The Passing of the Frontier: A Chronicle of the Old West

southern cattle constituted the only contribution to the West of that day. There were indeed earlier influences, the chief of which was the advent of the wild population of the

Fraser River Valley of British Columbia; neither is it necessary to mention in much detail the great camps of Nevada; nor yet the short-lived stampede of 1859 to the Pike's

White: "The Forty-N

ric

gain into the Rockies were a turbulent mob. Having overrun all our mountain ranges, following the earlier trails of the traders and trappers, they now recoiled upon themselves and rolled back eastward to meet the advancing civilization of the westbound rails, caring nothing for history and less for the civili

ere than in California, and having heard reports of strikes to the north, went hurrying out into the mountains of Oregon and Washington, in a wild stamped

t desert plains into Nevada and Idaho-made new centers of lurid activity, such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it was that Wa

e pack-trains alike penetrated the Salmon River Range. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes were to be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West, conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought i

eds and thousands eager to reach a land not so far as California, but reputed to be quite as rich. It was then, as the bull-trains came in from

men of the stampedes. Carson for its day (1859-60) was a capital not unlike the others. Some of its men had come down from

a series of cabins or huts where dwelt individual men, each doing his own cooking and washing; and outside these huts the uptorn earth-such were the camps which dotted the trails of the stampedes across inhospitable deserts and mountain ranges. Church and school were

at was before the day of modern ammunition. The six-shooter of the placer days was of the old cap-and-ball type, heavy, long-barreled, and usually wooden-handled. It was the general ownership of these deadly weapons which caused so much bloodshed in the camps. The revolver in the hands

for that wild and unknown country. In 1857, however, a party of miners who had wandered down the Big Hole River on their way back east from California decided to look into the Gold Creek discovery, of which they had heard. This party was led by James and Granville Stuart, and among others in the party were Jake Meeks, Robert Hereford, Robert Dempsey, John W. Powell, John M. Jacobs, Thomas Adams, and some others. These men did some

er Idaho camps, that, in the summer and autumn of 1862, brought into the mountains no less than five parties of gold-seekers, who r

ood men such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser, Walter Dance, and others later well known in the State. These men were prominent in the organization of the first miners' court, which had occasion to try-and promptly to hang-Stillman and Jernigan, two ruffians who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about four days when they thus met retribution fo

rrived in the Prickly Pear Valley in Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St. Paul on the 16th of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While Captain Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the yield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their original destination, still awaited them. Winter w

ime adventurers, those coming from the West, had located in the Idaho camps, and might be expected in Montana at any time. In contrast to these, the men lately out from the States were of a different type, many of them sober, most of them law-abiding, men who had come o

t yet recognized as the leader of that secret association of robbers and murderers which had terrorized the Idaho camps. He celebrated his arrival in Bannack by ki

twenty-seven men thus engaged all but seven were either killed or driven out of the country, nine being murdered outright. The man who had acted as sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly hounded by Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on him. Plummer was the best shot in the mountains at that time, and he thought it would be easy for him to kill his man and enter the usual plea of self-def

f the mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P. Langford, a prominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland exp

he rest of the world. Napoleon was not more of an exile on St. Helena than a newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakes and mountains. All the great battles of the season of 1862-Ant

Olympia was the capital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territory of Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri. Langford makes clear the political uncertaintie

ess organizing Terr

the occupation of this

as admitted into the Un

o, Nevada, Dakota, Ari

ada was admitted as a S

mitted and Wyoming was o

(1876) Colorado became

, Montana, Washington,

the latter year Oklahom

with its Mormon populat

until 1896. Oklahoma

Mexico were ad

now took place. Henry Plummer, the most active outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with the enforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of en

rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City. Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This

