A Rashomon Night: Montana Vigilantes and the Subjective Question of Guilt

The deadliest episode of vigilante justice in American history erupted in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains during the first six weeks of 1864. While the rest of the nation was preoccupied fighting the Civil War, a small corps of armed horsemen swept through the gold-mining towns of southwest Montana and hanged twenty-one troublemakers, including the duly-elected sheriff, Henry Plummer, creating a legend whose impact can still be felt today. In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, A Decent, Orderly Lynching: The Montana Vigilantes, Frederick Alien revisits the actions of Montana's founding fathers and explains why so many observers, then and now, have struggled over the question of Sheriff Plummer's guilt or innocence.

Suspicion of Sheriff Henry Plummer was accelerating, fueled by a peculiar pattern his critics thought they detected. Miners and merchants were leaving for "the States" in large numbers in fall 1863, laden with gold dust they had amassed during the spring and summer. In Bannack a traveler would come into George Ghrisman's general store or some other business and discuss his departure plans within earshot of Plummer or one of his deputies. Often, it seemed, Plummer would then find himself called away on sheriff's business, or to inspect a new mining claim, just as the party was leaving by stagecoach. Was it simple happenstance if the stage was later held up? Or was Plummer out there somewhere directing a criminal operation? Neil Howie, a miner who later served as the sheriff of Helena, claimed that Plummer approached him one day, commiserated over the rigors of mining for a living, and then added cryptically, "I can tell you an easier way." Howie refused to listen.1

One episode in particular helps explain the confused but increasingly wary attitude toward Plummer in the gold camps. Sam Hauser, the widely respected settler whose distrust of Plummer helped undo his chances of becoming a deputy federal marshal, was making plans in early November 1863 to return to St. Louis. After recovering from the injuries he suffered at the hands of Crow Indians during his venture into Yellowstone territory, Hauser had spent the summer working a profitable claim on Alder Creek, accumulating a substantial amount of gold dust. He meant to take the money home, and he also agreed to take along a cache of dust valued at fourteen thousand dollars belonging to his friends Granville Stuart and Walter B. Dance, the store owners, to repay their creditors. On the morning of Friday, November 13, 1863, Hauser stepped onto the stagecoach bound from Virginia City to Bannack and was surprised to find Plummer sitting across from him.

Concealing his discomfort, Hauser chatted with Plummer as if nothing were amiss. As the coach passed through some of the tight spots on the trail, Hauser said later, he imagined that Plummer's confederates might be lurking there, bent on robbery, though his stronger suspicion was that Plummer intended to wait and carry out the crime on the road from Bannack to Salt Lake City. When the coach arrived in Bannack without incident, Hauser breathed a sigh of relief.

The passengers, including Plummer, alighted and went into Goodrich's Hotel to have a drink and visit with friends. Hauser was planning to make the trip east with Nathaniel Langford, the successful lumberman and Republican politician, who greeted him with evident concern and asked about Plummer's presence on the stage. Nothing had happened, Hauser reported, but they would have to be on their guard constantly in the coming days. Langford agreed. In recent days he had encountered two of Plummer's deputies, Ned Ray and Buck Stinson, and he believed they were shadowing him, trying to learn the details of his departure.

Hauser's immediate concern, he confided in Langford, was the safekeeping of the gold dust in his possession. He and Langford intended to spend the night in Bannack and set off the next day with a group of Mormon freighters for Salt Lake City. Their money, a tempting target, would have to be guarded overnight. Much to Langford's surprise, Hauser abruptly interrupted the buzz of conversation at Goodrich's bar and announced in a loud voice that he was carrying a large supply of gold dust. Then he turned to Plummer and asked him to take custody of the buckskin sack. "I've got fourteen thousand dollars in this bag, which I'm going to take to the States with me," he told Plummer, "and I want you, as sheriff, to keep it for me till I start."2

Langford pulled Hauser aside and asked in a sharp whisper if he had lost his mind. Entrusting "so large an amount to a man of such doubtful reputation" was akin to asking the fox to guard the henhouse, Langford pointed out. In Langford's telling, Hauser answered him with breezy reassurance, pointing out that Plummer could not very easily keep the money since it had been given to him in front of several witnesses, many of them Bannack's most prominent citizens. If he failed to return it, his complicity would be obvious, and the debate about his honesty would be answered once and for all in the negative. Faced with this "bold strategy," as Langford called it, Plummer accepted the money and placed it in the safe at Chrisman's store until morning.3