W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M
49
Groups of private citizens who organized to punish rob-
bers, murderers, horse and cattle thieves in pre-territorial
and territorial Montana operated under the code of Vigi-
lance Committees. In 1864, the Vigilance Committee of Al-
der Gulch, soon called simply "the vigilantes," had imposed
the "hempen solution" on 21 local men accused of robbery.
e next year, the Alder Gulch vigilantes posted a public
notice in Virginia City announcing their intention to "inflict
summary punishment upon any and all malefactors in any
case where the civil authorities are unable to enforce the
proper penalty of the law." Readers of that notice inclined
toward "malefaction" might well have remembered the
lynchings dealt the year before by this watchful gang.
Vigilantism, whether practiced in the western Ameri-
can frontier or at other points of the globe, takes its name
from the Latin verb vigilare, "to keep awake." Vigilantes are
etymologically obliged to "stay awake and alert" to the deeds
of malefactors and scoundrels. Vigilante is related to vigor,
surveillance and vigil, a time to "keep watch."
One of the earliest citations of the word vigilante occurs
in American journalist Albert Dean Richardson's 1865
travel memoir Beyond the Mississippi, From the Great River
to the Great Ocean, Life and Adventures on the Prairies,
Mountains and Pacific Coast. Dean writes, "e power [in
Montana] is vested in the 'Vigilantes', a secret tribunal of
citizens, organized before civil laws were framed."
All about gambling,
vigilantes & gallows
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