east ten thousand people, was the product of ninety days. Into it were crowded all the elements of a rough and active civilization. Thousands of cabins and tents and brush wakiups... were seen on every hand. Every foot of the gulch... was undergoing displacement, and it was already disfigured by huge heaps of gravel which had been passed through the sluices and rifled of their glittering contents.... Gold was abundant, and every possible device was employed by the gamblers, the traders, the vile men and women that had come in with the miners into the l

pommelled to a jelly, while hundreds of onlookers cheered the victor.... Pistols flashed, bowie knives flourished, and braggart oaths filled the air, as often as men's passions triumphed over their reason. This was indeed the reign of unbridled license, and men who at first regarded it with disgust and terror, by constant

ld be sent out in safe-keeping? We are told that the only stage route extended from Virginia City no farther than Bannack. Between Virginia City and Salt Lake City there was an absolute wilderness, wholly unsettled, four hundred and seventy-five miles in width. "There

time the express coach, the solitary rider, the unguarded wagon-train, were held up and robbed, usually with the concomitant of murder. When the miners did start out from one camp to another they took all manner of precautions to conceal their gold dust. We are told that on one occasion one party bored a hole in the end of the wagon tongue with an auger and filled it full of gold dus

t know one another, had no organization, and scarcely dared at first to attempt one. On the other hand, the robbers' organization was complete and kept its secrets as the grave; indeed, many and many a

eing a silver-mine expert, among other things, and often would be called out to "expert" some new mine. That usually meant that he left town in order to commit some desperate robbery. The boldest outrages always required Plummer as the leader. Sometimes he would go away on the pretense of following some fugitive from justice. His horse, the fleetest

lone in the midst of one of the wildest of the western mountain regions. It will best serve our purpose to retain in mind the twofold character of this population, and to remember that the frontier caught to itself not only ruffians and desper

ters of civilization were far removed. The courts were powerless. In some cases even the machinery of the law was in the hands of these ruffians. But so violent were their deeds, so brutal, so murderous, so unfair, that slowly the indignation of the good men arose to the white-hot point

, a merchant of the Territory. The capture of these two followed closely upon the hanging of George Ives, also accused of more than one murder. Ives was an example of the degrading influence of the mines. He was a decent young man until he left his home in W

newly organized Vigilantes. Brown was hanged; so was Yager; but Yager, before his death, made a full c

ese names disclosed

ef of the band; Bill B

orge Brown, secretary

py, and roadster; Georg

horse thief and roadster

Hunter, telegraph man

Bannack City; George

ex Carter, Whiskey Bill

rank, Bob Zachary, Boon

er, Gad Moore were roa

the Vigilantes, with ma

tlaws was enti

cut out his tongue, then strip him naked and banish him. At the very last, however, he seems to have become composed. Stinson and Ray went to their fate alternately swearing and whining. Some of the ruffians faced death boldly. More than one himself jumped from the ladder or kicked from under him the box which was the only foothold between him and eternity. Boone Helm was as hardened as any of them. This man was a cannibal and murderer. He se

erstood that the Vigilantes were afoot. Langford, who undoubtedly knew intimately of the activities of this organization, ma

pursuits and their property. They could travel without fear. They had reasonable assurance of safety in the transmission of money to the States and in the arrival of property over the unguarded route from Salt Lake. The crack of pistols had ceased, and they could walk the streets without constant exposure to danger. There was an omnipresent spirit of protection, akin to that omnipresent spirit of law which pervaded old

antes. It would not be wholly pleasant to read even the names of a long list of these; perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, the notorious Joseph Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom a great deal of inaccurate and puerile history has been written. The truth about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in the discharge o

the Indians were entirely cleared away, made a certain wild history of its own. We had our Deadwood stage line then, and our Deadwood City with all its wild life of drinking, gambling, and shooting-the place where more than one notorious bad man lost his life, and some capable of

lena, on the site of Last Chance Gulch, one recalls that not so long ago citizens could show with a certain contemporary pride the old dead tree once known as "Hangman's Tree." It marked a spot which might be called a focus of the old frontier. Around it, and in the country immediately adjoining, was fou