about the same time, James Fergus located his ranch near Stuart's on
Armell's Creek.^ Stuart and his men branded their cattle with a D bar
S (D-S) and began construction of an L-shaped ranch house. One wing of
the house was occupied by Stuart and his family, the other wing by
g
Reece Anderson, who was now Stuart's foreman.
In July of 1880, the government responded to calls from the stock
man for protection from Indians by building Fort McGinnis about two
miles from the DHS ranch. Though the fort would provide a post office,
telegraph, supply store, and eventually a market for beef, Stuart
resented it. The fort threatened to preempt much of the grassland which
Stuart regarded as belonging to the DHS. This was the Gilded Age,
observed Donald MacMillan, and on the Great Plains it was the cattlemen
who were the "robber barrons." Davis, Hauser, and Stuart no more owned
the land their ranch was on than they owned the rain that watered it.
Davis and Hauser brought all their influence to bear in an effort to
change the location of the fort. Stuart blustered with indignation and
threatened court action. It was all to no avail.
The commander of the new fort at first refused to buy beef from the
DHS and instead sent his troops to drive in their own cattle. The
soldiers proved inept drovers, however, and not only lost their cattle
in a stampede, but became lost themselves in a storm and had to be
piloted home by a friendly trapper. On another occasion the soldiers
got their cattle mixed in with DHS stock and ran several pounds off the
frightened beasts before getting the situation straightened out.^^ The
spirited, independent character of the cowboy and cattle king was quite
opposite in nature from the regimented, uniformed government soldier
with whom he shared the frontier, and the former held the latter in
utter contempt. Granville Stuart wrote that the soldiers
...knew absolutely nothing about range stock and
could not read a brand ten paces from an animal and were
as incapable of taking care of themselves when out of
sight of the post as three-year-old children.
Stuart finally invited the post commander to dinner and in an after
dinner "chat" explained to him that anyone who annoyed DHS stock in the
future would do so "at their own risk." Thereafter, the army got its
beef from the DHS.^^
But Stuart soon had another complaint concerning the soldiers.
Indians were a problem for Stuart in central Montana as they had been
for him and James in California. At the first year's roundup, Stuart
figured a 13 percent loss of stock, five percent of it due to Indian
depredations, the rest to predatory animals and the weather.1 2 He wrote
numerous letters to government officials and to territorial newspapers
complaining of the menace and asking for help. He was disgusted with
the army and wrote in a letter to the Fort Benton River Press that when
a group of Gros Ventre were hunting his cattle, the military had respond-
ed with a single soldier, "wearing eye glasses."1 3 Stuart's daughter,
Mary Abbott, recalled one occasion when soldiers were summoned to deal
with a band of Indians who had stolen some horses. "Father laughed
about it lots of times," Mrs. Abbott remembered. "They'd go after
these...Indians to catch 'em...and they'd have to stop and blow their
bugles and go through all their maneuvering..." By the time the
soldiers were ready, of course, there wasn't an Indian within a hundred
Stuart's response to this situation, as it would be to other
situations in the future, was to take matters into his own hands. At
one point, a band of Cree came down from Canada, set up camp on DHS
"property," and were grazing their animals on DHS grass. Stuart took
a number of his cowboys, rode out to have a word with them, and dis
covered that the Indians had also killed five cows. Stuart described
the conversation he had with the Chief:
Pointing to a frozen beef hide thrown across a pole,
I asked for an explanation. The chief said his people
were starving and game was scarce, that my cattle being
on the range made the buffalo go away, that the priest
told him that he had a right to kill the white man's cattle
when his people were hungry.
Stuart was unmoved by the Chief's words. He asked to see the
priest, who was traveling with the Indians. The priest came forward
and Stuart told him that if he ever set foot on the range again, he
would be hung "higher than Raman." Stuart then took five Indian ponies
as compensatxon.
Despite the losses to Indians, the beef business was proving pro
fitable. The years 1880-1886 are generally considered the boom years
in the northern range cattle industry, and it was Stuart's good fortune
to enter into ranching during that period. In 1882 there were some
595,000 head of cattle in Montana worth around $21.30 per head. By
16
1885 there were 975,000 head going for a price of $28.30 each. Such
figures made the territorial newspapers swell with optimism. On
January 2, 1884, the Fort Benton River Press wrote.
The expense of raising stock in Montana is as little
as well can be in any part of the world. Very little shelter
or feeding is found necessary, even in winter, the average
loss if very light, rarely over 5 percent; and the annual
profits are from 25 to 50 percent.
Jocularly called the "bananna belt," metaphorically
the "gold belt," it is in its climactic conditions the
terrestrial paradise of horned stock.
The first year's profits of the DHS were sunk back into the company,
but in the second year, 40,000 head of cattle were sold and $37,000
in dividends were paid.^^ In 1882, Sam Hauser, whose interest in his
investinsnts tGndfid to be sbort lived, sold his shares in the DHS to
Conrad Kohrs. The sale pleased Stuart, and though the name was changed
to the Pioneer Cattle Company, the D-S brand was maintained.
But beneath the confident talk of big profits and high dividends,
there was a vague inkling that things would not always be so. As more
and more outfits moved onto the ranges it became clear that there was
a limit to the number of cattle they would support. Edgar Beecher
Bronson, who owned a ranch on the Wyoming-Nebraska border, saw 1882 as
the last "golden year" for the cattle industry. He prophetically dis
cerned four dark clouds "lowering" on the cattleman's horizon. He was
worried about the advancing grangers, the growth of settlements with
the advent of the railroad, the beginning of overcrowding on the range,
and, by the law of averages, the severe winters which lay somewhere
ahead. Bronson shrewdly sold his cattle and his ranch during the peak
years of the early '80s when there were "a dozen buyers for every seller
Few were as astute as Mr. Bronson. But as early as the summer of
1883, the Yellowstone Journal in Miles City posed the question, "Will
the heretofore vast profits of the ranching business be materially
curtailed in the next few years?" and answered it in the affirmative.
"The truth probably is," the article went on, "that the day of the
20
wildcat profits is over..." By 188A there is evidence that those
already on the range harbored a certain amount of resentment towards
newcomers. The Fort Benton River Press wrote on May 7, 1884,
It is claimed by the stockmen that the available
ranges in this country are sufficiently stocked. The
present occupants having contended with Indians, destroyed
the wild animals and made improvements, will give the
cold shoulder to all newcomers excepting such as may
purchase cattle already upon the range which would give
them proportionate range rights.
Granville Stuart himself saw that room was running out on the plains
and predicted drastic changes in the future. But in the meantime, he
21
wrote, "with ordinary good luck," there was "big money" to be made.
Cattle continued to crowd onto the range. In 1886, there were over
22
1,050,000 head in Montana.
In Wyoming, the jealousy over the ranges had already reached
serious proportions. Though it had long been the practice of cowboys
to invest some of their earning in a few head of cattle which they
would run with their boss's herd, it was a practice which by 1885 was
being officially frowned upon. The fear that cowboys were starting
their own herds by branding mavericks* belonging to their employer
became an obsession. By 1885, both the Wyoming and the Montana Stock
A "maverick" was defined by Wyoming law as any head of "neat cattle...
regardless of age, found running at large...without a mother, and upon
which there is no brand." (Helena H. Smith, War on Powder River, p. 52)
The name comes from one Samuel A. Maverick who owned some cattle and
kept them on an island off the Texas coast. Given their natural confines.
Maverick did not brand his cattle and when they occasionally wandered
ashore during low tides, people would see that there was no brand and say
"that's a Maverick." (Robert Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, p. 98-99).
The problem of what to do with a maverick was one that plagued the Great
Plains cattle industry from Texas to Canada. If an unbranded calf was
following a branded cow, it was assumed to be of the same brand as its
mother. Older animals which had been overlooked at roundups were assumed
to belong to the nearest sizeable herd. But this left a lot to the
imagination. The prairie was wide and unfenced and often cattle belong
ing to several owners mingled together. It was not uncommon for cattle
men to offer monetary incentives to their hands for dropping a brand on
any maverick they came across. In this manner, many a cowboy learned to
brand mavericks. (Helena H. Smith, The War on Powder River; see also
John Clay, My Life on the Range, p. 113).
Growers Associations had rules forbidding members to sell cattle to
cowboys or to hire cowboys who owned cattle. In Wyoming, however, a
blacklist was kept, and any member who employed a blacklisted cowboy
was subject to exclusion from Association functions, which included
23
round-ups. Such arrogance generated a good deal of bad blood. In
Montana, Granville Stuart among others opposed such restrictions. At
one meeting of the Stockman's Association, Teddy Blue writes that
Stuart
...made quite a speech, in which he tried hard to get
all the members to allow their cowpunchers to own cattle.
He said that ninety-nine per cent of them were honest men,
it would give them a chance to get ahead and give them an
interest in the range, that this would do more than any
thing else to stop rustling, as the boys were on the range
all the time.^^
This speaks well of Stuart. He was concerned with the problem of
mavericking, what he called a "Texas system of everybody placing his
brand on every calf found unbranded on the range, without even trying
25
to ascertain to whom the animal belonged." But he was shrewd enough
to realize that laws like the one the Association had passed would only
generate hostility among the cowboys, upon whom the cattle owner was
dependent. The high handedness of the Wyoming Association created years
of division, anger, and bloodshed. The Montana stockmen thought better
of things and six months after they had passed it, they repealed the
26
restriction on cowboy ownership of cattle.
Though Montana stockmen were less obsessed with mavericking and
consequently had less trouble with it, they did have other problems.
A:
V ■
Central Montana was a big country which supported, in addition to the
beef business, a number of other occupations, some of which were legal,
some of which were not. The Missouri River cut through the region and
served as an aquatic highway which, beginning in 1859, brought people
27
and trade via steamboat from St. Louis all the way to Fort Benton.
Over the years, numerous small towns had sprung up in support of the
trade. Towns like Judith Landing, Fort Musselshell, Fort Hawley, Carrol,
and Bates Point served as steamboat stations. The town of Rocky Point
sat on the southern edge of the Missouri about a hundred miles down
river of Fort Benton and about fifty miles north and east of the DHS.
With two saloons, a store, hotel, blacksmith shop, and freighters
warehouse, it was the point at which frieght for Lewistown, Ft. Maginnis,
and other communities in the Judith Basin was delivered by steamboat
to continue the journey overland. But Rocky Point had a bad reputation.
In 1883, Attorney General Benjamine Brewster wrote.
[Rocky Point] bears the name of being the worst place
in Montana Territory and is a resort of outlaws and thieves...
I am informed that as high as 50 barrels of whiskey a day
have been unloaded there at one time. Indians for a long
time have been trading at this point receiving liquor in
return for their furs, etc.^S
In fact, the whole area along the Missouri River from Rocky Point
east, the "Missouri Breaks" region, bore the reputation of being a home
for lawless elements. Here, in the bottoms along the river, men had
for years made a living cutting wood to sell for fuel to the steamboats.
But with impact of the railroads in the early 1880s, steamboat traffic
! ' i  ^
V  u * 
E A S T  G E i N T H A L  M O N T A W A
L t \ a i i i l 6 b H \
had fallen off and the abandoned wood camps became "the headquarters of
29
men of questionable character masquerading as choppers."
Sharing the range with the cattlemen and the Indian were a number
of white "wolfers," men who had replaced the trapper in the late 1860s
when the bounty for wolf pelts made the trade lucrative. In 1884, wolf
30
pelts brought about a dollar apiece. The wolfer's life was a hard one
as he had to contend with the Indians and the elements. He spent months
at a time alone on the range, laying out poisoned carcasses and checking
the line. He was considered a tough and disreputable lot even by the
cattlemen for whom he performed a great service.
The cattlemen were concerned, of course, that these fringe elements
(like whiskey peddlers, choppers, and wolfers), might also be stealing
stock. With the boom in the cattle industry there came a corresponding
boom in the stock stealing industry. In some cases the thieves had become
as serious about their business as the cattlemen were about theirs.
Walt Coburn, writing the history of his father Robert's Circle C Ranch,
described the lawless community in grand and glamorous terms:
The lawless fraternity was well organized. The leaders
of its many gangs were top cowhands and ruthless gunslingers.
They hand-picked their members for their ability as cowhands
and gunmen, their guts and outlaw cunning, and their deter
mination to play their tough string out. They had to be
willing to die with their boots on and a smoking gun in their
hand if it came to a showdown.
This description Is typical of much of the vnritten history of the
period in its vagueness. But through the cliches a picture of the
situation begins to emerge. It seems apparent that the cattlemen were
suffering the ravages of some organized horse thieves whose activities
reached a peak in the 1880s. Through a system of relays, horses stolen
in Wyoming and Montana were taken into Dakota and Canada and horses
stolen in those areas were relayed back. On July 2, 1884, the Fort
Benton River Press made reference to a "well organized band of horse
thieves" that were the "terror" of the Musselshell region. Granville
Stuart's letter press book contains several references to horse stealing
32
activity during the months of April, May, and June of 1884. On May 21
he wrote to Kohrs, "Lots of horse thieves around- and many horses being
stolen. (B)ut so far you have lost one and we three." On June 17 he
wrote to Milton F. Marsh, a Rocky Point saloon keeper and confidant of
the cattlemen, "we are six head of wild ones out." Whether he was includ
ing Kohrs' losses in this tally (they were now partners) is not clear.
Historians have taken the complaints of the cattlemen seriously in
compiling their history. The two able Montana historians, Michael P.
Malone and Richard B. Roeder, write that lawlessness had reached
Q O
"epidemic proportions." Herman Hagedorn wrote that "horse and cattle
3A
thieves...were actually threatening to destroy the cattle industry."
It seems unlikely, however, that the situation was really so
serious. In 1884 there were 138,000 more head of cattle in Montana than
35
there had been in 1883 and they were bringing a dollar more per head.
On April 9, 1884, the River Press wrote optimistically.
Reports from the ranges to the effect that calves are
comming in in myriads - and that all of them are fat and
friskey... The weather for three weeks has been favourable,
just at the opportune time, and as a result there will be a
very large branding this season. This fact, taken in
connection with the small loss during the winter in the
vacinity of Fort Benton, will delight the heart of the
cattle king, and give the industry quite a boom.
Stuart himself was optimistic about the spring roundup and wrote
to a friend, E.W. Knight of Helena on June 3,
Weather glorious with favourable indications for a
big calf crop. Round up now in progress and including a
delegation from other ranges the outfit comprises 50
men and 300 horses and here may be seen the cowboy in
all his glory.
Glorious it must have been. We can only imagine how Stuart must
have felt as he surveyed the operation. It must have looked like the
picture painted by Stuart's friend, Charles M. Russell, called "The
Roundup." Against a big Montana sky and the clouds of dust rising from
milling cattle, a number of mounted cowboys are skillfully cutting out
the unbranded steers. Another painting by Russell called "Laughter
Kills Lonesome" shows some cowboys relaxing around a campfire under a
star-filled northern sky, their bedrolls on the ground and their horses
grazing nearby. In the background a full moon is rising over the prairie
and on the side of the mess wagon, one can make out the D-S brand. Truly
Granville Stuart, the cattle king, was at last in his element.
But in 188A the optimistic predictions turned out to be premature.
On July 7, Stuart wrote to Kohrs,
We have finished the roundup and find a great shortage
in the calf crop which I cannot account for. We branded one
hundred less than last year.
I "mi l "iiiiMiiiii II I
The River Press also revised its estimates downwards writing that winter
36
losses had been "somewhat larger than anticipated." James Fergus
argued later, in an effort to justify the vigilante campaign, that the
37
loss of calves was the work of rustlers. But Stuart did not seem to
think so. He wrote to Jon S.M. Neil of Helena, "Everybody, on all the
ranges, almost without exception, branded fewer calves..." It had been
38
caused in part, thought Stuart, by a lack of bulls. Another cause may
have been the overcrowded ranges. More and more new herds were pushing
onto the Montana cattle lands and the problem of overstocked ranges was
a major concern at the Montana Stockgrowers Association meeting in
April of 1884. The poor management of bulls and overstocking are both
39
conditions which, in the course of a winter, can take a toll in calves.
Thus, to argue as Fergus did that the widespread calf shortage was some
how indicative of the severity of the rustling problem ignores much of
the evidence and taxes the imagination.
Indeed, there is a good deal of confusion as to the nature of the
"rustling" situation in Montana. Though there was concern for the
problem of "mavericking" and cattle stealing, the problem which received
the most attention in 1884, as we shall see, was horse stealing. The
two operations are substantially different. The stealing of cattle,
except when committed by Indians or "nesters" for immediate use as
food, was usually the work of men with cattle already on the range and
consisted most frequently of branding an unbranded calf or altering a
40
brand on an already branded steer. The stealing of horses, on the
other hand, usually consisted of taking the animals, often in herds, as
quickly as possible out of the territory (where their owner might
recognize them) and selling them elsewhere.
In Montana, however, there existed an unique situation. Malone
and Roeder write of thieves who "stole livestock in both Montana and
41
Canada then took the animals across the border for sale." This
suggests that cattle as well as horses were transported en masse out of
the territory. Though it seems unlikely that a slow moving herd of
stolen cattle could be driven across the Missouri River and into Canada
without discovery, there is evidence that at least one attempt was made
to do just that. In Forty Years on the Frontier, Stuart writes of
thieves on the Moccasin range (east across the Judith Mountains from
Stuart's home on the Maginnis range) who stole twenty-four head of cattle
and were driving them towards Canada when range riders picked up their
trail. The thieves drove the cattle into a coulee, killed them, and
42
made good their escape. There is no evidence that Stuart, Fergus, or
any of the other ranchers on the Maginnis range suffered from this kind
of activity but Fergus made the most of the incident in his defense of
the 1884 vigilante campaign and even threw in a second instance in which
43
he claimed that over forty head had been killed.
The more common form of cattle rustling in Montana, however, seems
to have been the random killing of cattle for food by the assorted
characters, red and white, who pursued their livelihood on the plains
and along the Missouri River. Fergus complained that "Wolves, horse
thieves, half-breeds and Indians have all been making common property
of range cattle." He related one story, which seems a bit tall.
concerning a man who "boasted of having shot seven head of cattle on
the range before he brought one down so he could have steak for break
fast."^'^ In Forty Years on the Frontier, Stuart wrote of a trader,
William Downes, who was living along the river and who, dispite warnings
45
to stop, "kept on stealing horses and killing cattle." We will hear
more about the unfortunate Downes later.
The evidence seems to indicate that the ranchers in eastern Montana
suffered the random theft of cattle by the lawless elements living in
the region. There were a few organized but abortive efforts to drive
cattle out of the territory but not on the scale that such activity was
46
occurring in Wyoming and other states. Stuart indicated that in the
period prior to the 1884 vigilante campaign, his losses due to rustling
were running at about three percent. Yet that compares well with the
first year the DHS was in operation when Indians had claimed five per
cent of the head, wild animals another five, and a profit had still
been realized. Before long, Wyoming ranchers would report the
loss of over half their calves to thieves. Thus the problem of
cattle rustling alone does not explain the drastic measures of the
summer of 1884. In fact, contemporary records make surprisingly scarce
mention of cattle rustling. Stuart's letter press material refers
frequently to the theft of horses but says nothing of cattle rustlers
other than Indians. We have seen in the writings of James Fergus and
in the case of William Downes that horse thieves, like many others,
were suspected of being cattle thieves as well. But James Fergus was
writing after the fact (his letters defending the vigilantes appeared
in the Rocky Mountain Husbandman following the campaign in August and
September) and was attempting to marshal sympathy for the plight of the
cattleman. As for William Downes, it was his association with alleged
horse thieves which, more than anything else, made him a marked man.
The vigilante campaign of 1884 was primarily a war against horse thieves.
If the horse thieves could also be accused of stealing cattle, so much
the better.
In April, 1884, the second annual meeting of the Montana Stock
Growers Association was held in Miles City. Miles City was the center
of Montana stock interests as Cheyenne was the center of Wyoming stock
interests. The event was accompanied by parades and banners and the
49
town was "thrown wide open" for the stockmen. But beneath the din of
the brass band, the mood was surly and grim with frustrated expectations.
"Everybody seemed to have a grievance," wrote Stuart. Two of the
ranchers exchanged bitter words and a bully young greenhorn from present
North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt, was for clearing a ring and letting
them go at it.^^ When the stockmen got down to business they discussed
the problem of overstocked ranges, Texas fever (which was infecting
cattle from Kansas and Nebraska), and what to do about rustling.
It is possible that an event in Miles City influenced the cattlemen
in regard to the last of these problems. In July, 1883, shortly after
the 1883 meeting of the Montana Stock Growers Association, a party of
masked men removed a "dangerous character" named Bill Rigney from the
city jail. Rigney had been locked up for threatening to rape the
daughters of a "worthy family named Campbell." The July 28 issue of
the Glendive Times reported that the unfortunate Rigney was "launched
from a railroad bridge over the Tongue River...into a dim and uncertain
future." The article continued.
The act meets with approbation of all who are good
citizens, and the verdict is that he got his just dues.
Rigney had been a terror in Miles City and neighboring
towns for some months, and was counted one of the worst and
most dangerous characters in the country. It is expected
that others of this gang will be given some of the same
medicine unless they light out.
The same issue of the Times carried a report that a list, naming the
members of the vigilante committee, had been anonymously submitted to
the newspaper for publication. The author had signed himself simply as
"citizen" and named some of the "best men in Miles City" as members of
the committee. Surely "Citizen," the article continued, was "not a
friend of the committee or he would not wish their names published."
The paper apparently was a friend of the committee, did not publish the
list, and warned "Citizen" that he should mend his ways. The list
survives in the archives of the Montana Historical Society and includes
the names of the county commissioner, an ex-sheriff, an under sheriff,
52
and a Wyoming stock detective.
