The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1920-04-09
STEAMER LUElLA CARRIED RICHEST CARGO
EVER TAKEN DOWN THE MISSOURI RIVER

of the Union armies, shaking a thirs
for adventure which the battlefield
had only stimulated, and gladly Civ.
ing the hand of fellowship to their
former foes.
Vigilantes of Fort Benton
Here mingled miners from. Califor-
MIA, farmers from the Atlantic sea-
| board, fur traders and trappers from
the vanishing northwestern wilder
ness, clergymen, hardened despera-
does and heroes of law and order;
every type and condition of man the
country could produce, gathered to-
gether by one common aim and i'm
pulse, the pursuit of wealth.
From the naked hills whose sum-
mits overtopped the settlement, saw
age and war loving Indians looked
down sullenly upon the invading
whites, seeing in every freight wagon
that left the levee for the distant
mines another contribution to the
forces which were slowly dispossess-
ing them of their native prairies;
hearing in every whistle-blast from
the crawling steamboats, the hoarse
challenge of civilization to barbar-
ism. A short distance along the
river bank from the new town loom
ed the massive but crumbling walls
of old Fort Benton, which for
score of years had stood guard over
the whites who had come to trade
with the Indians. It's days of use
fulness and its glory as an outpost
of the wilderness had already passed,
for near 1t now stood settlement of
white men strong enough in numbers
to defy the Indians.
Over in the far gold camps the
Vigilance committee, stern enforcer
of the laws of the frontier, had fin
ished its work of cleaning up their
country of road agents
and other desperadoes, but as yet the
feeble arm of the new territorial gov
had not yet gained strength |
to reach from Virginia City to Fort |
Benton, and here the Vigilance COM !
mittee still ruled supreme.
The men of the Fort Benton Vigil |
Iantes, of whom practically nothing
has been written and little is remem-
Oered today, did not meet in formal |
to pass upon the fate of
criminals. A few low words spoken
n passing as members met each
other on their daily business; a vote
aiken in the same manner, and per-
laps the rising sun of the next morn
ng would see still form hanging
~ the neck before one of the trading
houses. Or it might be that some
inister-looking individual would
lave disappeared from his familiar
launts, never to return-fled in the
hight from some grim warning he ;
lid not dare to question or resist.
Stern and Uncompromising
The law of the Fort Benton Vigil {
ance committee was as stern and un- !
as that of it's neighbor-
ng body of the gold camps, but it
vas seldom unjust, for even the ex-
remity of its punishments found ex-
use in the chaotic conditions that
btained. {
In Fort Benton so great had be- J
ONE the terror inspired by it's con- S
tant menace of swift vengeance up /
n evil doors that Captain Marsh saw /
len ride in from the mines, fling
own their saddles, with sacks of a
old dust tied to the cantles, upon q
lie floor of 1. G.. Baker & Company's C
ore and go off on a weeks spree, S
find when they sobered up and re- {
lrned for their property that it had a
OF been touched. a
While the Luella was unloading, p