The Vigilantes of Montana, part 6

The Bannack Hangings (1864)

Along with Henry Plummer, the Bannack Vigilantes, led by Wilbur Sanders, hanged Buck Stinson and Ned Ray.

Stinson had murdered two people in cold blood in front of scores of witnesses. One of them, Old Snag, was a venerable man of the Bannack tribe, whose neice was married to Robert Dempsey, an irrepressible Irishman. The second was John Dillingham, who had been Plummer's chief deputy when gold was discovered in Alder Gulch. Old Snag was murdered for target practice in Bannack, and Dillingham reportedly had warned a man that Stinson and another man would rob him.

Ned Ray was hanged for being a robber and part of the conspiracy of terror, but no one ever linked him with any of the murders in the vicinity.

The next day, the Vigilantes went to talk to a man named Joe Pizanthia, a Mexican. When two men knocked at Pizanthia's door and demanded that he come out and talk to them, Pizanthia opened fire, mortally wounding one and slightly wounding the other. The crowd who had joined the Vigilantes went wild. Sanders and the other Vigilante leaders lost control, and a howitzer was brought from Judge Edgerton's house and used to blast Pizanthia's cabin apart. Men dragged the wounded Pizanthia out, shot him repeatedly, hanged him from a pole, and then flung his corpse into the flames of his burning cabin.

In the evening, the Vigilantes hanged Dutch John Wagner in the same unfinished building where Plummer's and Stinson's corpses were laid out. Wagner had been wounded in an attempted holdup, and was identified by that wound. As they prepared to hang him, he asked how long it took to die that way because he had "never seen a man hanged before." Reassured that it would be very quick, he went meekly to his death. But it was not quick, because he was a big strong man, and his body refused to give up. He strangled and choked on the rope for several minutes.

(Next: The Virginia City Hangings)

 

This site by Byte Savvy, LLC. Text & Graphics © Carol Buchanan