It cannot be said for sure that these events influenced the stock
men who met in Miles City in 1884 but many of them were in favour of
dealing with stock thieves the way the Miles City vigilantes had dealt
with their potential rapist. There was a good deal of support for the
idea of raising a small army of cowboys and ridding the country of
unwanted characters. Stuart wrote.
The Montana cattlemen were as peaceable and lawabiding
a body of men as could be found anywhere but they had
$35,000,000 worth of property scattered over seventy-five
thousand square miles of practically uninhabited country and
it must be protected from thieves. The only way to do it
was to make the penalty for stealing so severe that it would
lose its attraction.53
This is the same line of reasoning that Stuart had used to justify the
execution of C.W. Spillman in 1862.
But at the Miles City meeting, Stuart argued against taking any
drastic action. He pointed out that a fight with the thieves would
claim many lives on both sides, for each of the thieves was a "desperado
and a dead shot." They lived in fortified cabins, he pointed out, and
would be difficult to deal with. Beyond that, the cattlemen might well
have to stand trial for murder if they killed any of the rustlers. There
was a heated debate over the issue in the course of which Stuart's good
friend, the Marquis De Mores, a rancher from South Dakota and associate
of Theodore Roosevelt's, accused Stuart of "backing water." But in the
end, Stuart's will prevailed and the association voted not to take any
extra-legal action against the thieves. Stuart later claimed, without
explaining how he knew, that the rustlers got wind of what had happened
at the meeting and were "jubilant," believing they were in for "what
promised to be an era of undisturbed and successful operations."^
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PART II
GRANVILLE STUART: THE VIGILANTE Els' '•**•
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CHAPTER IV: A WORD ABOUT SOURCES
Before turning our attention to the events of the summer of 1884,
it is necessary to look briefly at what has already been written about
them. It is Granville Stuart's own account, of course, which for years
served as the only history of the 1884 vigilante campaign. Contained
in the second volume of Forty Years on the Frontier, Stuart's version
is written in an omniscient voice and describes a "vigilante committee"
of fourteen men who, in the first part of July, killed between fourteen
and sixteen horse thieves. Stuart's history is brief, vague, and
incomplete, as it was no doubt intended to be. Nowhere does it mention
his own participation in the events, nor does it identify any of the
members of the vigilante party. There are also numerous inaccuracies
concerning names and dates. The account does, however, offer a spirited
defense of the vigilantes, and it was probably for this reason that it
was written.^
It is the work of Oscar 0. Mueller (no relation to me) which
represents the most thorough and historical account of the 1884 vigilantes.
Oscar Mueller was born in March, 1887, and grew up in Iowa. After
graduation from the University of Iowa law school in 1980, Mueller moved
to Lewistown, Montana, to become an Assistant County Attorney. He
eventually became City Attorney and from 1927 to 1931 he was the Mayor
of Lewistown. Mueller, a Mason, was active in civic affairs and en
thusiastically pursued his hobbies of archaeology, paleontology, and
history. He contributed numerous articles of interest to local news
papers and was considered one of the top ten archaeologists in Montana.
2
Two fossil finds were named after him.
Mueller's interest in Montana history is demonstrated in his article
"The Central Montana Vigilante Raids of 1884," which appeared in
3
Montana; The Magazine of Western History in January, 1951. The article
is based on numerous personal interviews and the letter-press book of
Granville Stuart. It can best be characterized as a well documented and
sympathetic vindication. Mueller fixed the number of victims at between
fifteen and eighteen. He emphasized the desperate nature of the thieves
and the good intentions of the cattlemen.
More about Mueller's feelings on vigilantes is revealed in his
correspondence. For many years, while he was working on his article,
Mueller communicated with Granville Stuart's widow, (the second wife)
Allis B. Stuart. In 1944, Mrs. Stuart wrote to Mueller and made
reference to a book recently published called Montana: High, Wide and
4
Handsome by Joseph Kinsey Howard. Howard's book had given a not overly
sympathetic account of the 1884 vigilantes. This angered Mrs. Stuart
and she wrote.
When a book like "High, Wide and Handsome" comes out
it makes us feel that we must bestir ourselves to straighten
out our history. He [Howard] seems to have no conception of
what the cattle industry was to Montana, what the Industry
was to the State, anything about the work of the Board of
Stock Commissioners or of the years of hard and faithful
work performed by the stock men without any renumeration
whatever. How they laboured that the country might settle
and all have equal rights to settle make homes and raise
their families.^
Mueller seems to have shared Mrs. Stuart's displeasure with those who
would write disparagingly about the cattlemen. In 1960, Helena Hunting-
ton Smith was working on her book. The War on Powder River, and wrote to
Mueller for information concerning Granville Stuart. Mueller wrote back,
citing his article, and informing Mrs. Smith that the best account of
the Powder River War was the one by Struthers Burt, Powder River, Let
g
'er Buck. Later, Mueller wrote to Michael S. Kennedy,
I am afriad that Mrs. Smith will take a radical view.
She is a good writer but has some strong opinions. It is
just human nature for one group to condemn the other as
being all wrong and having ulterior motives.^
Helena Smith's book is the best and most authoritative study of the
violence on the Wyoming cattle ranges and fixes the blame for the
trouble largely on the big cattlemen and the Wyoming Stock Growers
Association.*
Anyone studying the Montana vigilantes of 1884 is in debt to
Oscar Mueller. He took written statements from surviving participants,
had diaries and letter-press materials typed out for easy reference,
and deposited the evidence with the Montana Historical Society in Helena.
Mueller seems to have made a sincere, able effort to get the facts. Yet
his work presents scholarly problems. Much of what Mueller learned of
the vigilante campaign was apparently told to him orally by witnesses
It is quite surprising that Helena Smith, while condemning in no un
certain terms the Wyoming vigilantes, does not even mention their Montana
predecessors. She mentions Granville Stuart several times, generally as
an example of a good and conscientious cattle king, but never as the
leader of a vigilante movement which may well have given the Wyoming
cattlemen their inspiration.
■
who left no other record. We have only Mueller's version of their
testimony ("Materials for this paper came from many personal interviews
...") and his description of those participants as "men of integrity,
and character [who] bore excellent reputationCs]' and with whom Mueller
g
was "intimately acquainted." There is a problem in some cases (as will
be noted) in finding the original documents to which Mueller makes
reference. Also, Mueller's account is a very sympathetic one and in
his enthusiasm for portraying the vigilantes in their best light he has
focused on certain pieces of evidence at the expense of others. The
vigilante chapters of my study draw significantly on sources in the
Mueller collection but in many cases, emphasis has been placed on sources
which Mueller ignored. Other important material was found at the
Historical Society in Helena outside the Mueller collection, as well as
in the archives at Montana State University in Bozeman, the University
of Montana in Missoula, and in the County Court House in White Sulphur
Springs. Newpapers of the period have also provided a good deal of
useful information.
In the course of his research, Mueller discovered numerous errors
in the account given in Forty Years on the Frontier. In one instance,
the book indicates that two outlaws. Red Mike and Dutch Louis, were
caught and hanged when Stuart's own letter-press material indicates that
they escaped. In another, the book identifies Bill Williams as a horse
9
thief when he was, in fact, a friend of the cattlemen. Mueller blamed
these errors on Dr. Paul C. Phillips who edited Forty Years on the
Frontier. Phillips was apparently asked what his source of information
was in regard to the vigilante material and reportedly replied that it
came from Mrs. Stuart. Mrs. Stuart, however, wrote to Mueller that she
had "never attempted to write up a history of the rustlers war."^^ On
the basis of this and the factual errors in the book, Mueller wrote,
...it is my opinion that the material [in Forty Years
on the Frontier] was secured from other sources but not
properly correlated or checked for truth. I am absolutely con
vinced.. .t hat Granville had nothing to do with the write up.^
I feel that Mueller's conclusion is not warranted by the evidence.
Granville Stuart began writing his reminiscences as early as 1908 and
worked at them sporadically until his death. There is much evidence
that they were, by then, complete. A.S. Stone of the school of journal
ism at the University of Montana saw the manuscript and reported that
12
it was "practically in shape for publication." In 1919, Mrs. Stuart
wrote to a Chicago publishing company that she had a manuscript of her
husband's reminiscences telling of his life on the frontier including
13
the "vigilante days of the big cattle ranges." Stuart's daughter,
14
Mary Abbott, said, "The book was finished. Father told us that it was."
The job of getting the manuscript ready for publication went to
Paul C. Phillips, whom Paul Robert Treece described as a "close friend"
of the Stuarts. Victor R. Dahl wrote that Phillips was a well—trained
and already established historian...fully qualified to perform this
editorial task..."^^ The editorial job, Treece wrote, consisted of
...discarding some chapters which contained material
available elsewhere, eliminating most of the material which
was not exclusively autobiographical, adding one hundred
footnotes and rather abruptly ending the memoirs with
the disastrous winter of 1886-87.
It is certainly possible that mistakes were made in the editing process,
that without Stuart around to clear up ambiguities, errors were made in
the final draft. To be considered, too, is the fact that by 1916,
thirty-two years had passed since the events of 1884 and Stuart's own
account, understandably, might have been inaccurate. He was, by then,
in his eighties. Paul Treece relies confidently on the account in Forty
Years and does not question the editing job done by Phillips.
The exchange between Mueller and Phillips is never clearly spelled
out. Phillips reported that he got information for the vigilante
chapter from Mrs. Stuart. Mrs. Stuart reported that she never "wrote"
a history of the rustler war. But that would not seem to rule out the
possibility that Phillips got diaries, letters, or notebooks from Mrs.
Stuart for use in the editing process. There is no record of Phillips'
reaction to Mueller's charges, in fact there is no record that he ever
heard them. Nor is any explanation offered as to why Phillips would
fabricate material. To suggest that Phillips simply manufactured the
pages on the vigilante campaign on his own and then attributed them to
Stuart is a serious charge, one this writer cannot, as yet, accept.
One last problem with the sources which should be mentioned is the
Masonic connection. In his study of American vigilantism. Strain of
Violence, Richard M. Brown observed that the "relationship between
Freemasonry and vigilantism was frequently an intimate one." As Brown
explained.
The same Impulse-desire to participate in the upper level
dominance of the community - often caused the same person
to join the masonic lodge (usually an elite local organization)
and enlist in a vigilante movement.
Thus it was often the case the Freemasonry was part of the "shadowy
X8
background" of a vigilante movement. In 1863-64, the citizens of
Bannack and Virginia City, Montana, rose up against a ruthless and
murderous gang of road agents led by the corrupt Sheriff, Henry Plumraer.
The influence of local Masons in this affair was, according to a recent
19
article by Merill G. Burlingame, "considerable." As many as thirty
men were hanged by the vigilante committee, the membership and leadership
of which consisted almost entirely of Masons. Two early Montanans, both
of them participants and both of them Masonic grand masters, wrote the
history of the events; Thomas J. Dimsdale's The Vigilantes of Montana
appeared in 1866 and Nathaniel P. Langford's Vigilante Days and Ways
was published in 1890. Granville Stuart was "closely associated" with
both Dimsdale and Langford and "furnished them with materials" for
their books.
Stuart wrote in a brief autobiographical sketch in 1882 that he
belonged to "no society, secret or otherwise, except the Montana Histor-
21
ical Society." But there is evidence to the contrary. Upon hearing
the sketch read at a meeting of the Montana Institute of the Arts
History Group meeting, one of Stuart's grand-daughters, Mary Abbott's
daughter, dissented saying;
He was a Mason...one of the first Masons in Virginia
City. He had a Masonic ring and my brother [also a Mason]
wanted to get It and we can't find it. It was just a plain
gold band with a triangle on it or what ever it is.
Mary Abbott, also present, agreed and insisted, "Yes. Father was a
22
Mason." Thus, given the fact that Oscar Mueller was also a member of
23
the Masonic Order, it appears that not only were the two biggest
vigilante movements in Montana led by Masons, but the major histories
of those events were written by their fraternal brothers.
Michael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder wrote in Montana: A Histor-y
of Two Centuries that "vigilantism in Montana is a subject in need of
24
complete reassessment." Merrill G. Burlingame arrived at a similar
25
conclusion. In that spirit, let us now turn to the events of the
summer of 1884.
(kX- .-wr-,
CHAPTER V: VIGILANTES!
. I guess I hate a horse thief a little
worse than anybody."
-Granville Stuart to Frank
Canton, May 26, 1886^
It is not clear whether or not Granville Stuart already had it in
mind to move against the horse thieves before the April meeting of the
Montana Stock Growers Association in Miles City. But soon afterwards
he wrote to Sam Stuart of Deer Lodge of a "gentle horse thief" who had
"nipped" a horse from him and another from Conrad Kohrs. "If we catch
2
him, the county will not be put to any expense," he wrote. In a
letter to H.P. Brooks of Andersonville, Montana, on May 19, Stuart
wrote that he would keep a lookout for Brooks' horses, apparently
stolen, and for "Messrs. Sheridan, MacKenzie and Co." Stuart added,
'"Red Mike' we do not know." There was not enough proof to convict
any of them, Stuart wrote, but if MacKenzie could be caught it would
be arranged so that he would "steal no more horses." The letter
continued.
We over here are certainly willing to stand in with any
body who catches any of this gang and make[s3 an example
of them...that being the only way we will ever stop their
stealing.
One week later, Stuart wrote to Conrad Kohrs concerning horse thieves,
"We propose to hang the very first one we catch. But we don't know
how long it will take us to get hole [sic3 of one." It seems that
Stuart had a notion to hang some thieves as early as the April stock
man's meeting. His opposition to an organized foray may therefore
have seemed to be a reversal of a previously held position and this,
perhaps, is what the Marquis de Mores meant when he accused Stuart of
"backing water."
In July, 1884, Stuart's general desire to punish some thieves
became more calculated and determined. The date is not know, but some
time late in the month, Stuart called a meeting at the DHS ranch.*
Historian Hermann Hagedorn wrote that less than ten men in the whole
northwest knew about it, among them the Marquis de Mores. Mrs. Stuart
wrote that Granville "called a very few stockmen together and laid his
plans before them."^ A letter written on June 21 by Stuart to James
Fergus indicates that plans were underway and reveals something of the
clandestine nature of the operation:
*This may actually have been the second meeting. Teddy Blue Abbott
wrote that an "executive" meeting took place following the regular
session at Miles City stockman's convention. Participants divided up
the range, each man being in charge of a section. Stuart was in charge
of the Maginnis section while others took the Little Missouri and Tongue
River territories. "Executive committees, as they called them, were
to do the shooting and hanging. It was all worked out to a t,^^on paper.
But Granville Stuart was the only one who followed it through."
Pointed Them North, p. 132). But Mrs. Stuart in a letter to Mueller
(Sept. 30, 1940) wrote that there were "criminations and re-crimina
tions" at the Miles City meeting and that Stuart (as he wrote in Forty
Years on the Frontier) somehow thought that the thieves had friends in
the group and would know of any plans almost immediately. Hagedorn s
version concurs. Thus, it seems more likely that Stuart kept any plans
he had to himself and disclosed them only at the DHS to a select, and
as yet unidentified, group of men.
...as regards the horse thieves infesting this part
of the territory, I am devoting considerable time and some
money to find out who they are and their haunts, and I hope
to be able to give a good account of some of them soon,
[bjut all this is confidential, and should not be mentioned
to anybody, for fear it may defeat my plans but when I see
you I will tell you all about it.
It is unknown what was decided at the meeting, but at least some
general plans for a raid against horse thieves in the area were out
lined. The intrepid Theodore Roosevelt got wind of these plans from
the Marquis de Mores, and he and an Englishman named Jameson went to
Montana to join Granville. Stuart, however, refused their assistance
"pointblank," feeling them too reckless and green, and believing that
Roosevelt's prominent background would attract publicity.^
The first killings in the bloody summer of 1884 happened on or
before June 20 and probably did not involve Granville Stuart. A story
in the Fort Benton River Press described the lynching of two horse
thieves, Ed Owens and Li. Nickerson, somewhere along the Musselshell
River. A group of fifteen cowboys observed the suspicious activity of
two men driving a small band of horses. They gave chase and, following
a "scrimmage," the two were overtaken and captured. The details of
their demise were not given, but it was assumed that the two "would
steal no more horses."^
Several days later, two more horse thieves were killed in the
vicinity of the Judith River, probably near its mouth on the Missouri.
A cowboy of rancher J.A. Wells' was working cattle along the river when
two half-breeds, Narcisse Lavadure and Joe Vardner, stole seven horses
from his remuda and escaped with them. In their flight, Lavadure and
Vardner encountered William Thompson who recognized the horses and gave
chase. Joe Vardner was shot dead and Narcisse Lavadure was taken
prisoner and placed in a bam under guard. At 2 a.m. on June 27, an
armed "possee" overpowered the guard and hanged Lavadure.^
During the first part of July, however, Granville Stuart took a
more.active role in the struggle against horse thieves. On July 3,
Stuart's wish to get Mackenzie (p. 64) came true. According to
Forty Years on the Frontier, Sam Mackenzie was a Scotch half-breed who
pretended to be a wolfer "but in reality was one of the most active
horse thieves." He stole horses both in Canada and Montana but got
away with it "because of his many friends among the Cree half-breeds
g
in Canada and in the Judith basin." Mary Abbott recalled those first
days in July when word reached the DHS, from a cowboy whose job it was
to keep an eye on the thieves along the river, that Sam Mackenzie
was in the area. He had crossed the Missouri River with a blue mare
he had stolen from a prospector and was headed in their direction. It
was probably on the morning of July 2 that a neighbor of Stuart s rode
to the DHS with word that Mackenzie had spent the night at his place.
Stuart and several men from the DHS fanned out to search for Mackenzie.
He was captured in a coulee near Fort Maginnis on his way to the timber
and taken to the DHS for the night. Whether by choice or coercion,
Mackenzie entertained his captors by dancing and playing the violin.
The following day Mackenzie was taken to Fort Maginnis and placed in
the stockade.^ On the evening of July 3 or the morning of July 4, Sam
Mackenzie was removed from the stockade by a group of men from the DHS,
led by Reece Anderson, and hanged from a tree two miles from the fort.
A recruit at Fort Maginnis, Francis Patrick Burke, wrote to his
mother describing the eventful Fourth of July;
It was an exciting day for this place. The first
event of importance was the hanging of a horse thief just
before daylight by the Vigilance Committee. I went down
to see him. His body was suspended directly over the road
and the name and occupation were made known by a large
placard on his breast.^
Mary Abbott recalled that one of her cousins took her and some of the
other kids for a ride in the wagon over towards Fort Maginnis. "Can
you see that man hanging on the tree over there?" the cousin asked
them. "That's Sam Mackenzie." That evening, Mary's brother, Charles,
and a few others were on their way home from Maiden following the Fourth
of July celebration and decided to go have a talk with Mackenzie.
Charles addressed the corpse saying, "You should have known better than
to go stealing horses." At one point, Charles was shaking Mackenzie's
leg when he heard a jingling sound. Removing a moccasin he found fifty
cents in change. "He don't need it anymore," said Charles putting
12
the coins in his pocket.
Recruit Francis Burke also went to Maiden for the celebration.
Returning home that evening he discovered two bodies hanging from a
pine tree.
One had a card on his breast with the word "murderer"
on it, the other had the word "thief" on his. I never saw
such a horrible sight before. I hurried home and went to
bed. I had seen enough Montana justice...
The identity of these victims or of their executioners is not known.
Possibly one of them was MacKenzie for Burke writes that the location
was about two miles from the fort.
It was while Stuart was out looking for Sam MacKenzie that he
chanced upon two more outlaws whose days were numbered. Charles
O'Fallon and Charles Owen (known then and hereafter as "Rattlesnake
*
Jake") were camped on the range when Stuart rode into their camp and
asked if they'd seen MacKenzie. Fallon did the talking, Stuart observed,
while Rattlesnake Jake stayed in the tent with a Winchester. "I knew
they were a bad lot," wrote Stuart, "but I had nothing to cause their
14
arrest at the time." Stuart had not, apparently, received the telegram
sent by Teddy Blue, who was working a roundup on the Powder River in
Northern Wyoming, saying that Fallon and Rattlesnake Jake were wanted
by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association for rustling. After Stuart
left, the two men packed their gear and, stopping first in Maiden, went
on to Lewistown.
The story of what happened when Charles Fallon and Rattlesnake
Jake arrived in Lewistown is one told many times in history books and
re-enacted annually for tourists as part of the Lewistown Fourth of
July celebration. The best effort to ferret out the facts is a study
16
by Dorothy M. Johnson in Montana; The Magazine of Western History.
Fallon and Jake, having downed an undisclosed number of drinks, became
involved in an altercation while waiting for a horse race to start.
Jake hit a half-breed named Bob Jackson across the mouth with his
revolver, knocking him down. By some accounts Jackson, who was dressed
as Uncle Sam, was compelled by Jake to crawl in the dust like a snake.
(For such behavior Rattlesnake Jake reportedly earned his sobriquet.)17
After a few more drinks and some talk of "taking the town," Rattlesnake
Jake exchanged shots with a man named John Doane. By now, angered
citizens had armed themselves and bullets began to fly. The two out
laws made their stand in the middle of the street, without cover, and
killed one citizen, Benjamin Smith. Fallon managed to mount his horse
and had begun his getaway when he realized that Rattlesnake Jake was
not with him. Harry Rash was a witness to the events and described
what happened next:
I can see him yet as he lurched forward in his saddle.
His horse was running up the street at the time but he
straightened up turned and rode down to [jake] and said:
"Are you badly hurt?" [jake] said that he was. O'Fallon
said, "I am dying but I will stay with you." He got off
his horse and the two went across the street to a place
near the tent of a photographer, who had come to get a few
pictures of the wild and wooly Cow Puncher. Everybody shot
towards these fellows and they fell. [jake] had nine wounds
and O'Fallon carried seven.
