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MonDak Vigilantesby Curt Heimbuck 3-7-77 | Political Vigilantes | J.C. Collins | Seventy-Four Years Later No Montana history text is complete without mention of vigilantes. Whether they were mining ruffians, cattle rustlers, or anarchists and communists in the Industrial Workers of the World, Montana lore has a fascination with characters whose end came at the end of a rope. The first book published in the Montana Territory was Thomas Dimsdale’s The Vigilantes of Montana, a sympathetic look at the gold camp vigilantes, and the foundation for how most Montanan historians have viewed the episode ever since. Since then, Montana historians have published many more vigilante accounts and in doing so, revised some of the previously held beliefs about the guilt of the victims and the honor of the vigilantes themselves. Such myths die hard, however, and the honor of the vigilantes remains intact. 3-7-77The numbers 3-7-77 have become part of Montana’s lore. The origin and meaning of this group of numbers is still debated, but it is widely recognized as the calling card of the vigilantes. The vigilantes’ victims often had these numbers carved into their corpses or else vigilantes used the numbers as a means to scare off outlaws. These three numbers were even made some what official by their presence on the Montana Highway Patrol’s badge in 1956. The change was suggested by then chief Alex B. Stephenson, a man who would later serve as state treasurer in 1969. The Montana Highway Patrol formed in 1936 (thanks in part to efforts by former “From the Archives” character James Patrick Brennan), that 20 years later, the organization would decide to radically change their insignia is proof of the power and allure of the vigilantes. The best known vigilantes were those in Western Montana—Virginia City and Bannack. These vigilantes reigned in 1863 and 1864, when the United States was too embroiled in a Civil War to take much notice of their territories to the West. The vigilantes grew out of the void of law and order—a void that has been greatly exaggerated but existed for a short time, nonetheless. Movies, books, and faulty memories have magnified that time immensely. These same faulty memories have vindicated the actions of the vigilantes, leading some to canonize them as the first law enforcement in Montana. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question that honor and has also called into question the guilt of some of their victims. In their book, Hanging the Sheriff, Ruth Mather and Fred Boswell question the guilt of the vigilantes’ most famous victim, Bannack Sheriff Henry Plummer. Their book is one of many newly published volumes that take a hard look at the praise historians have blindly heaped on the vigilantes. The Vigilante movement in Western Montana should not overshadow the ugly but sometimes necessary extra-legal forces that took place in other corners of the state. While we best remember the vigilantes from 1863-64, mob justice continued into Montana history. Eastern Montana also saw its fair share of vigilante actions, and while some may see that as a source of pride for the independent minded Eastern Montanan, the fact that many of these actions took place after a system of law enforcement was already in place is disconcerting. While Montana vigilante actions had their beginnings in Virginia City and Bannack, they were a recurring phenomenon, not only in Western Montana, and everywhere else in the West, including the wide open plains of Eastern Montana. It’s impossible to read local histories without stumbling along stories of mob violence that some liked to dress up as justice. Nearly every state or city of some size have books published about the last legal hanging—Watford City, despite it’s small population has one, published by local attorney Dennis Edward Johnson, End of a Rope: The Story of North Dakota’s Last Hanging. What follows are just a few of the vigilante actions that took place in our small portion of the West. It is nowhere near a comprehensive list, but merely a few anecdotes that have stumbled across. We are sure to stumble across more. Stories with as much intrigue, violence, and injustice as vigilante stories do not hide in history for long. Political VigilantesOne form of vigilantism that was one of the darkest periods in Montana’s 20th century history was the political vigilantism that occurred during WWI. While much of these actions centered on labor activites, particularly in Butte, the U.S. entry into WWI quickly escalated them into largely anti-German screeds. The best known victim of this political violence was probably IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, also known as Wobblies) leader Frank Little, who was hanged in Butte in 1919. Members of the press, especially the outspoken Helena Independent editor Thomas Campbell, gave no sympathy to Frank Little, and placed such sentiments on their editorial pages. The Sidney-Herald had this to say about Frank Little’s lynching: Political vigilantes seldom went to the violent lengths of some of their precursors. Instead, their victims found themselves with reputations that left their lives, businesses, and sometimes families in tatters. Often times, these people ended up serving time in Deer Lodge on charges of sedition. For more on this topic, see the History Highlight on R.L. Wyman and the Council of Defense. J.C. Collins Collins was apprehended and taken to jail, but community members soon overpowered the deputies and dragged Collins out of the jail. They hanged him from a tree, riddled his body with bullets, and burned the corpse. The background of these individuals is unclear. And for those of us who do not accept the explanation in the caption of the photograph that J.A. Collins was just a “bad nigger,” his motives also remain unclear. The background of the crime does not paint a sympathetic picture of Collins—he beat a fellow worker’s wife and seemed to have little respect for property transactions—but it’s curious to wonder what pushed him to killing lawmen. That such an event should take place in Mondak—well known for its wild and wooly ways—should be no surprise. Alice Sweetman describes Mondak’s character well in her article “”. In 1920, The Boston Transcript noted the closure of the Mondak depot on the Great Northern in purple and outrageous pose that was the style of the time, referring to Mondak as “a typical swaggering bully of a town, spraddled across the railroad tracks, a clearing house for all the booze, vice, and crime for the surrounding country,” going on to say of Great Northern conductors “that stopped in Mondak had to qualify as fist fighters as well as railroad men.” Seventy-Four Years LaterSeventy-four years later, an event occurred just a few miles from Mondak whose similarities were offset by striking differences. March 17, 1990, James F. Allen shot and killed Fairview Police Chief Orville Sharbono when the officer attempted to serve Allen with civil papers. Unlike Sheriff Courtney and Deputy Burmeister, who were green in police work, Chief Sharbono had served for many years. While witnesses may have claimed that J.C. Collins was a “bad man,” James F. Allen was a certifiably “mad man.” He pleaded insanity and was sent to Warm Springs in early 1991. Newspaper reports of the event recall a certain type of anger and misunderstanding among the Fairview citizens, but those emotions were put into grieving and remembrance rather than vengeance. Times change and perhaps the greatest change is that law and order has been established and citizens trust it to perform justice. Even in what many historians refer to as the last frontier of the MonDak region and despite the constant reminder of its vigilante past on the door of every passing Highway Patrol car, we can be hopeful that the history of vigilantism is behind us. Sources:
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Race entered the picture in the town of Mondak in April of 1913. J.C. Collins, African American who was a laborer on construction of the Fairview bridge shot dead Sheriff Courtney and his deputy Bursmaster when they came to arrest him on an assault charge. After deputizing E.P. Wilson and sending him to the bridge construction camp to ask after Collins, the three Sheriffs ran into Collins, who then shot and killed both Courtney and Bursmaster. The Sidney-Herald’s April 18th issue, the only remaining report of the incident, is quiet on the fate of Deputy Wilson. Although the Yellowstone News reports that Wilson fired a harmless shot at Collins as he fled.