What makes the events in Lewistown significant is, for one thing,
the wide coverage they received in the territorial press. Newspapers
throughout the territory carried versions of the event perhaps the most
sensational of which appeared in the July 11 issue of the Maiden Mineral
Argus which enticed its readers with numerous headlines and sub-head-
lines like "PERFORATED THEM!," "Two Desperate Characters Attempt to
Hold Up the Town," and "Charles Owens and Charles Fallon will Steal No
More Horses." This may well have created a climate of opinion which
was more tolerant of the vigilante events to come. Oscar 0. Mueller
agrues that the killing of Rattlesnake Jake and Charles O'Fallon
frightened other nasty characters who, in large numbers, left the area.
This, Mueller theorized, "created much unfounded gossip concerning
numerous [vigilantej killings which never happened.
One last observation should perhaps be made. There is something
almost suicidal about the actions of the two men. Fred Ojers was of
the opinion that if the two had not been killed by the citizens of
Lewistown, they would have been killed by Stuart's outfit. Having
become wanted men by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and then to
have met Granville Stuart certainly boded poorly for their future. It
seems at least possible that, as Teddy Blue wrote, "they knew they
were doomed.
On July 9, Granville Stuart wrote to his mother that it was getting
"a trifle unpleasant" for horse thieves in the area. "Two hung and
two shot in the last week and pursuing some more." No doubt this
refers to the hanging of MacKenzie and the affair in Lewistown, but
that leaves one unaccounted for. On July 5, James Fergus wrote in a
letter to Wilbur F. Sanders, a leader of the 1863 Virginia City vigilan
tes and a powerful Republican leader in the territory.
We are worse infested with horse and cattle thieves
than we were with robbers during the days of the Road Agents,
and we are obliged to hang a few of them. One was hung at
Clagget a few days ago. One was hanging yesterday in a tree
between Granville Stuarts' and Maginnis... two were at Maiden
yesterday and are probably "up a tree" before this. Andrew
goes to Stuarts today to join a party to serve the county on
business.21
The reference to a hanging at Clagget refers to Narcisse Lavadure
(pp. 66-67), the one between Stuart's and Maginnls to Sam MacKenzie,
but who are the two at Maiden? Rattlesnake Jake and Charles O'Fallon
were briefly at Maiden and the reference may be to them. But there
may also be a connection between these two and the two whom Francis
Burke saw on his way home from Maiden on the Fourth of July. What is
clear in both these letters, however, is that plans for further action
were firmly made.
On July 7, the first organized vigilante party was dispatched
from the Fergus ranch and included, by Mueller's account, Andrew
Fergus (son of James Fergus, mentioned in the letter above), John Single,
Jack Tabor, and J.L. Stuart.2 2 Andrew Fergus kept a diary* of the
expedition which began with the heading, "First strike for Long Point,
then for Chas. Bates at mouth of Pachat."2 3 Long Point was on the
Missouri River a little down river from Rocky Point, and was apparently
the vigilantes' first target. The next entry is under the heading of
July 7, and reads: "payed by Stuart." This no doubt refers to Granville
Stuart, not J.L. Stuart, who was a member of the party.
The Fergus group was apparently in pursuit of Red Mike (mentioned
by Stuart to H.P. Brooks, P. 64), Dutch Louis Meyers, and Brocky Gal
lagher who had stolen horses from several ranches, J.L. Stuart's among
them. The account in Forty Years on the Frontier indicates that they
There is an Andrew Fergus diary at the Montana Historical Society in
Helena. It contains roundup tallies, but makes no mention of a vigilante
expedition. There is, in the Mueller collection, a typescript copy of
an Andrew Fergus diary detailing the expedition with a note by Mueller
that it is an "exact and true" copy. But the best efforts of myself and
employees at the Historical Society failed to locate the original.
were captured near Rocky Point. But Stuart's own letter-press shows,
24
as Mueller pointed out, that they escaped. There is no indication
in the diary that the party even saw the outlaws. Instead, they spent
several days idly camping on the north side of the Missouri River
killing nothing more than a deer. On the 13th, J.L. Stuart rode into
Rocky Point "for grub and information." He returned that night
apparently riding hell-for-leather into camp and raising an "excite
ment." At this, the horses stampeded and the group spent the next
eighteen hours collecting them. Mueller writes that Stuart received
a telegraphed message at Rocky Point instructing the group to meet a
25
second vigilante party. Diary entries on the 14th and 15th indicate
that the men crossed the Missouri, traveled up the Musselshell for five
hours, then up Crooked Creek six miles where they "came on the camp of
the Boys."
On July 7th, the same day that the Andrew Fergus party had left
for Long Point, another party had been sent out from the DHS by Granville
Stuart. Mueller identified the members of this party as Reece Anderson,
26
A.W. (Gus) Adams, and Lynn Patterson. They were led by one of Stuart's
top hands, William C. Burnett. Burnett left a written statement on
the vigilante campaign and explained how the July 7th expedition
started:
...we was shoeing horses at the ranch getting ready
for fall round-up when a man and a boy rode into the ranch
from Pease Bottom on the Yellowstone. He told Mr. Stuart
he had fifty head of horses stolen and that he had trailed
them to the mouth of the Musselshell on the Missouri River
and with field glasses had seen his horses in a corral and
five men who looked to be branding them. Granville sent
for me to come to his office and told me to take what men
I wanted and go down and get the horses. We have lost horses
and so have the other stockmen he went on to say and since
there is no sheriff and no judge in this part of Montana
and I think it is time to do something about it so if you
find the horses belonging to this man have been stolen use
your judgement in dealing with the thieves and I will be
back of anything you do.
The man and his boy showed the Burnett party the cabin they had
been watching. Nearby they captured a man on lookout who was riding
a Pioneer Cattle Company horse. The men and the boy identified their
27
horses in the corral, took them, "...and was well pleased." With
this, the Burnett narration of the incident ends without explaining
what happened to the outlaws. Mueller, who interviewed Burnett
several times, explains that the men "took no chances." A.W. Gus Adams,
a detective, wanted to keep one of the men, California Jack, and turn
him in for a $10,000 reward. But Burnett was against it. The men in
the cabin were quickly shot and California Jack
...was blindfolded, hands tied, put on a horse with
a rope about his neck and over the limb of a cottonwood
tree. A pistol shot, the crack of a whip, and the victim
was left hanging.
This was on the Missouri River bottom, just above the point where the
28
Musselshell River enters the Missouri.
The Burnett party was not yet finished with its work. Just down
stream from California Jack's, cottonwood was a trading post owned by
William Downes. Granville Stuart wrote in Forty Years on the Frontier
that Downes was ostensibly a wolfer, but mostly sold whiskey to the
Indians. His place had become a hangout for "tough characters," and
before long, Downes was stealing horses and killing cattle. Since
he was married, Stuart writes, Downes was given warning but paid "not
29
the least attention..." That evening, against the wishes of Burnett,
but at the insistence of Reece Anderson, the party rode to Downes'
trading post. We learn what happened next in a touching letter written
from C.E. Downes at Fort Benton to James Fergus at Fort Maginnis:
I write this letter for my poor old mother whose head
is bowed down with grief and trouble to such an extent that
we fear for her reason unless we can get news of my brother,
William Downes, who was a store keeper at the Musselshell.
...The end of June some short time after that...a party of
cowboys rode up there to his place and as we have been told
wanted him to go as a guide with them since which time we
have not heard or seen him since now. Your son was one of
the cowboys that went from Fort Maginnis* and Reece Anderson
who you must be acquainted with has been written to and as
I understand it he is Granville Stuart's foreman and as
it is understood he is at the head of the cowboys. Now it
appears when they went to my brother's they said he had horses
belonging to them and he told them if so to take them, but
he got them honestly in trade. ...they compelled him to go
(with them as a guide) since which time we have not heard a
word of him. Now of course your son would know or could
find out what became [of him].30
Unfortunately, the worst fears of the Downes family turned out
to be true. Stuart wrote, in Forty Years on the Frontier, that
31
William Downes and another, California Ed, were hanged. Mueller
quoted the Fort Benton River Press of July 23 in which it was reported
32
that William Downes and Charles Owens were victims of vigilantes.
It is possible, but not likely, that Andrew Fergus and his men were
involved in the lynchings at Downes' place. The diary indicates that
they were in the area but says nothing of meeting with Burnett. Yet,
the report of sixteen cowboys in the lynch group might be explained by
the participation of Fergus's group.
The same article, however, reported that William Downes bore "a good
reputation among merchants (in Fort Benton) with whom he had business
relations."
The July 23 issue of the River Press made an effort to tally the
casualties and concluded that within three weeks, thirteen men had
been killed. The campaign, the article reported, had begun with the
killing of two thieves on the Musselshell (probably Ed Owens and Li
Nickerson, on or before June 20) followed by the "dispatch" of two
half-breeds at Clagget (Joe Vardner and Narcisse Lavadure sometime
before June 30). The report included the two killed in Lewistown as
well as five near Rocky Point (probably referring to California Ed and
his friends though Rocky Point is over twenty miles from the mouth of
the Musselshell and four of those victims were shot, not hanged, as
33
the River Press reported). The article also mentioned one victim
being "strung up" on Armell Creek and another near Fort Maginnis. The
latter is surely Sam MacKenzie, but who is the former? We have seen
letters from Fergus, Stuart, and Francis Burke which also make ambigious
reference to a victim or victims of vigilantes at the same time and in
the same area as Sam MacKenzie, but beyond that little is known. The
papers frankly confessed their inability to keep abreast of the situa
tion. In fact, with the killing of California Ed and his four friends,
and the killing of Charles Owens and William Downes by Reece Anderson,
the number was already up to fifteen, at least eight, and possibly nine
of which were the work of Granville Stuart or his men. (See the Appen
dix, p. 141.)
On their way back to the DHS, Eurnett reported meeting a man who
asked to see Granville Stuart. Burnett replied that he was going that
direction and the man "throwed in" with them. At the DHS he talked to
Stuart:
He told Granville that he had gotten in with a tough
bunch and wanted to quit them and go straight. He also
said there was about fifteen men down on the Missouri River
that had about ICQ head of stolen horses* and that he would
go and shovj him where they was. Granville told him if his
story proved true he would help out. His name was Bill Cantrel
he had at one time been a buffalo hunter and from then on
he went by the name of Floppin' Bill.^^
"Floppin Bill" Cantrell's background is an obscure one. Robert
Fletcher gives the most detailed account in his history of the Montana
cattle industry. Free Grass to Fences. Cantrell came from Arkansas,
Fletcher reports, where his father had been with Quantrell's Guerillas.
Having worked along the Missouri as a trapper, wolfer, and wood cutter,
Mr. Cantrell was acquainted with most of the "rapscallions who infested
that part of the country." Cantrell had spent some time in Dakota,
which will be of significance later. Most recently he had been cutting
wood along the Missouri River and living with his Assinnibone wife.
A "gangling, overgrown kid of twenty," his prowess with an ax was much
respected and the "floppin' motion" of his arms gave rise to his nick
name. Fred Ojers, in his article on the vigilantes for the Great
Falls Tribune in 1926 claimed that Cantrell got his sobriquet for his
*This number is exaggerated. Stuart would later indicate that in the
entire summer he recovered only 71 horses. (Granville Stuart to R.B.
Harrison, Helena, Montana, October 15, 1884.)
habit of, upon felling a tree, spitting on his hands and saying "That's
the way to flop 'em."3 6 One of Cantrell's contemporaries, Harry Rash,
gave the following description of him;
You may talk about peculiar characters, but the man
that Stuart had at the head of the Vigilantes was one who
would take the cake any place. He was very tall and slim,
a perfect devil as far as fearlessness was concerned. He was as
awkward in appearance as one could well be. He was known
"Floppin" Bill. He would fight at the drop of a hat and
drop it himself.
It is not known why Floppin' Bill chose to join the vigilantes. Pos
sibly he was alarmed at their work and wanted to get on the safe side
of the fence. Possibly he had quarrelled with his former cohorts.
It seems clear, however, that his decision was not, as Fletcher wrote,
O O
"dictated by ethics."
Stuart was pleased to have Cantrell as a guide and prepared for
another foray. In a letter dated July 11 to Fred E. Lawrence of Flat
Willow, he wrote.
Dear Fred,
I have taken the liberty of retaining your rifle
as we go again tomorrow and are short of Winchesters.
The expedition was ̂  success.
Please burn this letter.
Yours truly,
Granville Stuart
On July 12, Granville Stuart, William Burnett, and six or seven others
left the DHS in the company of Floppin' Bill Cantrell.. On the 15th
they rendezvoused with Andrew Fergus and his party (as had been ar
ranged by the telegraphed message to Rocky Point) on Crooked Creek six
miles from its mouth on the Musselshell. The Andrew Fergus diary shows
that the group camped at the Musselshell on the 16th, and on the 17th
a party of eight scouts "went down as far as B's wood yard." Fergus
and seven others spent a lonesome and quiet night in camp.
The destination of the vigilantes was a woodyard along the river
near Bates Point. The woodyard was variously referred to as Bates'
woodyard or James' woodyard as it was owned by a man named in nearly
all accounts as simply "Old Man James" and his two sons. Mueller
alleged, without explanation, that these men were cousins of Jesse
OQ
James. James' woodyard had, according to Robert Fletcher, become a
hangout for one Jack Stringer ("Stringer Jack") who was a former
40
buffalo hunter and the leader of a "notorious gang" of thieves.
Members of the gang included, according to the account in Forty Years
on the Frontier, Paddy Ross, Swift Bill, Orvil Edwards, Frank Hanson,
Silas Nickerson, Dixie Burr, and Bill Williams. Mueller argues that
the last of these. Bill Williams, was not a thief, but a friend of the
cattlemen and that the account in Forty Years is wrong. The Fergus
diary does indicate that the vigilantes "got dinner at Williams" on the
21st, as Mueller points out.^^ If the two Williams's are one and the
same, it would appear that Forty Years is, in fact, in error. With or
without Williams, there were between twelve and fifteen thieves at the
42
woodyard (the Fergus diary indicates fifteen). The. sixth thief,
Dixie Burr, v;:as the son of Fred Burr vrho had come to Montana in 1853
and who was a long time acquaintence of Stuart's. Unlike Bill VJilliams
case, however, there is no doubt about Dixie Burr's character or
U)-■ NI I
THE ROUTE OF THE VIGILANTES
Fergus Party
Stuart Party —. —
m -Both Parties—.-—
Rendezvous (S)
\ X V
i?ocl:y:Hrx^f U/vt ' y'^ 4" 54 ^ p^,.4-/<^cv;;^
♦* I - / S r;»<a~T Kei Jrws //at4e
r^' U'/^
i
alliance,' 'f
On the 13th, the scouts returned, and the entire group started on
what Andrew Fergus described as "...the darkest and damdest night's
travell I ever took." The vigilantes crossed the Missouri and camped
within a few hours' ride of the woodyard. On the afternoon of the 19th,
the group moved in close to the woodyard, rested until 11 o'clock in the
evening, then approached along the river bottom. Fergus and a man
referred to in the diary by the alias of "Smith" were left with the
horses while the rest of the group positioned themselves around the
woodyard. There is a list, left by Stuart many years later, giving the
names of the vigilantes and their duties or positions that night:**
Fred Burr married an Indian woman who was the sister of Stuart's first
wife, Awbonnie. Dixie Burr was thus Granville Stuart's nephew. The
second Mrs. Stuart wrote Burr's history (in two paragraphs) describing
him as a bright boy with ambitions of becoming a doctor. But "at heart
he was an Indian and loved the ranch," she wrote. He fell into bad
company, went to Canada, and though he was to escape the vigilantes
at the woodyard, he was later hanged, probably at Granville Stuart's
direction. "Granville...showed him no mercy." wrote Mrs. Stuart.
"He done everything humanly possible for the boy and he threw away his
chance." ("The Dixie Burr Story," Allis B. Stuart Collection,
Montana Historical Society, Helena.)
Mueller states that the original list is in the possession of the
Historical Library at Helena, Montana. But, like the Fergus diary
(p. 62), it cannot be located. There exists instead a typed copy
in some of Mueller's papers at the Montana State University in
Bozeman (Man. File 761B) with the statement that it is a "true copy.'
Where is the original?
Flopping Bill, Cantrell, x
Jack Tabor
Pete Proctor in camp
Andrev7 Fergus To get horses
John Single at Ice house
Chas. Petty at Tent
A.W. Adams below house
Frank M. Headly*
Butch (Wallace x Stairley)
Lynn Patterson x
Wm Burnett
Jim Hibbs [The significance of the x's
Julian Stuart on the list is not known.]
The diary indicates that at about four in the morning of the 20th,
four of the vigilantes came up from the bottom leading a number of
horses. After they returned, the shooting began. Fergus wrote in the
diary, "...I heard a continued roar for five minutes & all was still
for fifteen minutes. Then light and scattered voleys were heard..."
[sic]. There is a more detailed version of the action in Forty Years
on the Frontier. Stuart wrote that the woodyard consisted of a log
cabin and a stable connected by a large corral. One hundred yards from
the cabin was a tent made of poles and three wagon sheets. The vigilan
tes divided up (the list, above, gives the approximate breakdown) to
cover the tent and the cabin. At daylight. Old Man James appeared in
the door of the cabin. He was ordered to open the corral and drive out
the horses, which he did. But he refused to surrender and ducked into
Apparently Stuart's memory failed him with respect to Frank M. Headly.
Burnett and others agreed that he was not present at James' VJoodyard.
(See Oscar 0. Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids," p. 31).
the cabin from which he began to fire through one of the port holes.*
"This," wrote Stuart, "was followed by a volley from the port holes
A 3
all around the cabin and in an instant the whole party was in action."
In the course of the battle, two cowboys, Lynn Patterson and Jack
Tabor, crawled up to the hay stack near the cabin and set it on fire.
Stuart writes that the cabin burned to the ground and that the men
,44
inside "kept up the fight until they were all killed or burned up.'
As the tent was closely surrounded by thick brush, escape from it was
easier. Stringer Jack reportedly crawled out and made it to a clump
of willows "from which he made his last stand." Dixie Burr, his arm
shattered by a bullet, managed to conceal himself in a dry well.
Another, named Frank Hansen, made a successful escape. Four others
identified by the Fort Benton River Press as Johnnie Owens, Swift Bill,
Sy Nickerson, and Phelps, managed to make it to the river where they
hid in the brush and drift wood. The vigilantes searched for them but
without success. These four and Dixie Burr later constructed a raft
45
and floated down the Missouri River. Andrew Fergus wrote in the
diary that he was rejoined by the vigilantes at around two o'clock in
the afternoon and dinner was consumed. The party then moved "up to
Pashet" (probably meaning Pouchelle Creek which empties into the
Missouri near Bates Point) where they spent the night and the no doubt
^Mueller's version indicates that the battle began when two lookouts,
the James boys, returned to the headquarters, they discovered the
vigilantes and vjarned their friends by yelling The S— B— Stranglers
have got us surrounded!" They were promptly killed and the battle
began.
weary Andrew Fergus was put on "first relief."
The next morning, the party took stock of themselves. They were
some sixty miles from the DHS, and their food had been soaked by the
muddy water of the Missouri River. At this point, Stuart decided to
hail a passing steamboat to secure provisions. William Burnett wrote
that at first the boat refused to stop. Angered, Stuart ordered his
men onto their horses and they rode downstream to head the boat off.
Wrote Burnett,
When the captain saw a lot of Winchesters and a bunch
of hungry looking riders, he landed. Granville told him
that we was stockmen who had some bad luck with our mess
outfit and that we wanted to buy some bacon and flour. The
captain shows us the commissary and says, "Help yourselves,
no charge."
One of the passengers, Rufus F. Zogbaum, was a correspondent for
Harper's New Monthly Magazine. He wrote an account of the trip from
Fort Benton downriver to St. Louis which was printed two years later
in the May, 1886 issue of Harper's and which provides us with an inter
esting perspective on the events. As the boat traveled downstream,
Zogbaum wrote, the passengers heard numerous rumors of a bold vigilante
campaign in the area. As the boat rounded "a long point of land
[Long Point]" those on deck noticed whisps of smoke rising along the
bank. A little further doxvnriver they came into view of the smoulder
ing remains of a ranch house with two half charred wagons in front of
it, as well as a dead dog, a dead mule, and a small number of chickens
cackling and huddled together. "By Jiminy," someone said, "the cow-boys
is makin' a clean sweep of the kentry." Someone noticed a tall, dead
tree from the skeletal arms of which, almost hidden by the underbrush,
hung "something indistinct, but fearfull in its mystery and silence..."*
"Look! look!" cried someone, "Down thar in them cottonwoods! that's
them!" Zogbaum described what they saw next:
Half hidden in a mass of wild rose bushes, backed by
the gray trunks and graceful feathery foliage of the poplars,
a group of men and horses is standing. We gather close up to
the rail, eager to see the dread horsemen, the result of whose
avenging ride we have witnessed... Most of them have dis
mounted and are standing at their horses' heads waist-deep
in the weeds and wild flowers, bronzed-faced, resolute-looking
men, unconsciously picturesque in costume and attitude;
bright barrelled Winchesters swung across their high-pommelled
saddles, on which is bound the scanty baggage of the cow
boy, while a few pack-mules quietly crop the grass a few paces
in the rear under the care of their drivers. They are
evidently under some discipline, for no one else moves as a
tall, handsome, blond-bearded man, flannel-shirted, high-
booted, with [a] crimson silk kerchief tied loosely, sailor
fashion, around his sunburned neck, advances to the water's
edge, and with a courteous wave of [a] broad-brimmed hat
hails the boat.^6
Zogbaum does not identify Stuart by name but says that many recognize
the vigilante leader for a man "of wealth and education well known in
the Territory." Zogbaum indicates that inquiries were made concerning
47
news up-river and the possibility of purchasing supplies.
Neither Zogbaum, Forty Years on the Frontier, nor the Burnett
account mention it, but the Fergus diary indicates that one of the
vigilante party, Pete Proctor, was put on board the boat. Mueller
wrote that Stuart's son Charles had explained to him that "Prickly Pear"
No other account mentions any hanging at James woodyard.
IS
m
i
'sms
yt
w
m
m
c-/;z.T T\
\iVt\v^.\K,'^:?^.
Vigilantes at James' Woodyard
"By Jiminy the cow-boys is makin' a terrible clean sweep of the kentry
Zogbaum's impression of the end of the James' woodyard fight
though he came one day after it occurred.
(From Harper's New Monthly Magazine)
Having procured supplies, the group made dinner and a party of
49
five left for the DBS with the horses they had recovered. Stuart
left at the same time but rode straight through, sixty-five miles,
arriving at the DHS in time to write two hasty letters*! dated the
24th of July. One of them was to Miss Luinda Stuart of Maiden, probably
the sister of J.L. Stuart, informing her that her brother and Andrew
Fergus were "both well" and would be gone a week longer. In the
second letter to James Fergus, Stuart went into more detail.
Dear Friend,
Have just returned and find you letter of the 13th...
This expedition is also a success... Three of the
men will be in today...the rest of the party (eleven
strong) are still on secret expedition and will be gone
some ten days longer. Andrew and Stuart are with them,
both well and hearty. Nobody hurt on our side but there
is wailing among the enemy and the good work goes
swiftly on...
Yours Truly,
Granville Stuart
(P.S.)
Don't tell anyone that the expedition will be out
ten days more, it might interfere with their plans.50
Stuart then rode to Fort Maginnis to telegraph Deputy U.S. Marshal
Sam Fischel of the escape of the thieves from the woodyard. The
message was also telegraphed to military authorities at Poplar, a post
on the Missouri almost at the point where the river flows across the
Dakota border. The military was interested in capturing these thieves
*The Granville Stuart letter-press book, however, is missing four pages.
Two of them contained entries between July 12, 1884 and July 24, 1884, and
two contained entries between July 24 and August 17. This was the condi
tion of the book when it was given to the MHS to duplicate by Paul C.
Phillips and was probably the condition when he first saw it (ca. 1920).
as the Army had also been victims of their depredations. We will hear
more of this later. Stuart then rode to a meeting of the Montana Stock
Growers Association at Helena.
Rufus Zogbaum once again had the good fortune to be in the right
place at the right time for a good story. He was in Poplar when word
was received from Fort Maginnis to be on the lookout for the escaped
thieves. With the aid of Indian trackers and a number of soldiers
who sporadically fired their rifles into the brush along the river-
bank, the five fugitives from James' woodyard were apprehended. They
turned out not to be the game villains Zogbaum had expected. He
described them as they were marched into the fort.
...guarded by the vigilant soldiers...wild eyed and
haggared, covered with mud and dirt, their brier-torn
clothing hanging in shreds from their frames, emaciated
with hunger, one with a bullet torn arm [Dixie Burr]
bound in blood stained bandages, their abject appearance
well proves that 'the way of the transgressor is hard...'
The thieves were captured sometime during the last week in July or
the first week in August. Zogbaum writes that they were locked up "to
await what fate has in store for them." Receiving word that they had
been captured, Marshall Fishel and a deputized Reece Anderson went to
Poplar to bring them back for trial at Fort Benton. Nineteen days
after Fishel, Reece Anderson and party, prisoners in tow, left Poplar,
thd Marshall returned to Fort Benton and told the local press that
somewhere about eight miles above the mouth of the Musselshell, the party
had been relieved of their burden. By his account, a party of fifteen
men, sporting "well primed Winchesters," rode into their camp at four
in the morning, the 28th day of August, He explained:
Myself and Mr. R. Anderson were then called out of camp.
We were carried a couple miles away, and cautioned not to
glance back under penalty of instant death. The remainder
of my possee were kept at camp while a portion of the masked
party took charge of the prisoners and went off with them.
The rest of their band soon followed. They disturbed nothing
in camp, except the prisoners.
The culprits were said to be cowboys. Though Fischel could not say for
sure what had happened to them, he had the feeling that they were no
longer of this world. Stuart seems to have had more information for
he wrote in Forty Years on the Frontier that they were taken to a place
nearby (perhaps a woodyard) where a log placed between two cabins
served as an impromptu gallows. Afterwards, the cabins were burned
53
along with the bodies. Stuart does not say who was in this vigilante
party, of course. Mueller was unwilling to connect the incident with
anyone from the DHS and said it looked like the work of some "RL riders"
54
without giving any explanation.
The vigilantes had done their work well. The Fort Benton River
Press observed that horse thieves would soon be "as scarce on the upper
Missouri as they are in Heaven. The vigilantes suffered no casualties
and the only injury was Granville Stuart's. Apparently a pistol was
fired close to his head, damaging his inner ear and leaving him feeling
56
"terribly ill" and forever deaf on one side. Stuart's letter-press
book shows that seventy-one horses were recovered. William Burnett
wrote that they included horses stolen from Wyoming and some with the
MP (Mounted Police) brand from Canada. The no doubt appreciative
members of the Montana Stock Growers Association meeting in Helena
elected Granville Stuart as president, and the cattle king settled
down for what would be the last flush season of the open range cattle il
industry on the northern Great Plains.
m
/
khff''
3
CHAPTER VI: AFTERMATH
Rumors and Repercussions
True to Stuart's wishes, the vigilante campaign had been kept
highly secret. Few knew for sure who the vigilantes were or how many
victims they had claimed, and those who knew weren't talking. Late
in August, the Rocky Mountain Husbandman, trying to separate fact from
fiction, reported.
From the best information only about seventeen have
shared this fate [lynching] from first to last; yet, from
the rumors afloat one would think that not less than fifty^
had come to their end at the hands of exasperated cowboys.
The Maiden Mineral Argus guessed that "seventeen would be placing the
2
number a little too high." On August 6, the Fort Benton River Press
also waxed prudent, suggesting that casualties had been exaggerated.
Reports from steamboats, however, indicated that a number of men were
leaving the area via boat down the Missouri. These reports, of course,
came before the hanging of Sheriff Fischel's four prisoners. But they
reveal that sober opinion placed the death toll at least twenty,
slightly more with the execution of Dixie Burr and company.
Rut there were other contemporary versions which placed the
number much higher. Theodore Roosevelt wrote that nearly sixty men had
been hanged or shot, but not, he added, "with the best judgement in all
Vf"
cases." Fred Ojers interviewed several old timers for his article
and reported.
...we find it variously estimated that at least 35
persons were killed by the cowboy vigilantes. One man said
he had counted the names of 62 persons that rumor then listed
as dead. Unquestionably, there was no small number of men
of dubious character missing when the riders disbanded.^
Joseph Kinsey Howard also found differing estimates, some ranging as
high as seventy-five. He quoted one F.S. Stimson, manager of the
Northwest Ranch Company, who reported thirty-eight men had been killed.^
Today, the general estimate lies in that neighborhood. Richard M. Brown
in his study of American vigilantism. Strain of Violence, placed the
number at thirty-five.
Another source which suggests that the numbers may have been higher
than estimated in the newspapers are the letters from Francis Burke to
his parents while he was stationed at Fort Maginnis. On July 15, for
example, he wrote to his mother, "I know of thirty men who have been
hung or shot within a radius of 25 miles of this place during this
present month." He went on.
It is absolutely unsafe to go any\jhere unless with a strong
party. The outlaws are strong and hitherto held the upper
hand, but now the people are rising and are bound to crush
them out. The only trouble is they over do the thing and
doubtless some innocent men have suffered and others will
suffer before the good work is done. I know a place on
the Missouri River where the bodies of nine men are swinging ^
in the breeze on the cottonwood trees along the river bank...
Such numbers are difficult to account for, especially so early in July.
It seems quite possible that the William Burnett party killed as many
as nine men. Five were killed in the California Jack episode (p. 73).
At least two were killed at William Downes' trading post and reports
8
from the area indicate that as many as five might have been. Burke
probably heard of these episodes from DHS cowboys visiting the post.
The other thirty men, however, I cannot presently document.
But in a September 15 letter home, Francis Burke had an even more
remarkable story to tell. It seems that on the morning of August 3,
he and four other recruits were escorting an army wagon to Rocky Point.
At their camp on Big Crooked Creek, just before daylight, their mules
(which had been drawing the wagon) were stampeded "by a party of mounted
men." As their saddle horses were tethered, they still had mounts and
leaving the driver in charge of the wagon. Burke and two others set
out to find their mules. By noon they had found no trace of them and
were resting when. Burke writes, a party of fourteen cowboys "commanded
by Mr. G. Stuart" rode up. Stuart told them that he was also in search
of stolen stock "and would show no mercy to horse thieves." Burke was
further informed by Stuart that he knew where the outlaws had a rendez
vous, and that if the soldiers wished to join the party they would
surely get their mules back. This the soldiers decided to do and Burke
describes an all night ride, "...the wildest I ever had." He goes on
to describe stopping to wait for darkness the following night, then
moving in close to the outlaws' hideout. As daylight approached.
Burke writes, two men appeared in the cabin door. The vigilantes
opened fire and two fell dead. Immediately, rifle muzzles appeared in
spaces in the logs, "...and lead began flying around us pretty lively.
Two cowboys volunteered to set fire to a haystack and though one was
killed in the effort, the other succeeded in setting it ablaze. Writes
Burke,
Things now looked desperate for the thives. They had
the choice of remaining inside and roasting to death or
comming out to be shot. They seemed to prefer the latter,
and after a while came rushing out, shooting at us as they
ran. Only five escaped, and thirteen fell either dead or
badly wounded. Another one of the cowboys was killed by
exposing himself recklessly. We went up to the house and
the bodies of the dead were thro\m upon the burning pile.^
Though Burke's letters from Fort Maginnis are valuable and interest
ing, they are not always completely accurate^^ and clearly this one
presents problems. It is obvious that Burke is referring to the gun
fight at James' Woodyard though no other account, Andrew Fergus', Gran-
ville Stuart's, or William Burnett's, say anything about the partici
pation of three soldiers from Fort Maginnis. All versions but Burke's
agree that no cowboys were killed. Burke does not mention the existence
of a tent, as Stuart does. He also differs with Stuart where the
latter claims that the men in the cabin refused to leave it and died
in the flames. On this score. Burke's version sounds more accurate,
however. Burke is also wrong on the date. By his version, the fight
occurred on August 5th or 6th. But the evidence seems conclusive that
it happened on July 20th. Burke's version also gives a different des
cription as to the beginning of the battle, though all versions differ
and agree only on the fact that two men were killed immediately.
We must not be too hasty in writing off Burke's story as a tall
frontier tale, however. His account contains so many accurate statements
that it is remarkable. Stuart and his men were indeed in the neighbor
hood of Crooked Creek. There were, as Burke writes, fourteen of them.
Both Burke and Andrew Fergus write of a wild night's ride prior to the
fight. The description of sneaking up on the cabin, of the fortified
nature of the cabin down to the spaces for rifles, is consistent with
other versions. Though Burke misses the dates, he is writing many weeks
later. Also, both Stuart and Burnett were wrong on the dates, the
former saying the fight occurred on July 8, the latter saying it happened
in August. The burning of the cabin, of course, is part of all
versions. Burke is close as to the number of casualties and in agreement
\\rith the other versions on the number which escaped. As to the failure
to mention the participation of any recruits in the fight, Burke writes.
No one at the post knows that we had anything to do
with it for while the military authorities sjmipathize with
the settlers in their method of treating these fellows,
they cannot openly countenance it, and this is the reason
no mention is made in the papers of our part in the affair.
This helps to explain why the military was so helpful in the effort to
capture the escaped thieves (pages 87-88) and may explain the seeming
cooperation of the military in the Sam Mackenzie affair.
It seems unlikely that Burke could have constructed this story
simply on the basis of articles which appeared in the newspapers.
They had widely differing and inaccurate versions of the fight and
Burke includes details which do not appear in the territorial press.
A more likely explanation may be that Burke got the story from friends
at the DHS and retold it, placing himself in the action. But it seems
just as possible that things happened exactly as Burke says they did.
Rumors of high death tolls are often accompanied with rumors that
the raids of 1884 did not end in July as Mueller and Stuart claim they
did, nor were they limited to central Montana. There is stubborn
evidence to the effect that Stuart or men working for him carried their
vigilante campaign into North Dakota.
In Medora, North Dakota,* Theodore Roosevelt's country, cattle
and horse rustling was a big concern and the local paper, the Badlands
Cowboy, urged stockmen to take action. On May 19, 1884, the Cowboy
recommended that stockmen "...clinch every particle of crooked work to
the full extent of written and range law." During the months of July
and August, assorted stories appeared enthusiastically following the
activities of Stuart's vigilantes like the following item of August 14,
giving the first rumors of the fight at James' Woodyard:
...Granville Stuart's cowboys have a large band of
thieves surrounded. The band is too strong to be taken but
can be held till help comes. Reinforcements left Cottonwood
Sunday. Hot times are expected.13
However, by Fall, the Badlands Cowboy had lost its sympathy with
Stuart and his "stranglers." On the 30th of October, the paper found
itself in opposition to the vigilantes.
A report that Montana "stranglers" were on their way
to Medora caused considerable talk, and all kinds of rumors
were afloat. Last week they captured an innocent cowboy
*In 1884, Medora was in Dakota Territory which did not split into South
Dakota and North Dakota until 1889.
and held him in custody for two days. He says he could
not convince them that he was honest, nor would they listen
to anything he said but knew everything... Medora is able to
take care of her own stock and can dispense with the aid of
the "stranglers," as they style themselves. A horse thief
stands no show, nor does he deserve any, but to take men who
are looking for estrayed stock and string them up a couple
times in order to get information, is going a little too
far, and there is likely to be trouble should they attempt
anything like that around here. ...It is hoped that they
will exercise a little more precaution in the future.
Hermann Hagedorn filled in a few of the details of the above
story, writing that a cowboy, one Pierce Bolan, who was "as honest as
daylight," was found by a group of Montana vigilantes, led by Floppin'
Bill Cantrell, walking near Elkhorn Bottom. They assumed he was afoot
preparing to steal a horse and called upon him to confess. Bolan
replied that he had nothing to confess at which point, Hagedorn writes.
The raiders...threw a rope around his neck and drew him
up in such a way that his feet just touched the ground. The
victim continued to proclaim his innocence and the vigilantes
finally released him, but not until he was unconscious. When
he came to, the raiders were gone, but nearby he found
a paper possibly dropped not altogether inadvertently.
It bore the names of fifteen men along the Little Missouri
whom Granville Stuart's committee had marked for punishment.
Hagedorn reports that the raiders spent some time in North Dakota,
"terrorizing and burning" a number of ranches of suspected horse thieves.
Such behavior was not well received, and many in the area were ready
to organize their own vigilante committee to deal with the stranglers.
Prudently, the Montana group left.
It seems likely that at least one man suffered with his life at
the hands of Montana vigilantes. George Grinnell and his partner.
Ed Hall, lived on the south side of the Missouri River in North Dakota,
do^mstream from Fort Buford. They made their living here either by
fair means or foul, depending on whom one believes. Fred Ojers wrote
that Grinnell was a horse thief, leader of a gang, and though several
attempts were made by Montana raiders to drop a rope around his neck,
only his wife succeeded, strangling him as he slept one night.
It seems Grinnell and his partners escaped death at the hands of the
Montana group at least once. On October 20, 1884, the press at Poplar
reported that a number of cowboys were en route to Grinnell's ranch,
" n oted as a general resort for horse thieves." On the same day,
Grinnell reportedly appealed to the commander of Fort Buford for pro-
16
tection but was refused. Hagedorn also writes of this incident,
writing that two cowpunchers, generally considered honest but marked
for death by the vigilantes, fled their ranch at word that the raiders
were on their way. The raiders arrived and found only a hired hand
who, like Bolan, was treated to the "sensation of a lariat around his
neck," before being released and advised to vacate the country.
But in November, George Grinnell's luck ran out. The November 20
issue of the Medora Badland's Cowboy reported his death by hanging at
the hands of "Montana Stranglers." Wrote the Cowboy,
He is [Grinnell] spoken of as a man who would not steal
cattle, and it seems to be a case of personal emnity. The
leader of the stranglers and Grinnell had some difficulty
dividing buffalo robes a few years ago, and it is supposed
that the hanging was a result of this misunderstanding.
The idea that there was enmity between the leader of the stranglers and
Grinnell is intriguing. Hagedorn and other accounts identify Floppin'
Bill Cantrell as the leader and we remember Fletcher's remarks about
Floppin' Bill's background which included some time in North Dakota
X8
before coming to Montana.
More talk of Stuart's men being active in Dakota can be found in
the story of John Goodall. Goodall, who was a cowboy in Dakota in 1884,
remembers managing the fall roundup when one Elf Cole, from Powder River,
rode up and asked to borrow fifteen horses for a party of vigilantes
who were in the neighborhood and in need of fresh mounts. Goodall made
the loan and asked no questions. Goodall's story was taken down by
Usher L. Burdick who wrote.
Goodall recalls, too, that Cole wanted Goodall's best
saddle horse for the boss, probably meaning Granville Stuart,
and gave directions that the horse should be left in the
livery barn in Medora.
Goodall complied with the request and loaned his best horse, a white
one known as "Snowball" to the vigilantes. The horse was later seen
19
with the raiders at Fort Buford.
In a recent article for the Daily News in Minot, North Dakota,
Robert Cory writes that Floppin' Bill and fifteen men were in the area
of Burlington, North Dakota, at the beginning of November and that they
were responsible for five deaths. Two of the victims, named Bates and
Ravenwood, were approached by a member of the vigilantes who said he
wanted to purchase some horses. Ravenwood and Bates apparently offered
him some horses which, as it turned out, had been stolen in Montana.
After being escorted into town and forced to pay their grocery bill at
J.L. Colton's store, they were taken out on the prairie and hanged.20
There is one last rumor which should be mentioned, though it is
the most obscure of all. Malone and Roeder report that Stuart also
joined a group of vigilantes who hired a special train which ran on
Northern Pacific tracks through Montana and Dakota, stopping periodically
to deal with rustlers. The facts seem "lastingly veiled in secrecy,"
though some old-timers guess that this outfit killed as many as sixty
21
men. These two able Montana historians do not indicate exactly where
they found evidence of this incident, but it seems to this writer that
their version resembles one given by Robert Fletcher, again without
footnote:
That summer, a chartered train picked up another band
of avengers and their horses at a secluded siding near Miles
City. It stopped at intervals between Billings and Medora.
The train crew waited until the passengers had returned from
missions to the hinterland. Nemesis rode with them packing
a hair rope. It is alleged that the tally credited to this
and similar forays totaled sixty-three.22
Whatever the true nature of this incident, it resembles the actions of
Wyoming stockmen in the years that followed.
The defenders of the vigilantes, of course, argue that the last of
the raids was the one at James' woodyard. Mueller's unswerving defence
of the campaign includes testimony that they were not involved in
Dakota.
Many stories were current that Cantrell was a leader
of vigilantes in Eastern Montana and in the badlands of
North Dakota. The testimony of the stockmen supports Granville
Stuart's letter press which indicates that he was a Stock
Inspector in the 1884-1886 period in Central Montana.
Mueller defends Cantrell, praising him as a reliable, efficient, and
23
fearless man who made an excellent stock inspector. Such adjectives
reveal little as to Cantrell's motivations, of course. Nor would his
role as a stock inspector prohibit him from making incursions into
Dakota after thieves. But let us turn to Stuart's letter-press
material as Mueller recommends.
Stuart wrote to A.W. Gus Adams, also a stock inspector, on the
8th of October, 1884:
Dear Gus,
1 got your telegram last night. Flopper,
Reece, Lynn, Frank, Buch, Tabor and Will Clarke
are over in the Rockies. Johnny Davis told Reece
that he saw Duchy there only a few days before,
and the boys lit out at once, look for them
in three or four days.
VJhat do you want Flopper for?...
Yours Truly,
Granville Stuart
This indicates that a posse was north of the Missouri River in the
Little Rocky Mountains trying to capture Louis Myres and possibly
others of the group which escaped from Rocky Point. This is the only
letter which might suggest that Floppin' Bill was somewhere other than
Dakota and it is apparently to this that Mueller refers. But consider
another letter from Stuart to Gus Adams, written on October 23, 1884,
Dear Gus,
Glad to hear that you grabbed [or gobbled]
five "of em" and trust your expedition may prove
a success. ...
Yours Truly,
Granville Stuart
We can only speculate as to the meaning of these letters, but we know
that Adams wrote to Stuart before the 8th of October and "wanted"
Floppin' Bill. We know that by the 23rd, five "of em" had been grabbed.
Robert Cory, in his article, writes that Montana vigilantes claimed
five victims. The letter of the 23rd also refers to another "expedition."
In November there is the report of George Grinnell's hanging at the
hands of a Montana group. Certainly the distance between central
Montana and western Dakota is great, but we also have the report of a
special train running from Miles City (Gus Adams' home) to Medora.
The evidence is circumstantial but intriguing.
In the wake of events of 1884, there was widespread support for
the vigilantes by those in a position to voice an opinion. The press
was generally sympathetic, frequently referring to the "good work" of
the vigilantes and recommending more "hemp" as a remedy for transgres-
2A 
sors. The Rocky Mountain Husbandman came strongly to their defense,
pointing out that the raids had been expensive (from $3,000 to $5,000)
and that "every stockman in the Territory" ought to contribute as all
would benefit. The paper continued,
Mob law is certainly to be abhorred, yet when we
consider the great annoyances that people have been
■<>7
subjected to, we cannot censure them for thus summarily
dealing out justice without awaiting the inefficient, slow
action of the law.25
Not content with this, James Fergus wrote more than one scathing
defense of the vigilantes to the Rocky Mountain Husbandman. On
August 16 a letter from Fergus ran in the Husbandman complaining that
eastern Montana ranchers had seen several tax assessors but no peace
officers, that the military at Fort Maginnis was of no help because of
all the red tape involved in getting orders from distant officers, and
that the result was a country infested with "thieves, bandits and
desperadoes." He went on.
...now as the county don't protect us, the army
don't protect us, there is no way left but to protect
ourselves and so we call upon the much abused cowboy.
Invoking the bloody shirt, good Republican that he was, Fergus wrote
in a letter dated August 28,
...if a history of this summer's raids on the horse
and cattle thieves of eastern Montana could be written
it would show as much good management, bravery and
endurance as anything during the war for the Union, and
that is saying a great deal.
This was not the first vigilante situation on which Fergus had
expressed an opinion. Following the Bannack—Virginia City affair in
1864, Fergus wrote an open letter to the "Gentlemen of the Vigilance
Committee" in which he included a cautionary note. Though Americans
had the right to trial by their countrymen in open court by the laws of
the nation, he wrote, there "may arise [circumstances] when for the
benefit of the community at large good men may be compelled to disregard
the laws...and deal out swift and certain punishment..." The citizens
of Bannack and Virginia City had been plagued by murderous road agents
and a corrupt Sheriff which threatened the safety of the community.
But, wrote Fergus,
...I think for the safety of society the powers you then
exercised should be resorted to only in extreme cases, all
interference with the laws are dangerous. If one man or
body of men set the laws aside another man or body of men
can chose the same right. The end would be anarchy and
confusion.26
Though no one, not even Fergus, claimed that the lives or safety of
eastern Montana residents were endangered by stock thieves, Fergus had
apparently come to believe that the safety of property was also a cir
cumstance which could justify extreme action. In 1884, Fergus wrote,
"unlawful or not, necessity compels it, it has got to be done and will
27
be, but others deserve the credit, not me."
No doubt Stuart rather wished his neighbor would stop defending
him and giving him all the credit but he would have no such luck.
A short time later, Fergus dropped a warning to critics in a public
statement.
Sympathizers who are more or less "tarred with the
same stick" will be watched and their names placed on record.
It would be well for such to understand that the hanging, etc.,
of horse thieves has not been done by bands of lawless cowboys,
but was a result of a general understanding among all the
large cattle ranchers of Montana.
With this, Fergus had spilled a few beans. This was, as Joseph Kinsey
Howard indicates, the first public admission that the 1884 raids were
planned in advance and not the result of a spontaneous uprising of
28
exasperated stockmen. Fergus, on still another occasion addressed
himself to the raids. Arriving in Helena that fall, he was questioned
by curious reporters about news from the front, and took advantage of
the situation to crack a bit of a joke. As Fergus was a Republican and
Stuart was a Democrat, the two friends were rivals in territorial
politics. As Howard tells it, Fergus jokingly explained that he had
...persuaded his neighbor Stuart to send his cowboys to
shoot Democrats and thus enable him [Stuart] to bring about
his own election to the Territorial legislature... "They
got rid of 22 before I left and probably got rid of the other
18 (the county had a Democratic majority of 40) by this time,"
said Fergus, "vrnen Granville found out what he had done he was
taken sick and is still sick and I don't think he'll ever come
out of it."29
The Maiden Mineral Argus didn't find Mr. Fergus' remarks very humorous
and wrote, "...if this is the way a sojourn in Helena affects Mr. Fergus'
30
idea of wit, he had better come home."
He was only kidding, of course, but it is a curious coincidence
that Fergus said Stuart "got rid of" twenty-two men, just about the
total one comes up with if one includes the lynching of Sheriff Fischel
and Reece Anderson's five prisoners in the count.
Stuart knew better than to say or write anything about the raids.
Teddy Blue, however, relates an incident in which Stuart was confronted
by a women who accused him of hanging thirty innocent men. "He raised
his hat to her and said; 'Yes, madam, and by God, I done it alone."'31
There were reports to the effect that Stuart actually was sick, as
Fergus hinted, following the raids, an illness described by the
32
Mineral Argus as "mental exhaustion." This is not mentioned anywhere
else but may refer to Stuart's ear injury (page 89).
Stuart not only refrained from making any public statements concern
ing the raids, but in his personal correspondence he made no confessions.
Such action may have been prudent, but it was also cruel. We have seen
that inquiries were made after William Downes by family and friends
upon the publication of newspaper accounts that he had been killed
(page 72, 51-52). The only evidence that these letters were ever
answered is a note in Stuart's letter-press book dated October 1, 1884.
Written to D.D. Henning of Little Rock, Arkansas, it appears to be in
Stuart's hand but is signed by his foreman. It reads.
Madam:
I am in receipt of yours of the 18th ult. and in
reply would state that I do not know WM. Downes, nor
do I know where he is, and I regret to say that I do
not know any one who can give you the desired
information, as I am not acquainted along the Missouri
River.
Very respectfully yours,
Reece Anderson
Stuart also stonewalled an inquiry from Mr. Hugh Owens of V7est Union
Minnesota, writing on April 24, 1885,
Dear Sir,
Yours of the 20th inst. just rec'd and in reply
I would say that there was a report last summer that
several men had been hung on the Missouri River
some 75 or 80 miles from here, and a man named Owens.[ *]
I did not know him, or any of them, and do not
know if there was any truth in the report.
Yours truly,
33
Granville Stuart
As might have been guessed by Fergus' relentless defense, there was a
certain amount of criticism of the vigilantes. It was the killing of Wm.
Downes which proved most controversial. When reports from the steamboat
Batchelor indicated that he had been among the victims, the River Press
wrote, "Downes...has been a trader on the Missouri for some years and
bears a good reputation here among merchants with whom he had business
o /
relations." Downes*reputation came from the fact that he had recently
made good on a business debt he and two partners had incurred. Though
his two partners had absconded, the River Press reported in a story in
May, 1884, Downes alone had repaid the entire amount to Joseph Hirshberg
of Fort Benton. It was held as an example of rare honesty and Hirshberg
35
was among those who wrote to Stuart asking for news of Downes. Mueller
writes that Stuart had been upset with Anderson for hanging Dovrnes and
for that reason had not invited him to participate in the raid at James'
O £
woodyard. Still, Stuart made no mention of this in Forty Years,
insisting that he had been a cattle and horse thief, (see page 51)
More than anything else, the fact that some innocent men
might have been killed drew the most criticism. Joseph Howard
*It was a tough summer for men named Owens. Ed Owens has hanged on or be
fore June 20, Charles "Rattlesnake Jake" Owens was killed on the 4th of
July, Charles Owens was hanged with William Downes along the Missouri
River, and Johnnie Owens escaped from the fight at James' woodyard but
was hanged with four others on the way to Fort Benton with Sheriff Fischel.
The above inquiry seems to concern one of the last two.
found anti-stockmen sentiment while preparing his book, Montana: High,
Wide, and Handsome. Wrote Howard, "Some old-timers think, however, that
a few 'toughs' who consorted with rustlers but were not actually guilty
37
themselves were caught." Theodore Roosevelt thought that several of
the men were shot or hung "either through carelessness and misapprehension
38
or on account of some personal spite." In the late fall of 1884,
the Fort Benton River Press broke with its custom of supporting the
cattlemen in an editorial which called the campaign "plain murder."
Often, it argued, the vigilantes had used their war with horse thieves
as an excuse to drive out of the territory anyone who stood in their
way. While the region stood to benefit from the removal of a number of
39
the victims, there were some good men, too, who had perished.
Stuart, of course, denied all this. In Forty Years he wrote, i
There was not a man taken on suspicion and not one
was hanged for the first offence. The men that were taken
were members of an organized band of thieves that for more
than two years had evaded the law and robbed the range
at will. The fact that the stock men loaned milch cows,
horses, and farm machinery to settlers on small ranches,
branded their calves for them at roundup prices, established
schools for them, bought their butter and vegitables at
high prices and in every way helped them to get a start
is proof that any lawabiding person was welcome in this
country.
Mueller, too, defends the vigilantes with respect to their critics.
He wrote that the "storm of protest" came mostly from people ignorant
4]
of the facts and from those who didn't have an interest in livestock.
I'Hiat Mueller calls a "storm of protest" really amounted to little
more than light and scattered criticism. The victims, guilty or
innocent, were men who lived in a rough and isolated land. They did not
have influence with the. territorial legislature or the ear of the local
press. They did not have friends in high places and what relatives or
loved ones they had mostly lived far away. No one spoke for them. Of
the numerous victims we know the names of only a handful and had five of
them not been arrested before they were lynched, we would know even
fewer. These men chose to live in central Montana at least in part
because of the roughness and isolation and all the excitement and
struggle, opportunity and danger that went with it. For them, powerful
and respected men like Stuart were one of the greatest dangers. There
was never any threat that the vigilantes might be persecuted for their
actions against such men. They were not even officially reprimanded
though Howard writes of "some recently elected deputy sheriffs [who
/ o
raised] a howl about it." Montana was a territory with a vigilante
history. The actions of the citizens in Bannack and Virginia City had
been popularized and gloriously vindicated in books like Thomas Dims-
dale's The Vigilantes of Montana. The word "vigilante" held prestige
in Montana* and Stuart and his men, for the most part, enjoyed the
approval of the community. As a reward, Stuart was elected president
of the Montana Stock Growers' Association, and he, in turn, appointed
Richard M. Brown writes that Montana was "a most significant vigilante
state" and that the Bannack-Virginia City affair gave the word
"vigilante" to the English language. (Strain of Violence, p. 101)
Even today, Montanans pay tribute to their vigilante heritage. Malone
and Roeder point out that there is an athletic field in Helena named
"Vigilante Stadium" and the Montana highway patrolmen wear uniforms
bearing the insignia "3-7-77," the secret password for the 1865 vigilan
tes. (Montana: A History of Two Centuries, p. 63)
Floppln' Bill Cantrell to be the first Stock Inspector in the territory.
When one of his vigilante cowboys. Jack Tabor, was later convicted of
killing a sheepherder in a drunken quarrel, Granville Stuart got him
off the hook.
All the Montana stockmen, in fact, found their situation improved,
not just with respect to horse thieves, hut in territorial politics as
well. The cattlemen had, for years prior to 1884, been trying to \;^n
various kinds of protective legislation from the Territorial Legislature
and from Congress. In 1883, a "fair number" of important stockmen had
been elected to the legislature and Stuart had been elected president
of the senate. That year they sent a memorial to Congress asking that
the government ride closer herd on the Indians in the Territory. They
suggested that more steer meat be issued (which could be purchased
from Montana stockmen) so the Indians would be less inclined to stray
from the reservation. Another petition was sent to Congress concerning
the threatened outbreak of pleuro-pneumonia among cattle on the northern
plains. This eventually resulted in the establishment by Congress of
the General Bureau of Animal Industry. During the same year the
Territorial Assembly created a Board of Stock Commissioners providing
for inspection of brands by authorized inspectors, registration of cattle
and horses driven out of the state, and the hiring of detectives to
police the range. With all this, the cattlemen of Montana were jubilant.
But when the bill creating the Board of Stock Commissioners reached
44
Governor Crosby's desk, he vetoed it. Stuart later described Crosby,
saying he was a "New Yorker,'
...a delightful person to meet socially [but he]
had spent most of his life on the staff of various
generals of the army and in Europe and was entirely out of
harmony with his surroundings in Montana and unfamiliar
with...the needs of the Territory.^5
But it was not quite that simple. Montana, unlike Wyoming where
cattlemen were used to having their way, was not a single industry
state. The mining industry was at least as important to the state and
was generally in opposition to the cattle industry in legislative affairs.
In their bill creating a Board of Stock Commissioners, the cattlemen
had proposed that it be financed by an increased assessment of one-half
47
mill per annum on all taxable property in the territory. As stock
raising in significant quantities was limited to a few counties in
east-central Montana, Governor Crosby would have been severely criticized
had he signed the bill. But with the failure of this bill, the stockmen
indignantly took matters into their own hands and often cited its failure
as part of the cause of the vigilante campaign in 1884. Fletcher wrote,
echoing many.
Denied the legal machinary that would have been made
operative by a Board of Stock Commissioners, there seemed
no remedy for an intolerable situation, except direct
action.^8
Following the vigilante campaign, however, the stockmen again went
to the legislature and this time had so much success that it was
referred to as the "Cowboy Legislature." Bills were passed creating a
Stock Commission and empowering that commission to appoint inspectors
and detectives as needed, with the power to arrest violators of stock
Iav7s. A territorial veterinary surgeon was employed and given the power
to quarantine cattle. Branding prior to roundup time was prohibited.
This time, however, the proposal was financed not by a territory wide
property tax increase, but by a levy confined to the "livestock in cow
49
counties."
With the new board set up, Stuart and the other cattlemen in Montana
looked forward optimistically to the coming season. Stuart's correspon
dence shows that he occupied himself with a variety of range business
including trying to return horses which had been recovered in the 1884
campaign to their rightful owners. One man who wanted to recover some
horses was Lewis Myres. Myres (referred to in Forty Years on the
Frontier as "Dutch Louis")^^ had been one of the men the Andrew Fergus
party wanted to catch near Rocky Point (page 75). Apparently they
caught only his horses. In a letter to James Fergus dated December 29,
1884, Myres wrote.
Dear Sir,
Please let me know the charges on my horses for ranging
the same and I will either come myself or send some one
to get them...
Also I would like you very much to inform me what I
am charged up with by the cattle association for last
summer. I send a party after the horses and on return
he informed me that they would be held until my capture
and ever since then 1 have hen hung or shot [by rumor] every
now and then and I would like to learn what reasons there is
for using my name in the manner it has ben used.
I am willing to appear before court for defence, last
fall after sending word to the same effect to Mr. Reece
Anderson the gentleman gave to answer that I would get
the rope neck-tie as soon as I would show up although I
am determined to keep from being tried before rough and
tumble law. I trust you to give true answer to this so
I got to know how much to believe of all this...
Lewis Myres^^
Finally on April 23, 1885, Stuart wrote to Fergus that they might as
well give Myers back his horses for they lacked enough evidence to
convict him of killing cattle. "It is only hearsay," wrote Stuart.
The same letter reveals that a man named Pike (possibly Pike Landusky)
had been arrested for shooting at Myers. Pike had volunteered to try
again if the Stockgrowers Association would get him out of jail by
paying his five hundred dollar bond. They decided against it because,
as Stuart wrote, "we believe he would forfeit..."
The task of collecting money to help pay for the expenses of the
campaign fell largely to James Fergus whose account book shows a detailed
record of who contributed what towards the "Horse Thief expense." It
was a complicated process. A letter to Fergus from J.L. Stuart reads.
I received a letter from Dempsey and he evidently
does not understand the amount he is expected to pay towards
last summer's campaign and I find his part is 64.90 and
perhaps you had better write him again, he's at Twin
Bridges, Montana.
The remaining tab was eventually picked up by the Montana Livestock
Association in 1887. Thus the Association gave official sanction to
53
the vigilante campaign of 1884,
But central Montana was not free of horse thieves, nor, in spite
of the new legal machinery, was lynching a thing referred to in the
past tense. Stuart's correspondence over the next two years is full
of euphemisms concerning the disposal of thieves. He wrote to R.B.
Harrison, Secretary of the Association in June of 1885, "hope to nip
a couple cattle thieves soon..." In July he wrote to Thomas J. Bryaan,
President of the Association, that he was pleased that Dutch Charley
and Booth would soon "get their 'quietus.'" A letter in November, 1885
to William Buchanan of Maiden approved a planned raid into Canada to
recover stolen horses from a band of Indians. He argued that there
should be no killing north of the border, but if the Indians followed
the party south, they should "waylay and kill as many as possible." On
December 28, 1885, he wrote to J.H. Burgess of Miles City that there was
a rumor of a party of horse thieves holed up on the north side of the
Missouri. He recommended that they "...send a party up there to look
around and if there is a nest of them...take steps to make a good man of
every mother's son of them." Even in July, 1836, Stuart was suggesting
54
a few "necktie sociables" might be in order.
Stuart was not alone in his desire to stage another vigilante cam
paign. A letter from J.L. Stuart to James Fergus dated April 2, 1885,
reveals that Fergus was thinking along the same lines. J.L. Stuart wrote.
Now as to forming a Vigilance Committee I do not think
there is enough on this Range of the right kind to warrent
a meeting and besides I do not care to belong unless Business
is done more quietly than same was done last summer for there
is too many people knows who belonged last season and some
of the parties have left the country on the account of so
much talk besides it does not require many if they are the
right kind and further more I dont think we will be required
to make any more raids unless it is [against] a few now in
the little rockies.55
Mueller x<rrote that following the vigilante campiagn, "Stock Inspectors
took over the job of enforcing the laws and peace descended upon the
56
range..." But these references to stealing and the possibility of
extralegal action suggest that the transition was not quite so smooth.
The argument was made again and again by the stockmen-vigilantes
and by their defenders that the peace officers and courts of law offered
no protection from thieves. Specifics are rarely if ever given, but
there is an abundance of general complaining for which the following
by Granville Stuart is pretty typical: "The civil laws and courts," he
wrote in Forty Years on the Frontier, "had been tried and found wanting."^
In 1884 the district court closest to the Maginnis range was located
in VJhite Sulphur Springs, almost a hundred miles from the DHS ranch.
An investigation of the surviving civil and criminal records there
suggests that there may have been some basis for complaint. Many reports
of stock theft are registered there for the period of 1880-84 though only
a few resulted in arrests. A typical entry reads as follows: "Sept.
29, 1883: Bryon R. Sherman complains that John Doe stole a roan horse.
Warrent Issued. E.A. Reis failed to find Doe." But there are also
records of arrests and convictions. Of thirty-eight grand jury indict
ments between 1880 and 1884, eight of them were handed down for stock
theft. The records of civil and criminal complaints, containing every
thing from insanity hearings to a case concerning a dead hog, show that
58
about one complaint of horse stealing in five resulted in arrest. The
records, however, are vague and incomplete.
But what is especially interesting is that there is no record
(that I can find) that Stuart or anyone representing him ever bothered
to file complaints with the court. To be sure, a hundred miles is a
long way to travel. Yet in August, 1884, Robert Coburn filed a complaint
of a stolen horse with the district court. His Circle C ranch was
located on the northern side of the Missouri River near the Little
Rocky Mountains, a good distance farther from White Sulphur Springs than
the DHS ranch. A year following the vigilante campaign, Stuart did
manage to travel the hundred miles to court to serve his turn at jury
duty. The records show that in April, 1885, he was foreman of a grand
jury which indicted Danial McKay. McKay was a jailor charged with
allowing or aiding a prisoner to escape. The prisoner, as it turns out,
George Onthwait, had been jailed for stealing two geldings, one wagon,
six pounds of gunpowder, and several other articles including a frying
59
pan, from none other than William (Floppin' Bill) Cantrell.
Probably the most intriguing aspect of the 1884 vigilante campaign,
however, is its possible connection with events which would take place
in Wyoming a few years later. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association, as
we have seen, was more powerful and tended to be more arrogant than
its Montana counterpart, largely because Wyoming was a single industry
state where grass was truly king. Power and arrogance had not spared
the Wyoming Association from the problems facing Stuart and other Mon
tana cattlemen like overcrowded ranges and an abundance of rustlers.
In fact, the high handed tactics of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association
had aggravated the situation. By the late 1880s and early 189Gs, Wyoming
had become widely and viciously divided with the big stockmen, mostly
members of the Association, on one side and smaller stockmen, farmers.
and settlers on the other. The former tended to lump the latter together
under the general heading of "rustler," while the latter tended to re
gard the former as exploitive robber barons, as lawless as any
rustler.
In the second half of the 1880s, the conflict between the two be
came increasingly more violent. One of the most sensational incidents
was the hanging of two "rustlers," Ella Watson and James Averell, at
their road ranch on the Sweetwater River in central Wyoming. Watson
and Averell were not typical rustlers. Ella made a modest living as a
prostitute and James owned no cattle at all. But the range was lonely
and cash was often short and Ella's cowboy patrons sometimes payed for
her services by bringing her a calf and marking it with her brand. The
fact that the calves were sometimes mavericks cut out of the boss's
herd earned Ella the nickname "Cattle Kate" and earned her and Averell a
60
brutal and poorly executed hanging on July 20, 1889. Ella Watson thus
earned the dubious distinction of being the first woman hanged in Wyoming.
(Wyoming, after all, is the "Equality State" and was the first state to
give women the vote.) The Salt Lake Tribune was not impressed, however,
ii61
and wrote, "That is about the poorest use a woman can be put to.
There is evidence that Ella Watson's real crime was locating on
land "owned" by large stockmen in the area. In addition, letters from
James Averell criticizing the power of the big stockmen in the area had
appeared in local newspapers prior to their hanging. The results of an
investigation would have been interesting had one been completed. The
hanging had been witnessed and the perpetrators, all cattlemen, were
identified. But in a nasty turn of events the witnesses died or
62
disappeared and the six were never tried.
This is just one of many incidents in the struggle in Wyoming which
came to be known as the Johnson County or Powder River War, and if it
cannot be directly connected with Granville Stuart's 1884 vigilante
campaign, there would be another incident which could. In March of
1892, George Dunning, a miner, cowboy, and generally tough character,
was on his way from Silver City, Idaho to Boise when, through curious
circumstance, he was recruited by H.J. Ijams, the Secretary of the
Wyoming Stock Growers Association, to do some work rounding up cattle
thieves in Wyoming. In a controversial "Confession" which was published
following the events. Dunning wrote.
Mr. Ijams said that the latest scheme of the stock
association was to publicly wipe the thieves in Johnson
county, Wyoming, out of existence; the way he said the
stock association of Montana did in that state eight or
nine years ago.^^
Dunning found himself one of fifty men, half of them members of
the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, half of them hired guns from
Texas, on board a secret train which left Cheyenne under cover of
darkness heading north. Their destination was the Powder River area of
northern Wyoming, "rustler" country. They were heavily armed, had extra
horses and a list of men whose future looked gloomy. But for all that,
the operation was badly bungled from first to last. The fifty invaders
managed to surround a cabin near present Kaycee, Wyoming, on the tenth
of April, 1892. In a battle which looked like a comic caricature of
Stuart's fight at Bate's Point, the Wyoming vigilantes, after fighting
it out most of the day and setting fire to the cabin, finally managed
to kill the two "rustlers" inside (Nate Champion and Nick E.ay). But the
mission was no longer a secret and soon the invaders found themselves
surrounded by a large and well armed force of enraged citizens from
nearby Buffalo and the surrounding area. They were held under siege
until soldiers from nearby Fort McKinney, dispatched by President Har
rison, arrived to place them under arrest. The story of Wyoming's
rustler war is skillfully and authoritatively told by Helena Huntington
Smith in The War on Powder River, but it was the 1894 account by A.S.
Mercer which, with a little exaggeration, dubbed the invasion "The
,.64
Crowning Infamy of the Ages.
We have seen from Dunning's "Confession" that the Wyoming vigilantes
were inspired by Stuart's actions in 1884. (After all, it was Fergus
who said, "If one man or body of men set the laws aside another man or
body of men may chose the same right...") A more direct connection
can be found in the correspondence of Granville Stuart. Among Stuart's
numerous letters to various people attempting to identify or obtain
information on horse thieves are a couple to Frank Canton of Buffalo,
Wyoming. Canton was sheriff of Johnson County, Wyoming from 1882 to
1886, but he was a poor excuse for a lawman. Though he was tough and
effective, he had a shady past and had changed his name from Joe Horner
after fleeing Texas following a shooting scrape. In 1886, Canton
was defeated in the race for sheriff by Red Angus. He then became a
detective for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and in November,
1891, he shot and killed John Teasdale, in the back, as the latter rode
through a gulch. Teasdale was a settler but was considered a rustler by
the Association. Canton was acquitted in a hastily organized arraign
ment. Soon after, new evidence was discovered, but before he could be
arrested. Canton fled. When he returned to Buffalo, it was with the
fifty vigilantes.
In May, 1886, Stuart had written to Canton apparently in reply to
an inquiry from him concerning the character of Roach Chapman, Joe Boze,
and William Burnett. All three, said Stuart, were good men who had
worked for him. But as for what Roach Chapman did after he left,
Stuart could not say. He wrote.
I am sorry he turned out bad and I will instruct our in
spectors to look out for him. —You can always bet on
my doing all I can to snatch the d...d thieves bald headed
and we nip one once and awhile up here.
Yours truly,
Granville Stuart
President
This letter is interesting, not simply because it demonstrates
cooperation between Stuart and the Wyoming lawmen, but because it gives
light to the interesting circumstances of William Burnett. Burnett
had, for some years, been dividing his time between Wyoming and Montana.
During the summer, he worked for Stuart and in 1884 led a party of
vigilantes. In the winter he lived in Buffalo, Wyoming, where he owned
a bar. Apparently as early as 1886, Burnett was in with the crowd in
Wyoming considered by Canton and the Association to be rustlers or rust
ler sympathizers. By the lS90s, Burnett was a friend of Red Angus, the
new sheriff of Buffalo, a bitter enemy of Canton and his cattlemen
cohorts. Red Angus, in fact, led the army of citizens which surrounded
68
the Wyoming vigilantes and William Burnett was with him.
Thus we find the peculiar situation in which Granville Stuart had
his ally in the never ending sturggle against horse thieves, Frank
Canton, on one side of the Powder River War, and one of his own vigilan
tes, William Burnett, on the other. Helena Smith described the final
surrender when troops from Fort McKinney, commanded by Colonel Van Horn,
arrived and ordered a cease-fire. With a few officers and Sheriff
Red Angus at his side. Van Horn rode to the door of the cabin. The
leader of the vigilantes. Major Frank Wolcott, backed up by his fifty
men, Frank Canton among them, stepped out to meet him.
Colonel Van Horn explained that his orders were to
quell disturbance and to prevent loss of life and destruction
of property. Would the major's party surrender quietly?
"I will surrender to you," returned the doughty major,
"but to that man (indicating Sheriff Angus) never. I know
him well. Rather than give up to him we will all die right
here."69
Of course, by the time the Powder River War occurred, Granville Stuart
had left cattle ranching, like so many other careers, far behind.
The winter of 1886-87 brought home to the cattlemen on the Great
Plains all the myths upon which their empire had been founded: the
myth of the mild climate, the illusion of superabundant resources which
could not be exhausted, the disastrous belief that cattle, like buffalo.
could endure the winter gales without the aid of man. It demolished
all the sturdy talk which camouflaged the fragile nature of any enterprise
built on the hostile and unforgiving plains, demolished it with an icy
blast from hell that signalled the end of the open range cattle boom.
The summer of '86 was remorselessly hot and dry. For the first time,
Granville Stuart's herd losses included animals that had eaten poison
ous plants which offered themselves where grass was scarce. Waterholes
which had never gone dry before turned to baked clay. Range fires
burned unchecked and what grass was spared from the flames turned
brown and shriveled under the prairie sun. Stuart's thermometer stood
at from one hundred to one hundred ten degrees in the shade for days at
a time. The stockholders of the Pioneer Cattle Company decided to move
as much of their herd as possible to the north. Wrote Stuart,
August 10 we began gathering the cattle... Ordinarily
one could see for miles across the range in our clear atmo
sphere, but not so at this time. Dense smoke obscured
everything and this together with the cinders and clouds
of hot dry alkali dust almost choked and blinded us, causing
much suffering to men and horses.
Nearing the Missouri, the cattle smelled water and stampeded. Their
course was not for the safe bottom but to the nearest point which, as
it turned out, was lined with quicksand. Despite the best efforts of
cowboys and the nearby steamboat, seventy head perished. In the fall,
there was no rain and the hopes that late prairie grass might sprout
were dashed.
Then came the winter storms. The Cree had a word for it,
72
"Kissiney—oo—way'—o," or, "it blows cold." The animals that wintered
south had left early that year and even those which usually remained
disappeared. For the first time since he came to central Montana,
Stuart saw white Arctic owls on the range. The first heavy storm came
in November. Stuart wrote.
On the sixteenth the thermometer fell to two degrees
below zero, with a cutting northeast wind and on the seven
teenth and eighteenth six inches of snow fell, but blew
into drifts. The cattle north of the Missouri being un
accustomed to the range drifted badly and kept working
back to the river.73
Worse storms followed. On December 5, four inches of snow fell and
temperatures dipped to twelve below. On the 14th, a severe blizzard
caught Stuart on a stage between Musselshell and Flat Willow. He
and two other passengers had to help the driver by walking before the
horses with a lantern to guide them. Then it cleared up and the
weather became bright and warm.
But on January 9, winter came in earnest. Stuart recalled.
It began to snow and snowed steadily for sixteen hours,
in which sixteen inches of snow fell on a level. The ther
mometer dropped to twenty-two degrees below zero, then twenty-
seven degrees, then thirty degrees, and on the night of
January 15 stood at forty-six degrees below zero, and there
were sixteen inches of snow... It was as though the Artie
regions had pushed down and enveloped us. Everything was
white. Not a point of bare ground was visible in any direction.
This storm lasted ten days without abating. The cattle
drifted before the storm and fat young steers froze to
death along their trails.74
A brief thaw seemed to promise relief, but lasted only two days, long
enough to melt the top of the snow which then turned to ice. The
weakened cattle would lose their footing, fall, and then be unable
to get up.^^ Across the Great Plains, cattle died by the thousands.
TJhat little grass there was lay beneath snow and ice. Small streams
froze solid and only large rivers offered drinking water. Cattle
came to the rivers in herds and as the first ones stopped to drink,
the others behind pushed them forward into the water where they
76 
drowned. In their pitiful condition, the animals turned to man for
help. In Great Falls, citizens looked out their windows and saw the
"gaunt, reeling figures" of a herd of five thousand which had drifted
from eastern Montana. In Medora, the starving cattle rummaged in
garbage cans and gathered around manure piles to eat bits of feed
78
which might have passed through horses undigested. In Laramie, cattle
grazed on shade trees, broke through fences to feed in gardens, and
79
finally dropped dead on the streets.
It was the practice of cattlemen to let most of their cowboys go
in the winter, though a few stayed around "riding the grub line," working
a few days here, a few there, doing odd jobs in return for food and
lodging. In the winter of 1886-87, they had their hands full.
Wrote Teddy Blue,
No one knows how they worked but themselves. They saved
thousands of cattle. Think of riding all day in a blinding
snowstorm, the temperature fifty and sixty below zero, and
no dinner. You'd get a bunch of cattle up the hill and
another would be coming down behind you, and it was all so
slow, plunging after them through the deep snow that way;
you'd have to fight every step of the road. The horses'
feet were cut and bleeding from the heavy crust, and the
cattle had the hair and hide wore off their legs to the
knees and hocks. It was surely hell tg^see big four-year-
old steers just able to stagger along.
They camped in the coulees around fires. The Indians used to say
that white men built big fires and sat far back while they built
small ones and sat close. That winter, wrote Teddy Blue, the cowboys
81
built big fires and sat close. As for the suffering of the cattle,
we have Charles Russell's sketch of a gaunt steer, head bowed into the
blizzard, a coyote waiting in the background. The caption read, "The
Last of Five Thousand." X'Jhen the print gained circulation, the caption
82
was "Waiting for a Chinook."
As the spring thaw came and the stench of dead, bloated cattle
filled the air, it was clear that the winter of 1886-37 had been a deva
stating blow to the cattle industry. The actual losses are difficult
to calculate as many managers exaggerated the number to cover up sloppy
or dishonest bookkeeping. There is even the story of one rancher who
reported the loss of 50 percent of his steers and 75 percent of his cows
83
and ended up claiming the loss of 125 percent of his herd. In general,
the figures varied with some ranchers actually losing ninety percent of
their cattle. Professor T.A. Larson provides us with one of the best
studies of the situation and writes that by the best estimate, based
on tax assessments, not much more than fifteen percent of the cattle
in Wyoming were lost. The remaining cattle, however, were worth 30
percent less at market. Montana was hit harder, suffering the loss of
29 percent of its cattle and receiving valuation decreased 28 percent
for the remaining herds.
The disaster could only in small measure be blamed on the weather,
however. The cattlemen of the Great Plains were mainly responsible.
In March, 1885, Bill Nye warned the stockmen of Wyoming that they were
85
killing the goose that layed the golden egg. By overcrowding the
ranges, by failing to provide shelters or winter feed, by letting cow
hands go during the winter who might have been kept on to watch over
the herd and keep ice cleared away from watering holes, the northern
ranchers precipitated the tragedy. In the famous words of Wyoming
rancher John Clay, "Even with the best of winters it would have been a
86
case of suicide. As things turned out, it was plain murder."
The winter of 1886-87 broke Granville Stuart's spirit and bank
account. The DHS lost fifty percent of its herd and though Stuart hung
on a couple more years, he was forced in 1890, to sell his interest in
the DHS back to A.J. Davis. Wrote Stuart,
A business that had been facinating to me before, suddenly
became distasteful. I wanted no more of it. I never wanted
to own again an animal that 1 could not feed and shelter.
J j
c i t' ■ ■ ■
♦/ —"Wf.: .
•' -^/f I>s
r. ^
CHAPTER VII: CONCLUSIONS
"If a man is caught stealing stock, give him the
benefit of the noose; but unless a clear case is against
him he should have a chance to prove his innocence."
-The Bad Lands Cowboy
Medora, North Dakota
Oct. 23, 1884
Granville Stuart's vigilante campaign against horse thieves in 1884
was the most significant part of a general move on the part of cattlemen
in the area against undesirable characters. Joseph Kinsey Howard wrote
that the "Musselshell-Missouri cleanup was only one of several—
The hanging of Narcisse Lavadure in June, for example, was the work of
a group of vigilantes unconnected with Stuart. But by far the greatest
number of casualties were inflicted by Stuart or men under his direction.
Oscar 0. Mueller wrote that between 15 and 18 horse thieves suffered
with their lives for their crimes at the hands of Stuart and his men.
1 believe the number to have been higher.
We know that Stuart's foreman, Reece Anderson, presided over the
lynching of Sam MacKenzie near Fort Maginnis. Newspaper reports as
well as letters from James Fergus and Francis Burke suggest that at
least one and possibly two others were killed at about the same time.
In a letter shortly after MacKenzie's dispatch, Stuart himself makes
reference to the lynching of two men in the area. It seems likely that
either along with MacKenzie or shortly thereafter, a second man and
possibly a third were killed in an affair which probably involved Stuart.
The William Burnett and Reece Anderson party killed five men near
the mouth of the Musselshell and at least two more at William Downes'
trading post. Though there were newspaper reports of five men killed
in the vicinity of Rocky Point and though Andrew Fergus and his party
were in the area, the evidence seems to indicate that the men they were
after fled. The newspaper reports are probably referring to the victims
of the Burnett/Anderson party.
The fight at James' Woodyard claimed an unknown number of lives
though my best estimate, based on several accounts, is between five and
seven. Five of the thieves who escaped were recaptured at Poplar.
They were lynched while being escorted by U.S. Deputy Marshal Sam Fischel
from Poplar to White Sulphur Springs. Oscar 0. Mueller was unwilling
to connect this lynching with Stuart, though it seems a pretty good bet
that he had a hand in it. Had the prisoners lived long enough to be
tried, the details of the fight at the woodyard would surely have come
out, and it is likely that Stuart and his men would have found them
selves facing legal action for their work. No one else had so compel
ling a reason to lynch men who were already under arrest and in custody
of an U.S. Deputy Marshal. The fact that Reece Anderson, with his
record of violence, was a member of the posse, makes the Stuart connec
tion all the stronger.
There is also strong evidence that Floppin' Bill Cantrell and
others were active in North Dakota late in 1884. Members of "Stuart s
Stranglers" are credited with the deaths of at least five men including
George Grinnell. Mueller denies that Cantrell or any other of Stuart's
men were active in Dakota, but Stuart's letter congratulating A.VJ. Davis
for "grabbing" five "of 'em" is intriguing as is the reference to
further expeditions. Also intriguing are the pages which were removed
from Stuart's letter-press book and those which remain indicating that
Stuart kept his hand in on horse thief matters for the next two years
and making frequent reference to lynching.
For these reasons, it seems that in Montana the Ijmching of between
nineteen and twenty-three men can presently be documented and linked to
Granville Stuart. I agree with the number given by James Fergus when
he said, by way of a joke, that Stuart had killed twenty-two democrats
(page 105)•  At least five more were probably killed in Dakota though
here, more research is in order. The rumors of an even higher death
toll are persistent and abundant, though those may be explained, in
part, by the work of other vigilante parties which were active.
Certainly Richard M. Brown's number of thirty-five victims seems reason
able though they cannot all be connected with Granville Stuart.
Theodore Roosevelt's number of sixty-five fatalities seems a bit steep.
Most of the men killed by Stuart's vigilantes seem to have been
guilty of stealing horses. Only a couple were accused of being cattle
rustlers. The constant clamoring of stockmen about their loss of
cattle to thieves represents as much an excuse for the raids as a
precipitating factor. The desperateness of the outlaws was also widely
celebrated, especially in secondary sources. But there is little first
hand evidence to account for it. They were often described as "dead
shots" or tough "gunslingers," but none were of concern to the stockmen
except when they stole horses and It was for this crime primarily that
they were executed. Teddy Blue wrote of the time he was out on the
range and met Frank Hansen, who had escaped from the vigilantes at
James' woodyard. As Hansen was out of grub, Blue and his companions
shared theirs with him as was range courtesy. Hansen spent some time
with Teddy Blue and his companions until they fell into disagreement
on the subject of vigilantism at which point Hansen was told to take
2
some food and ride. Nothing in this incident suggests that this horse
thief was ruthless or murderous. Besides, Floppin' Bill Cantrell was
probably as tough and shady as any of the outlaws.
The stories of the victims, it is sad to say, are written on
water. If the vigilantes knew the names of their victims, they recorded
only a few. Those who escaped (like Hansen) understandably kept a low
profile. But theirs is the other half of the story, and what they
might have been able to tell us could have substantially changed our
understanding of the situation. Without their accounts, we must realize
that the story remains incomplete. As Joseph Kinsey Howard pointed out,
3
these men were pioneers too.
Nor would it be correct to assume that all the victims were guilty
of stealing stock. At least two men were hanged whose guilt was not
universally acknowledged. Ed Owens and Billy Downes were both men with
a good reputation in Fort Benton, and the latter had demonstrated rare
character and honesty in repaying a debt which his partners had chosen
to forfeit. Granville Stuart described Downes as a thief in Forty Years,
but at the time he had been very angry with Anderson when he heard
about the hanging. Another man generally considered honest was George
Grinnell, whose death was rumored to be the work of Floppin' Bill Can-
trell. Pierce Bolan suffered brutal treatment, possibly at the hands
of Stuart's men, before being given the benefit of the doubt. The
killing of innocent men by the vigilantes is an ingredient in many
accounts and it weighs heavily against them. Even the Medora Badlands
Cowboy, generally supportive of lynch law, found itself defending the
rights of the victims. A fellow ought to have a chance to state his
innocence, they argued in effect (page 127). Had they given the matter
a bit of thought, the editors might have realized that the opportunity
to demonstrate innocence is decidedly circumvented by the existence of
a lynch party, the latter of which indicates that the former has already
been determined.
No doubt Downes, Owens, and Grinnell could have provided a good
defense had they been tried in a regular court of law, as might others.
Louis Myres would have been hanged had Andrew Fergus caught up with him
at Rocky Point. But ultimately, Stuart and Fergus had to give him back
his horses which they had captured. They realized they could not con
vict him in court as their evidence was "hearsay." Nor would the
thieves have paid with their lives had they been found guilty in a
court of law. The seventh session of the Territorial Legislative As
sembly had in 1872, fixed the penalty for grand larceny (to "feloniously
steal take and carry away, lead, or drive away the personal goods or
property of another...") at imprisonment for from one to fourteen years.
Altering brands was punishable by imprisonment for from six months to
five years.
But this brings us to the heart of the vigilante attitude. It is
proclaimed again and again, from Stuart to Oscar 0. Mueller, that the
courts and lawmen of the Territory had failed to deal with the stock
thives. In a classic popular sovereignty argument, Hermann Hagedorn
wrote.
Justice was to be done, and done it was with all the
terrible relentlessness that always characterizes a free
citizen when he takes back, for a moment, the powers he
has delegated to a government which in a crisis has proved
impotent or unwilling to exercise them.5
An assertion of this kind is easy to make and hard to disprove. In none
of the accounts, Fletcher's, Stuart's, Mueller's, Teddy Blue's, are any
specifics given. One might expect, for example, to find Granville
Stuart's letter-press book full of petitions to the district Sheriff,
to the legislature, and to the federal government for help with the
horse thief situation, but there are none. There are scattered letters
complaining of Indian depredations, but as to white thieves, this
writer has found no communication to officials concerning them in the
year of 1884. A brief study of court records in White Sulphur Springs
reveals that though many complaints failed to result in arrests, there
were arrests and convictions. Most surprising, however, is the fact
that no records exist to show that Stuart ever filed complaints. More
research along these lines needs to be done. For now, it should simply
be noted that no specific evidence is presented to demonstrate that
concerted efforts were made to enlist the aid of the territory's legal
machinery, nor does it present itself to the investigator. The crux
of the complaint seems to be that the existence of thieves proves that
the law had been ineffective.
When the stockmen did pursue legal avenues, they did not always
use the best judgement. Certainly they were on the right track when
they drafted legislation to create a board of livestock commissioners
and to hire range detectives. But their first effort to pass the bill
failed in 1883-84, because it called for a tax increase on the population
at large to finance the operation. When the bill was vetoed by Governor
Crosby, disappointed stockmen complained that they could get no help
and began dealing with thieves on their own. A year later, the stockmen
in the legislature again submitted the proposal, this time providing
for a tax on livestock to finance the new commission and to pay detec
tives salaries. This bill proved more acceptable and was passed. Thus,
either through greed or lack of political acumen, the stockmen in 1883-
84 engineered the failure of their own protective measures and created
the conditions they would later claim had driven them to take violent
action.
Granville Stuart seems to have been an unusually conscientious
cattleman. His was an effort to make a life at stock raising rather
than a quick fortune. His stand in favor of cowboys who wanted to own
cattle, his concern for the problem of overgrazing, and his work to
organize stock associations and to reach common agreement concerning
range problems, represent some of the most progressive and constructive
ingredients of the Great Plains cattle industry. Stuart's literate
background and reflective temperament combined with his pioneer years
in the gold fields and in the early settlements of Montana to produce
a rare breed of frontiersman.
Yet, by the time Stuart entered into cattle ranching, his best
years were in many ways behind him. In 1884, he turned fifty years
old. The death of his brother James, to whom he had been uncommonly
close, the death of his mother and some of his children, had the effect
of generally hardening Stuart's gentlemanly disposition.^ He had long
suffered the social stigma that went with being a "squaw man" at a time
when Montana was growing more and more concerned with being civilized
and cultivating social values. This, along with his involvement in the
range cattle industry, which had also seen better days and was soon to
decline, left Stuart belonging more properly to the early frontier era
of the territory, an important part of the pioneer movement but a smaller
voice in future events. The symbol of those early years had been his
brother James: Indian fighter, explorer, mining-town sheriff, man of
action. In many ways, Stuart's move to the cattle ranges of central
Montana represented a move back to the frontier, back to the days he
had shared with James. It was a move to a place where an individual
could still make his mark, where men were measured by their fortitude
and courage and not by social institutions.
This is, perhaps, a part of what the vigilante campaign was all
about. For a man whose interest had once been in the philosophical and
the poetic, the murder of more than twenty men for the crime of theft
represents a significant shift in values. It suggests a throw back to
the days, twenty years earlier, when citizens in western Montana had
taken the law into their own hands, perhaps back in 1862 when James
Stuart had hanged the first man in Montana for the crime of stealing
horses.
But Stuart's good years on the cattle frontier did not last long.
By the mid-lBOOs there were signs that Stuart was under increasing
strain. With the death of his faithful wife, Awbonnie, Stuart married
a white school teacher who was despised by his children and even by
dedicated hands like Teddy Blue. With remarkable and uncharacteristic
coldness, Stuart sent his remaining children to live at a Catholic
mission and never again had anything to do with them. On May 5, 1887,
James Fergus wrote a revealing letter to Conrad Kohrs discussing Stuart.
Pveferring to a previous conversation, Fergus wrote, "DS cattle have
never been so well looked after...as when they were run by Stuart and
Anderson on the first three years they were here..." He also praised
the valuable service rendered by Stuart in his struggle against horse
thieves. But Fergus also remarked, "This , however, has nothing to say
or do about Granville having too many irons in the fire to keep them
all from burning..."^ Stuart, it appears, was ready for another change
of careers.
The first vigilante movement in American history occurred in South
Carolina in 1767 and from then until 1900, vigilantism was a constant
part of American life. It arose in response to a typical American
problem, wrote Richard M. Brown, "...the absence of effective law and
order in a frontier region." Because life on the frontier shook the
stability of orderly society, the organization of a vigilance committee
represented a move to re-establish values. These values had been secure
in older settled areas, but were threatened on the frontier by the exis
tence of marginal characters and outlaws who seemed to herald social
chaos. Wrote Brown,
Vigilante action was a clear warning to disorderly in
habitants that the newness of settlement would provide no
opportunity for the erosion of the established values of
civilization. Vigilantism was a violent sanctification of
the deeply cherished values of life and property.^
Coming to central Montana in the late 1870s and early 80s, the cattle
men found roving bands of Indians and shady characters like wolfers,
woodchoppers, and traders along with others whose means of livelihood
were not clear. They brought with them their institutions. Fergus and
Stuart brought their large libraries and claimed vast amounts of land
for their cattle. Stuart began immediately to set up schools for his
and neighboring children. They complained constantly about the presence
of Indians and waged war on horse thieves, all to protect their newly
transplanted values and institutions.
But there was an economic ingredient in many vigilante actions as
well. Brovm writes that vigilante leaders often wished to achieve
their goals as cheaply as they could.
They were the typical frontier entrepreneurs. Their
enterprise in commerce or land was often speculative, and
they frequently skated on economic thin ice. The delicate
balance of their personal finances could be easily upset;
hence, they had a lively awareness of the cost of public
services and a yen to keep them down, lest, as substantial
taxpayers, their own circumstances should suffer.10
Certainly the economic motivations were clear in the 1884 campaign.
One of the most frequent euphemisms for a lynching was the phrase used
by Stuart in a letter to Sam Stuart on April 25, 1884: "If we catch
them the county will not be put to any expense. Adding to the economic
considerations was the fact that by 1884, the cattle industry was nearing
the end of its grace period and problems of overcrowding were becoming
pronounced. Certainly it is more than coincidence that at this time,
following a disappointing roundup season, the stockmen found they could
no longer suffer the depredations of thieves when, in previous years,
losses to Indians and animals had been much higher. ^
Vigilante campaigns were usually organized and led by the well-to-
do members of the community, the "local elite." Most often their
actions were directed against the lower level or marginal members of the
community. As Brown noted.
The lower people were not outlaws but often tended to
lawlessness and identified more with the outlaw element than
the law-abiding members of the commuhity. The outlaw element
lived on the fringes of the community.
This was clearly the case in 1884 with men like Granville Stuart and
James Fergus, both prominent figures in territorial politics, leading
the vigilante campaigns. Their victims included outlaws living along
the Missouri River as well as marginal types who consorted with the
thieves or who opened their establishment to them as, apparently, did
William Do^mes and Old Man James.
Thus, the vigilante campaign of 1884 seems to fit well into the
classical mold of vigilante action. In a few respects, however, it was
significantly different. First, a frequent characteristic of a vigilance
committee in action was the holding of a brief semblance of a trial
13
during which the accused might state his or her innocence. This
formality (and it was usually just a formality) was, by all reports,
dispensed with in 1884. Also, though the usual size of a vigilante
14
committee ran between one hundred and several hundred members, Stuart's
party probably included no more than fifteen men.* Yet, though one of
the smallest vigilante movements in terms of membership, the Montana
vigilantes of 1884 did not content themselves with one of two victims,
as was usually the case. Stuart's group killed over twenty people and,
taken together with the work of other vigilante groups in the area,
there may have been as many as thirty-five victims making the general
movement the bloodiest one in American history. For as long as there
has been vigilantism, there has been opposition to it. Clearly, it
violates the law even if it is done in the name of law and order.
(Fergus wrote that the 1884 vigilante campaign would have been "heralded
over the country as an act of good generalship and bravery were it not
unlawful.")' If vigilantism was often a vehicle of social order and
stability, there were times when it was not. Though there is little
But the fact that several cattlemen and finally the Montana Livestock
Association contributed money to defray the expenses suggests that
Stuart represented the interests, if not the will, of a great many.
evidence that the cattlemen in Montana took advantage of their horse
thief roundup to attack small ranchers or farmers, such evidence is
abundant in the Powder River affair, and we have seen that the latter
was inspired by the former. Relying on the "law of passion" was a high
and dangerous price to pay in return for a few less criminals, and it
may, in subtle ways, have done more to encourage lawlessness than to
contain it. As Brown explained.
Basic to American lawlessness has been our proclivity
to pick and choose the laws we would obey, respecting those
which we approve and defying those with which we disagree.
Our arbitrary attitude toward law reflects a fundamental
and deep-seated disrespect for law, or to put it another way,
reveals only a superficial allegiance to laxir. Perhaps the
most important result of vigilantism has not been its social-
stabilizing effect but the subtle way in which it persistently
undermined our respect for law by its repeated insistence that
there are times when we may choose to obey the law or not.^^
By 1891, Granville Stuart was out of the cattle business and hurting
for money. He gratefully accepted an appointment as State Land Agent,
a job which involved him in exhausting surveying work. But his repeated
attempts to get himself a political appointment in return for his life
long service to the Democratic party finally payed off. In 1894, Pres
ident Grover Cleveland appointed him United States Minister to Paraguay
and Uruguay and from then until 1898 he served in that capacity and
18
lived in Montevideo. When he lost that position with the election
of President McKinley, he returned to Montana. His declining years
were full of debts and law suits largely a result of his financial
losses during his cattle ranching days. Friends, alarmed at his deter
iorating health and financial situation, managed to push through the
state legislature a bill which would make Stuart the official state
historian and give him a salary of three thousand dollars annually.
He worked vigorously at writing a history of Montana, but friends
finally pursuaded him to apply himself more to his own memoirs. On Septem-
19
ber 16, 1918, he was stricken with a heart attack and died.
Granville Stuart's story is the kind that facinates historians.
He spent nearly his entire life on one frontier or another and his
experiences were remarkably rich and varied. He was raised in the
sparsely settled regions of Iowa and Virginia. He spent his early |
days of manhood on the loose in the California gold fields and in g
the frontier mining settlements of western Montana. He was forty- |
five years old when he moved to the remote cattle country of east
central Montana, sixty when he fulfilled his dreams of going to
South America, and in his eighties when he completed his autobiography.
Through his various careers, Stuart served in a number of frontier
■ i
roles, among them prospector, merchant, trader, politician, and
cattle rancher. But perhaps Granville Stuart's most successful ®
career and most important role is the one we have studied and under-
stood the least: that of vigilante.
APPENDIX
List of Victims of Granville Stuart's 1884 Vigilante Campaign*
DATE-PARTY LEADER LOCATION THE VICTIMS
July 3 or 4 Near Fort Maginnis Sam MacKenzie
Anderson
July 3 or 4 Near Fort Maginnis Possibly one or
Unknown** two unidentified
July 7 or 8 Missouri River at California Jack
Burnett/Anderson mouth of Musselshell Four others
unidentified
July 7 or 8 Downes Trading Post, William Do\imes
Anderson/Burnett*** Missouri River Charles Owens
July 20 James' woodyard Old Man James
Stuart Missouri River Two James sons
Stringer Jack
Two to four
others unidenti
fied
August 28 Missouri River near Dixie Burr
Unknown**** mouth of Musselshell Johnnie Owens
Swift Bill
Cy Nickerson
Phelps
Total; At least nineteen and perhaps as many as twenty three xjere killed
during July and August, 1884 in incidents with which Stuart was probably
connected. James Fergus said jokingly that Stuart had killed twenty-two
men. I agree with his number. That means that probably one man was
killed at about the same time as Sam MacKenzie and that three unidenti
fied men were killed at James' woodyard.
*Not included here are those killed in Montana by vigilante committees
operating independently of Stuart's. Such parties claimed the life of
Narcissis Lavadure among others. Also not included are those killed by
Montana vigilantes, probably led by Floppin' Bill Cantrell, in the
Dakota Territory. These movements, combined with Stuart's Montana
campaign, probably resulted in around 35 deaths.
**Letters and newspaper reports indicate that one and possibly two men were
lynched at about the same time as MacKenzie in the Ft. Maginnis/DHS area.
***Burnett was in charge of the raid against California Jack's cabin
but it was at Reece Anderson's insistance that they moved against
Downes' trading post.
one confessed to this incident, but Reece Anderson was in the
party escorting Dixie Burr and the others and only Stuart's vigilantes
had a compelling reason to lynch men already in the custody of an.U.S.
Deputy Marshall.
NOTES
Part I
Chapter I: "Mr. Montana:" The First Forty Years
Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier as seen in the
Journals and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, Gold-Miner, Trader,
Merchant, Rancher, and Politician edited by Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols,;
Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) I, 16
Granville Stuart, Diary & Sketchbook of a Journey to "America" in
1866, & Return Trip Up the Missouri River to Fort Benton, Montana edited
by Carl Schaefer Dentzer (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1963) p. ix
3
Paul Robert Treece, "Mr. Montana: The Life of Granville Stuart
1834-1918" (2 Vols.; unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Univer
sity, 1974) I, 2
^Ibid.
^Stuart, Forty Years, p. 23
^Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 39
^Stuart, Forty Years, I, 28-29
^Ibid., I, 16
^Ibid., I, 37
^°Ibid., I. 57
^^Ibid., I, 61
^^Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 118
13
Stuart, Forty Years, I, 76
^^Ibid., I, 7, 9-10
^^Ibid., I, 81, 90-91
1 f\
quoted in Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 177
^^Stuart, Forty Years, I, 101-102
^'^Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 115
^^Ibid., I, 118
20
Stuart, Forty Years, I, 118
^^Ibid., I, 124
^^Ibid.. I, 136
23
Granville Stuart, Montana As It Is, (New York: C.S. Westcott,
1865) pp. 7-8
^^Ibid., p. 8, 9
25
Michael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder, Montana: A History of
Two Centuries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976) p. 50
O ̂
Stuart, Forty Years, I, 205
27
Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 187
OQ
Stuart, Forty Years, I, 218; Paul C. Phillips notes that Missoula
county was organized on December 14, 1860. (Forty Years, I, 165)
James and Granville were elected to their respective offices in the
second official election for Missoula county officer. (Forty Years,
I, 214)
OQ
Ibid., I, 218-219; It is unclear whether James or one of the men
from Elk City fired first, though presumably it was one of the latter.
^°Ibid., I, 291-220
Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 243
'Stuart, Forty Years, I, 221n
33
Ibid.
Treece, "Mr. Montana," I, 232
quoted in Treece, "Mr. Montana," II, 417
Ibid., II, 419-420
^^Ibid., II, 313
39
Ibid., II, 418
Ibid.. I, 40
Ibid., II, 287
Ibxd.
Paul C. Phillips' introduction to Stuart's Forty Years, I, 15
Oct. 16, 1960 and Dec. 6, 1964; Treece suggests that Stuart well
deserved to be known as "Mr. Montana" and uses the phrase as the title
and theme for his dissertation.
45
Quoted in Treece, II, 359
Chapter II: "The Beef Bonanza"
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (New York: Grosset &
Dunlap, 1931) p. 152, 159
see Howard R. Lamar, The Trader on the American Frontier: Myth's
Victim, (College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1977)
Ernest Staples Osgood, The Day of the Cattleman (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1929) p. 19
4
Quoted in Ibid., p. lln
\ichael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder, Montana: A History of
Two Centuries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976) p. Ill
Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier As Seen in the
Journals and Reminiscences of Granville Sturat, Gold-Miner, Trader,
Merchant, Rancher, and Politician edited by Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols.;
Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) II, 97
^Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey: From New York to San Fran
cisco In the Summer of 1859 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964) p. 164
Q
Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 11
^Ibid., p. 17
^^Robert H. Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences: The Montana Cattle
Range Story, (New York: University Publishers Incorporated, 1960)
pp. 20-21
^^Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 23
^^Webb, The Great Plains, pp. 207-209
^^Ibid., p. 223
^^Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 39
^^Ibid., p. 45
^^Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 122
^^"The Range and Ranch Cattle Business in the United States,"
Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States, (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885) p. 12
^^Quoted in T.A. Larson, History of Wyoming (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1965) p. 165
Quoted in Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 83
20
(New edition; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959) pp. 34-36
21
The Rocky Mountain Husbandman (White Sulphur Springs, Montana)
April 2, 1885
22
Quoted in Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 86
^^Jebb, The Great Plains, p. 224
^^Ibid., p. 224n
25
Malone and Roeder, Montana, pp. 116-17
^^Ibid., p. 117
27
Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, p. 39
28
Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 27
29
Walt Coburn, Pioneer Cattleman in Montana: The Story of the
Circle C. Ranch (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968) p. 154
OA
E.G. ("Teddy Blue") Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, We Pointed
Them North (Revised edition with notes; Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1955) p. 137n
Ibid.
Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 117
^^Ibid., pp. 117-118
^^Gene M. Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1966) p. 109
O C
Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, p. 102
'stuart. Forty Years, II, 187-188
Chapter III: The Cattle King
Paul Robert Treece, "Mr. Montana: The Life of Granville Stuart,
1834-1918" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1974)
11, 371
^Ibid., 11, 369
3
Michael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder, Montana: A History of
Two Centuries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976) p. 369
^Donald MacMillan, "The Gilded Age and Montana's DHS Ranch" Montana:
The Magazine of Western History, XX, No. 2 (Spring, 1970) pp. 52-57;
Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier As Seen in the Journals
and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, Gold-Miner, Trader, Merchant,
Rancher, and Politician edited by Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols.; Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) 11, 99
^Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 144
^MacMillan, "The Gilded Age..." p. 54
^Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 113
^Treece, "Mr. Montana," 11, 277-278
^MacMillan, "The Gilded Age..." p. 51; Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 145
^^Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 146-47
^^Ibid., 11, 147-48
^^Ibid., 11, 150
TO *
Ernest Staples Osgood, The Day of the Cattlemen (Minneapolis: .
University of Minnesota Press, 1929) p. 144n
^^Montana Institute of the Arts History Group, tape recording of
Mary Stuart Abbott and Oscar 0. Mueller, Lewistown, Montana, 1958. A
typed transcript is available as is the tape itself at the Montana State
University Library, Bozeman, Montana. The tape itself and not the trans
cript (which is incomplete) is referred to here and hereafter.
Stuart, Forty Years, II, 148-149
^^These figures come from estimates made by the United States Depart
ment of Agriculture. They are quoted in Leland Everett Stuart's "Men
and Cattle on the Northern Plains," (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Oregon, 1971) p. 32. Dr. Stuart's dissertation is an
excellent source of information on the cattle industry. It has been a
valuable tool in my research. Dr. Stuart is not related to Granville
Stuart though he is preparing an article on Stuart and Wyoming rancher
John Clay.
^^The Fort Benton River Press for 1884 is available on microfilm
from Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, and from
the Montana Historical Society, Helena.
^^Treece, "Mr. Montana," II, 277-278
19
Edgar Beecher Bronson, Reminiscences of a Ranchman (New York:
The McClure Company, 1908) pp. 293-296 Mr. Bronson's excellent but often
neglected primary source. Dr. Leland Stuart brought it to my attention.
Quoted in Leland Everett Stuart, "Men and Cattle on the Northern
Plains," p. 37
^^Treece, "Mr. Montana," II, 381
99 
Leland Everett Stuart, "Men and Cattle on the Northern Plains,"
p. 32; see also Granville Stuart, Forty Years, II, 227
9
Osgood, The Day of the Cattleman, p. 150; Helena Huntington Smith,
The War on Powder River (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966),
pp. 27-28
^^E.C. ("Teddy Blue") Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, We Pointed
Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, [1939] 1955) pp. 129-130
25
Stuart, Forty Years, II, 167
^^Ibid., II, 148-149
^^Quoted by Fred Ojers in a three part article on the 1884 vigilantes.
Great Falls Tribune, Sept. 19, 1926.
29
Ibid. A brief discussion of steamboating on the Missouri is
contained in Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 56. More discussion of
steamboating and choppers is in Joseph Kinsey Howard, Montana: High,
Wide, and Handsome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943) p. 122
30
Fort Benton River Press, Feb. 13, 1884
^^alt Coburn, Pioneer Cattlemen in Montana: The Story of the Circle
C Ranch (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968) p. 37
32
Granville Stuart's letter-press is available on microfilm from the
Montana Historical Society and is the source of all correspondence
attributed to Stuart in this paper unless otherwise indicated.
33
Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 122
Herman Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands (Boston: Riverside
Press, 1921) p. 45
Leland Stuart, "Men and Cattle on the Nothern Plains," p. 32
^^Fort Benton River Press, April 23, 1884
37
Letter from James Fergus to the Rocky Mountain Husbandman dated
August 27, 1884. (Oscar 0. Mueller Collection, Montana Historical
Society, Helena, File Folder 1-8)
O Q
Granville Stuart to Jon S.M. Neil, August 17, 1884.
OQ
Helena Huntington Smith discussed the effects of overstocking and
poor managment of bulls in Wyoming. See The War on Powder River (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1966) pp. 18, 34, 46
'^^The process of changing brands is described by Walt Coburn in
Pioneer Cattlemen in Montana, p. 38; Helena Huntington Smith describes
cattle stealing as it occurred in Wyoming where cattle, and not horses
were the main object of thieves. See The War on Powder River, pp. 150-151
^^alone and Roeder, Montana, p. 122
/ 0
Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 197
Fergus to Rocky Mountain Husbandman, dated August 28, 1884.
44
Ibid.
45
Stuart, Forty Years, II, 205-206
A6
Helena Smith refers to larger scale operations of this kind in
War on Powder River, p. 179
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 150; Treece, "Mr. Montana..." 380
48
Agnes Wright Spring, Seventy Years: A Panoramic History of the Wyoming
Growers Association, Published by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, 1942. p. 99
'^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 175-76, 195
^°Stuart, Forty Years, II, 195-196
Part II
Chapter IV: A Word About Sources
Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier As Seen in the
Journals and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, GoId-Miner, Trader,
Merchant, Rancher and Politician edited by Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols.;
Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) II, 206-210
2
Biographical information on Mueller comes from assorted clippings
in the Oscar 0. Mueller Collection in the Montana Historical Society
Library in Helena. Mueller died Jan. 3, 1964 at the age of eighty-six.
Mueller's article, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids of 1884"
appears in a condensed form in Montana: The Magazine of Western History,
I, No. 1 (Winter, 1951); A slightly longer, more detailed version is in
the Mueller Collection at the Montana Historical Scoiety Library in
Helena. The longest and most detailed version, however, is contained
in the December 30, 1951 Lewistown Daily News, published in Lewistown,
Montana. References in this paper will be to the versions in Montana
Magazine and the Daily News.
^Joseph Kinsey Howard, Montana: High, Wide and Handsome (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1943); See also the article by Richard B. Roeder
"Joseph Kinsey Howard and His Vision of the West" Montana: The Magazine
of Western History, Vol. 30, No. 1, Jan. 1980 pp. 2-11 for a sketch of
this remarkable journalist/historian.
Mils B. Stuart to Oscar 0. Mueller, Sept. 7, 1944. The corres
pondence between Mueller and Mils B. Stuart and other correspondence
bearing on Mueller's vigilante research are in the Mueller Collection
at the Montana Historical Society Library in Helena.
Mueller to Helena H. Smith, Sept. 22, 1960. Mueller Collection,
Montana Historical Society Library, Helena.
^Mueller to Michael S. Kennedy, September 23, 1960. Mueller
Collection, Montana Historical Society Library, Helena.
g
Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." Montana Magazine,
pp. 26n, 32; In the Daily News version, Mueller writes that "major
credit and assistance" came from William Burnett and his seems to be
the most important testimony. His written account, however, gives few
details.
9
The Andrew Fergus Diary indicates that one "Williams" gave food
to the vigilantes on July 21, 1884. A typescript copy of that diary
is part of the Oscar 0. Mueller Collection, Montana Historical Society
Library, Helena.
^^Allis B. Stuart to Oscar 0. Mueller, June 17, 1942. Mueller Col
lection, Montana Historical Society, Helena. The letter continues "...
when we gave [the papers] to Phillips it was with the instructions 'you
are not to change a word not even to crossing a t or dotting an i.'
Ted Abbott may have given Phillips information. Sam Stuart did but he
certainly could not use that information only in footnotes."
^^Oscar 0. Mueller, "Notes on Errata in 'Forty Years on the Frontier'
As Related to the Central Montana Raids of 1884." Mueller Collection,
Montana Historical Society, Helena. Mueller points out in "Errata" that
dates in Forty Years are inaccurate as is information concerning the
Rocky Point thieves Red Mike, Brocky Gallagher, and Dutch Louie Myers.
This writer agrees that Forty Years is in error on these points and
disagrees only with Mueller's conclusion that Stuart had "absolutely
nothing'to do with the vigilante chapter.
12
Paul Robert Treece, "Mr. Montana: The Life of Granville Stuart,
1834-1918" (2 Vols.; unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Univer
sity, 1974) II, 464
Allis B. Stuart to McClure and Company, Feb. 25, 1919. Allis B.
Stuart Collection, Special Collection 1009, Folder 3-23, Montana Histor
ical Society Library, Helena.
Montana Institute of the Arts History Group, tape recording of
Mary Abbott and Oscar 0. Mueller, Lewistown, Montana, 1958. Tape
available from Montana State University, Bozeman.
^^Treece, "Mr. Montana..." 11, 465-466
^^Victor R. Dahl, "Granville Sturat" Author and Subject of Western
History." Pacific Historical Review, vol. 39 (1970) p. 439 Paul C.
Phillips is the author of two books on western history. The West in the
Dipolmacy of the American Revolution (Urbana, 111., 1913. Reprinted New
York, 1967) and The Fur Trade, 2 vols. with the concluding chapters
written by J.W. Smurr (Norman, Oklahoma, 1961)
^^Treece, "Mr. Montana..." 11, p. 466
Richard M. Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of
American Violence and Vigilantism (Oxford, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975) p. 106
19
Merill G. Burlingame, "Montana's Righteous Hangmen: A Reconsider
ation." Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 18, no. 4,
(Oct. 1978) p. 49
O O
Paul C. Phillips in the introduction to Stuart's Forty Years, I, 14
O "I
The sketch is contained in the Granville Stuart letter-press
material for the year of 1882.
^^Montana Institute of the Arts History Group, taped interview with
Mary Stuart Abbott.
^^From newspaper clippings in the Mueller Collection, Montana Histor
ical Society, Helena.
^^Michael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder, Montana: A History of
Two Centuries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976) p. 310
'Burlingame, "Montana's Righteous Hangmen..." pp. 48-49
Chapter V: Vigilantes!
Granville Stuart's May 26, 1886 letter to Frank Canton is contained
in the Granville Stuart letter-press book, a microfilm copy of which is
available from the Montana Historical Society, Helena. All other ref
erences to Stuart correspondence, unless otherwise specified, are from
the letter-press book.
2
Ibid, Stuart to Sam Stuart, April 25, 1884
3
Ibid, Stuart to Conrad Kohrs, May 21, 1884
4
Allis B. Stuart to Oscar 0. Mueller, September 10, 1940, Oscar
0. Mueller Collection, Montana Historical Society, Helena. See also
Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands (Boston: The Riverside
Press, 1921) pp. 145-146
^Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands, pp. 146-147
^Fort Benton River Press, July 2, 1884. Issues of the River Press
are available on microfilm from the Montana Historical Society, Helena
^Ibid., July 9, 1884
g
Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier As Seen in the Jour
nals and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, Gold-Miner, Trader, Merchant,
Rancher, and Politician edited by Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols.; Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) II, 206-210
9
Montana Institute of the Arts History Group, interview of Mary
Stuart Abbott (also Oscar 0. Mueller) Lewistown, Montana, 1958. A
typed transcript, incomplete, is available of the interview from the
library at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana. The original
tape is also there and all references to Mary Abbott are to the original
tape.
Ibid. Primary sources conflict as to when Mackenzie was hanged,
morning or evening, July 3 or July 4. Stuart wrote to M.J. Hall on
Oct. 16, 1884, that Mackenzie was hanged on July 3. In other details,
there is surprising concensus. The Mackenzie incident reveals a great
deal of cooperation between the military and local ranchers of which we
will see more. The explanation for this may lie in the fact that the
army had also been victimized by horse thieves. See page 93.
"Letters from a Recruit," Montana; The Magazine of Western
History, XIX, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), p. 16; Francis Patrick Burke was
born at Lowell, Massachusetts and was educated in public schools in
Boston and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1880 he
entered into the Signal Service (which included the Weather Service)
and accompanied the Greely expedition to Montana. He later became a
sergeant in the military meteorological service, finally becoming the
local forecast official and director of the Kentucky section of the
Climate and Crop Service (information from the Burke Collection,
Montana Historical Society, Helena). Burke's letters to his parents
describe a number of the events of 1884, but also contain a number of
glaring inaccuracies. He describes, for example, a famous gun battle
which occurred on July 4, 1884 in Lewistown as happening in Maiden.
This might be explained by the monotony of army life and the desire to
"throw in another grizzley" to make for a better story.
12
Montana Institute of the Arts History Group, taped interview
with Mary Stuart Abbott.
13
Burke, "Letters from a Recruit," p. 17
^^Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 201-202
^^E.C. ("Teddy Blue") Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, We
Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher (Revised edition
with notes; Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1955) p. 134-35
16
Dorothy M. Johnson, "Independence Day, 1884," Montana: The
Magazine of Western History, Vll, No. 3 (July, 1958) pp. 2-7
17
Fred Ojers, a three part article on the 1884 vigilantes. Great
Falls Tribune, Oct. 3, 1926
18
Harry Rash, "The Story of Harry Rash of the Discovery of Gold
in the Little Rockies," edited by A.J. Noyes, Allis B. Stuart Collection,
Montana Historical Society, Helena. Harry Rash came to Montana in 1883
to hunt and trap on the Missouri River. He claims to have discovered
gold in the Little Rockies on a trip with Pike Landusky and 'Dutch
Louie' near Alder Gulch. He also witnessed some vigilante actions.
His story was taken down by A.J. Noyes (author of The Story of Ajax)
who explained "What this story is worth 1 do not [know]. 1 am simply
giving it as it was told to me."
^^Oscar 0. Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids of 1884,"
Montana; The Magazine of Western History, 1, no. 1 (Winter, 1951)
Fred Ojers, Great Falls Tribune, Oct. 3, 1926; E.G. Abbott and
Helena Huntington Smith, We Pointed Them North, p. 135; Stuart, Forty
Years, II, 205
21
James Fergus to Wilbur F. Sanders, July 5, 1884, Oscar 0. Mueller
Collection, Man. File 761B. Montana State University Library, Bozeman
22
Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana Magazine)
p. 26
22
Andrew Fergus Diary, Montana Historical Society, Helena. A
type-script copy is there. The original is missing.
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 206-207; Stuart's letter-press, however,
contains a letter from Stuart to A.W. Adams on Oct. 8, 1884 reading:
"Flopper, Reece, Lynn, Frank, Buch, Tabor and Will Clark are over in
the Rockies. Johnny Davis told Reece that he saw Duchy there only a
few days before..."
^^Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) pp. 29-30
^^Ibid., p. 28
^^William Burnett, written account of his years in Montana, Oscar
0. liueller Collection, Montana Historical Society, Helena. William
C. Burnett had a fascinating career and it is unfortunate that we do
not know more about him. Oscar 0. Mueller refers to him as "my old
friend " in his letter to Helena H. Smith (Sept. 22, 1960) and it
is through Mueller's correspondence that we learn about him. In a
letter to Mrs. Stuart (Oct. 15, 1942) Mueller wrote concerning
Mr. Burnett, "He was in the Texas Rangers for the years of '77 and '78.
In '79 he came up with a herd from Texas to Laramie, Wyoming. He stayed
there until 1882, then came to Montana..." W.C. Burnett wrote of his
own experiences in Montana, probably at Mueller's request, and it is
part of the Mueller Collection. He and his brother drifted up into
the Judith Basin vaguely looking for work. They went to James Fergus s
ranch where they were given dinner. Burnett writes, "I asked Mr. Fergus
is he needed any men and he looked our outfit over and asked where we
were from and I told him Texas. He says you look like a couple of
horse thieves to me." It is not clear if Fergus was smiling when he
said it. In 1882, Burnett went to work for the DHS.
^^Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) p. 28
Stuart, Forty Years, II, 205
^^C.E. Downes to James Fergus, Aug. 14, 1884. Mueller Collection,
folder 1-6, Montana Historical Society, Helena.
^^Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 206
^^Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) p. 29
^^Tow articles in the July 23, 1884 Fort Benton River Press mention
reports of the hanging of five men near Rocky Point. Since Rocky
Point is some twenty miles from the mouth of the Musselshell and since
four of the five men there were shot, the possibility suggests itself
that five others were killed near Rocky Point. We know the Fergus
party went there looking for thieves. But the evidence (p. 49) is that
the thieves escaped and the diary of Fergus mentions nothing of any
hanging (p. 61). It seems more likely that reference in the River Press
is to the men killed by Burnett, Anderson, and company.
^^William Burnett statement, Mueller Collection, Montana Historical
Society, Helena
^^Robert H. Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences: The Montana Cattle
Range Story (New York: University Publishers Incorporated, 1960) p. 65
^^Fred Ojers, Great Falls Tribune, Oct. 3
^^Harry Rash, "The Story of Harry Rash..." Rash probably knew
Floppin' Bill for they had both been partners of Powell "Pike" Landusky,
a wild man, Indian-killing, living-legend who lived for thrity years
in Montana. Landusky was killed in 1893 by Kid Curry (Harvey Logan)
of the Wild Bunch. (see Walt Coburn's Pioneer Cattlemen in Montana,
chapters 5-7)
Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, p. 65
^^Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids. ," (Montana
Magazine) p. 30
Fletcher, Free Grass To Fences, p. 65
Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 207
Mueller writes that there were "about twelve" thieves. "Central
Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana Magazine)?. 31; James Fergus
in a letter to the Rocky Mountain Husbandman dated Aug. 28, 1884, wrote
that there were "nearly as many thieves" as vigilantes (of which there
were fourteen). Mueller Collection, Montana Historical Society,
Helena. Yet the Andrew Fergus diary says there were fifteen thieves.
^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 207-208
Ibid., II, 207
45
The Fort Benton River Press. Sept. 10, 1884; Granville Stuart
named the five survivors as being Dixie Burr, Paddy Ross, Silas Nicker-
son, Orvil Edwards, and Swift Bill. See Forty Years, II, 207
^^Rufus F. Zogbaum, "With the Bluecoats on the Border," Harper's
New Monthly Magazine, LXXII, No. 432, p. 851
Ibid.
Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) p. 31
49
Fergus Diary, July 22
^^This letter is apparently on one of the pages missing from the
Stuart letter-press book as it is not contained there. It turned up
among James Fergus's papers and is now in the Mueller Collection.
^^Zogbaum, "With the Bluecoats on the Border," p. 857
52
Fort Benton River Press, Sept. 10, 1884
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 208
Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) p. 31; In the version of the article that appeared in the
Lewistoxm Daily News, December 30, 1951, Mueller wrote: "To this day
I have found no one present at this hanging willing to even at this
late data, admit directly that the Deputy U.S. Marshall and his
deputies helped hang the victims. The information from different
sources is to the effect that some of the PJ. riders then in the lower
Musselshell Valley, participated in, and, in fact, Xi7ere responsible for,
the hanging of the victims."
Fort Benton River Press. July 30, 1884
56
Mils B. Stuart to Oscar 0. Mueller, June 18, 1942, Mils B,
Stuart Collection, Special Collection 1009, folder 3-23, Montana
Historical Society, Helena
^^Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." (Montana
Magazine) p. 34
Chapter VI: Aftermath: Rumors and Repercussions
Quoted in "Letters from a Recruit," Montana: The Magazine
of Western History Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Winter, 1969)
Aug. 21, 1884
3
Hermann Hagedorn, ed., The Works of Theodore Roosevelt Vol. 1
National ed. (20 vols.; New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1926)
p. 282
4
Great Falls Tribune. Sept. 27, 1926
^Joseph Kinsey Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1943) p. 134
^Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence; Historical Studies
of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975) pp. 103, 150
^Burke's letters were printed in "Letters from a Recruit,"
Montana: The Magazine of Western History Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Winter, 1969)
pp. 14-22
The Fort Benton River Press carried a story on July 23, 1884
reporting that two men, Dave Hilger and S.X. Swendeman had arrived in
toxm with word that "...five horse thieves were captured and hung in
the vicinity of Rocky Point a few days ago." The deed had been done
by a "regularly organized band of cowboys" who had secured thirty-two
head of stolen horses. This might refer to the California Jack episode
except that the mouth of the Musselshell (where that episode took place)
is twenty some miles from Rocky Point and, in that episode, only one
of the five were hanged, the rest were shot, (see page 74) Downes'
trading post, on the other hand, was close to Rocky Point and thus
more "in the vicinity" than California Jack's cabin.
9
"Letters from a Recruit," p. 19
^'^See note number 11, Chapter V.
^^See Granville Stuart, Forty Years on the Frontier As Seen in the
Journals and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, Gold-Miner, Trader,
Merchant, Rancher and Politician ed. Paul C. Phillips (2 Vols.; Cleve
land: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1925) II, 207 and William Burnett, written
statement of hsi years in Montana, Oscar 0. Mueller Collection, Montana
Historical Society, Helena. For biographical information of Burnett
see note 27, Chapter V.
12
"Letters from a Recruit," p. 19; The military was forbidden to
interfere with or assist civil authorities in the performance of their
duties by Federal legislation in 1878. The restriction, however, was
often circumvented. See Frank R. Prassel, The Western Peace Officer:
A Legacy of Law and Order (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1972) pp. 194-96
13
The Medora Badland's Cowboy is available on microfilm
14
Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands, (Boston: The
Riverside Press, 1921) pp. 197-198
^^Fred Ojers in a three part article on the vigilantes for the Great
Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Montana, Sept. 19, 26, Oct. 3, 1926).
Information on Grinnell is in the second part, Sept. 27
^^Ojers, Great Falls Tribune, Sept. 27. See also Fort Benton
River Press, (Fort Benton, Montana) Oct. 20, 1884
^^Hagedom, Roosevelt in the Badlands, p. 195
18
Robert H. Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences: The Montana Cattle
Range Story (New York: University Publishers Incorporated, 1960)
p. 65. See also page this paper.
19
Usher L. Burdick, The Life and Exploits of John Goodall
(Watford City, North Dakota: The MacKenzie County Farmer, 1931) p. 16
Robert Cory, "Tumbling Around These Prairies" Minot Daily News
(Minot, North Dakota) Saturday, November 26, 1960, p. 5
^Hlichael P, Malone and Richard B. Roeder, Montana: A History
of Two Centuries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976)
p. 123
22
Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, pp. 65-66; Fletcher does not
say so, but his information on the vigilante train probably came
from Wallis Huidkoper, Land of the Dacotas (Helena, 1949) p. 15;
George F. Shafer, "Early History of McKenzie County," Collections
of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Vol. IV (Grand
Forks, 1913) p. 58; Joseph Henry Taylor, Frontier & Indian Life
and Kaleidoscopic Lives, (Washburn, North Dakota, 1932) pp. 273-280;
An account based on the above is written by Ray H. Mattison,
"Roosevelt and the Stockmen's Association," North Dakota History
(Bismark: State Historical Society) April, May, 1950 Volume 17,
Nos. 1 and 2. See especially No. 1, p. 84 where Mattison writes:
"A special train on the Northern Pacific, bearing the vigilantes and
their horses, moved eastward from Billings, Montana. After stopping
at various points, a party finally reached Medora where the train
was abandoned. The committee was comprised of twenty members and
was under the charge of a character known as 'Flopping Bill.'"
^^Oscar 0. Mueller, "The Central Montana Vigilante Raids of
1884," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. i. No. 1
(Winter, 1951) p. 32
o /
Fort Benton River Press, Aug. 6, 1884
2 S
Quoted in Joseph Kinsey Howard's, Montana: High, Wide, and
Handsome, pp. 134-135
^^Quoted in Robert M. Home, "James Fergus: Frontier Business
man-Miner-Rancher-Free-Thinker." (Unpublished D.Ed, dissertation.
University of Montana, 1971) p. 92
^^James Fergus to the Rocky Mountain Husbandman, a letter dated
Aug. 28, 1884. The original, referred to here, is in the Mueller
Collection, File folder 1-12, Montana Historical Society, Helena
9 ft
Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 136
^^Ibid., p. 135
^^Ibid.. pp. 135-136
Charles "Teddy Blue" Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, We
Pointed Them North; Recollections of a Cowpuncher (Revised edition
with notes; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954) p. 135
Quoted in Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 135
33
The Granville Stuart letter-press material is available on
microfilm from the Montana Historical Society, Helena. All reference
to Stuart correspondence, unless otherwise noted, is to that material.
n /
Fort Benton River Press, July 30, 1884
^^Hirshberg's letter is in the Mueller Collection, File Folder
1-6, Montana Historical Society, Helena
Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." p. 29
37
Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 137
^^Hagedorn, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. I, pp. 383-384
^^Quoted by Ojers, Great Falls Tribune, Sept. 27, 1926
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 209
^^Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." p. 32
^^Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 134
^^Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." p. 32
^^Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, pp. 61-64
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 168
^^Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 121-22
47 ^ /
Fletcher, Free Grass to Fences, p. 64
j.i_'; '  - , ''v
Ibid.
Ibid.,  p=. 71
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 206-207
C 1
The Myres letter is with the Mueller Papers, Man. File 761B,
Montana State University, Missoula.
S2
The letter from Fergus to J.L. Stuart is in the Mueller Collection,
File 1-8, Montana Historical Society, Helena.
S
Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." p. 34
^^Granville Stuart to J.X. Beider, July 14, 1886 (Stuart letter
press). 
^^The letter from J.L. Stuart to James Fergus is part of the
James Fergus Papers, Box 10, File 40, University of Montana Library,
Missoula.
Mueller, "Central Montana Vigilante Raids..." p. 35
^^Stuart, Forty Years, 11, 196
CO
The district court records for as far back as 1879 are kept in
the court house in White Sulphur Springs. They are incomplete and
disorganized. Records of trials and convictions are contained in a
book labeled Grand Jury Indictments, Third Judicial District Court,
Meagher County, 1880-1884. Civil and criminal complaints are
recorded in the Register of Court Actions, Probate Court, Meagher
County, 1883-84. Other records are misplaced or nonexistent.
Ibid., Grand Jury Indictments
^^Helena Huntington Smith, The War on Powder River; The Histor;^
of an Insurrection (Lincoln" University of Nebraska Press, 1966)
pp. 121-134
^^Quoted by T.A. Larson, History of Wyoming, (Lincoln: Univer
sity of Nebraska Press, 1966) p. 270
62
Smith, War on Powder River, p. 133
Ijams' confession is in A.S. Mercer, The Banditti of the
Plains or the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 (New edition:
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954) p. 159
Ibid.
65„
See page
^^Smith, War on Powder River, p. 98; see also Frank Richard
Prassel, The Western Peace Officer: A Legacy of Law and Order, (Nor
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972) pp. 145-46
fi7
Smith, War on Powder River, pp. 161-78
Mueller wrote to Helena Smith about William Burnett's involve
ment in the Powder River War on September 22, 1960. The letter is
part of the Mueller Collection, Montana Historical Society, Helena.
^^Smith, War on Powder River, 226
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 232
^^Ibid., II, 233-34
72
Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 157
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 234
^^Ibid., II, 236
^^Abbott and Smith, We Pointed Them North, p. 176
Ibid.
^^Ernest Staples Osgood, The Day of the Cattlemen (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1929) p. 220
78
Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands, p. 435
T.A. Larson, History of VJyoming, p. 191
OA
Abbott and Smith, We Pointed Them North, p. 176
^^Ibid., p. 179
on
Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, p. 159
^Yellowstone Journal (Miles City, Montana) Special historical
edition, Sept. 27, 1900, p. 4 - quoted in Leland Stuart's "Men and
Cattle on the Northern Plains, 1860-1887" (Unpublished Ph.D. dis
sertation, University of Oregon) p. 101. Stuart's dissertation is
an excellent source of information concerning the winter of 1886-87.
See also Malone and Roeder, Montana, p. 125
®Y.A. Larson, "The Winter of 1886-87 in Wyoming," Annals of
Wyoming, XIV, Vol. 1, (Jan., 1942) pp. 14-16
®^Quoted in Osgood, Day of the Cattlemen, p. 217
®^John Clay, My Life on the Range (New edition; Norman: Univer
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1962) p. 172
^^Stuart, Forty Years, II, 237
Chapter VII: Conclusions
^Joseph Kinsey Howard, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1943) p. 137
^Charles "Teddy Blue" Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, ̂
Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher (Revised edition
with notes; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955) p. 126
Howard, Montana, p. 137
^"Laws, Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Montana
Passed at the Seventh Session of the Legislative Assembly Begun at
Virginia City Monday Dec. 4, 1871 and Concluded Jan. 12, 1872
Title X, Chapter VI, Sect. 72, 78. Contained in the Western Range
Cattle Industry Study, Montana Writers' Project, (Montana State
University, Bozeman) Reel #3
^Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Badlands (Boston: River
side Press, 1921) p. 158
Paul Robert Treece, "Mr. Montana: The Life of Granville Stuart,
1834-1918." (2 Vols.; Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State
University, 1974) II, 415
^James Fergus to Conrad Kohrs, May 5, 1887, James Fergus
Collection, Man. File 674, Montana State University, Missoula.
\ichard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies
of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975) p. 96
^Ibid., p. 97
^°Ibid., p. Ill
^^All references to Stuart correspondance is to the Granville
Stuart letter—press book, (a microfilm copy of which is available
from the Montana Historical Society, Helena) except where otherwise
noted.
12
Brown, Strain of Violence, pp. 104-105
^^Ibid., p. 109
^^Ibid., p. 108
^^Ibid., p. 101
James Fergus to the Rocky Mountain Husbandman, letter dated
Aug. 28, 1884. The original, referred to here, is in the Mueller
Collection, File Folder 1—12, Montana Historical Society, Helena
^^Richard M. Brown, "The American Vigilante Tradition," in
Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Curr, eds., The History of Violence
in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. A Report
Submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention
of Violence (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1969) p. 156
Treece, "Mr. Montana" II, 425-438
II^'
JV
'ssr '"■''
j
V-
"wv M'K4« •J' ?  •y :^ Va"; V.
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1834-1918." 2 Vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University,