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Bend Oregon New
Vigilante Justice - Part 1
In the 1850’s, at the time of the great migration west, the Ochoco
country of Central Oregon was a land rich in grass, timber, and water:
a vast oasis on the high desert plateau. It was a stockman’s paradise
for both cattle and sheep where drovers pushed herds to graze in the
lush grasslands watered by the Crooked River.
The rich market for beef seemed unlimited when a drive to Portland or
the Union Pacific railhead in Utah could fetch 18-dollars a head.
By 1868 a squatter named Barney Prine hammered together ramshackle
buildings on the banks of the Crooked River. From his rustic location
he began serving cowboys, whatever they needed. He was blacksmith,
storekeeper and bartender.
Prine bought his whiskey by the barrel to help cowboys clear the trail
dust from their throats. Horseshoes were forged from the iron of
abandoned wagon trains that still littered the valley. It was the
beginning of a settlement that would carry Barney Prine’s name and be
the hub of conflicting interests over the next 40 years.
In the beginning the presence of competing interests made little
difference. There was plenty of land for everyone.
Homesteaders would squat on rangeland and rub shoulders with cattlemen
who were crowded by horse breeders and sheepherders. It created the
kind of friction that ultimately led to violence and vigilantes.
The real trouble started when barbed wire fences began to appear. It
was the cheapest, surest way to define and maintain a claim to any
land holding, whether it was legally recognized or not.
In 1881 Crook County had not yet been formed, and law in the Ochoco
was loosely provided out of the Wasco County seat in The Dalles.
The country was too big to be policed by a lone deputy and a city
marshal, and cattlemen were becoming restless. Sheepherders were
destroying their grassland, homesteaders were rustling their cattle,
and squatters were creating problems with water rights, or so they
said.
To protect their interests, the cattleman formed a stockmen’s
protective association.
The prime mover in the Association was Colonel William “Bud” Thompson,
a veteran of the Modoc Indian War and a former newspaperman who
published a newspaper in Salem that supported Governor Lafayette
Grover. His political connections were formidable and he brought
those connections with him when he began ranching on the Ochoco.
His brother, S.G. Thompson, was appointed the first judge when Crook
County was formed in October 1882. Political influence and powerful
connections would make the former newspaperman virtually untouchable
by the law for his involvement with the Vigilante movement.
March 15, 1881 was cold and bleak on the rangelands. Blizzard
conditions threatened and little movement occurred, which is possibly
why A.H. Crooks and his son-in-law, Stephen Jory, chose this time to
blaze fence lines on government land along Willow Creek in the Grizzly
area. They were working in an area disputed by Lucious Langdon, a
neighboring rancher. But who would be around to witness their work in
such miserable weather?
The sound in the cold morning air of the axes biting deep into juniper
betrayed their presence. Langdon, who was returning to his home with
supplies from town, found Jory and Crooks. In a rage, Langdon
unlimbered his rifle, killed the two men, and fled on horseback.
A few hours later the bodies were discovered by Garret Maupin who
galloped to Prineville with news of the crime. A posse formed under
Wasco Deputy Sheriff J.L. Luckey including one of Langdon’s employees,
W. H. Harrison.
After a long night’s search some of the posse members, who belonged to
the stockmen’s association, broke away and returned to Prineville.
Historians believe this group formed the nucleus of vigilantes in
their first act of violence in the Ochoco.
On the second day of the search Jim Blakely, former Marshal of
Brownsville and now a rancher in the Ochoco, joined the posse. On a
hunch they returned to the Langdon ranch, found the fugitive and
placed him under arrest.
Blakely was a trusted member of the community who ran a spread in the
Hay Creek area next to Bud Thompson’s place. While they
were neighbors, the two men never saw eye-to-eye on the law and order
issues that were to make them adversaries in the years ahead.
Blakely’s posse turned Langdon over to the custody of Deputy Luckey,
and turned in for the night. In the meantime, Langdon’s hired hand,
Harrison, was also taken into custody although he was innocent of any
crime and was in Prineville at the time of the murders.
Langdon and Harrison were both held in a hotel bar during the night,
and what happened next was a prelude to two years of law by the rope
and gun.
Colonel Thompson was one of those inside the hotel. In his memoir,
published decades later, the Colonel would write: “..a deputy and a
Marshal guarded the street door, while I kept watch on the back door.
Harrison was sitting near me and started to tell me all about the
murder...just as four men sprang upon the two officers and bore them
to the floor.... All were masked...as Langdon sprang to his feet one
of them struck him with his pistol. The weapon discharged and they
then emptied their revolvers into his body...other men placed a rope
around the neck of Harrison and as he was rushed past me he wailed
‘for God’s sake save my life and I will tell it all!’”
Few witnesses to the event would tell the same story, but the fate of
W. H. Harrison was sealed,when the rope around his neck and was
twisted about the pommel of the saddle; of one of the masked men who
took off at a gallop for Crooked River Bridge. At daybreak,
Harrison’s body was found hanging from the bridge.
Jim Blakely would later testify for the record that he saw W.H.
Harrison in Prineville on the day of the murders, and that Harrison
rode with the first posse in pursuit of Langdon. Blakely called
“...the killing of Harrison nothing less than the murder of an
innocent man.”
Blakely challenged the report written to The Dalles by Deputy Luckey
who said Harrison had been under arrest. Blakely had earlier refused
to serve an arrest warrant on Harrison because there was no reason in
law to do so.
It was the beginning of a confrontation that would lead Blakely to
become Sheriff of Prineville and the man who broke the grip of the
vigilantes on the Ochoco.
But, for another two years Prineville, Oregon, would live under a
virtual reign of terror imposed by masked riders imposing frontier
justice in the dark of night. Instead of pursuing criminals outside
the law, the vigilantes of the Ochoco rode for power through
intimidation and brutality, and when they chose, by kidnapping,
lynching and murder.
Copyright Rick Meyers 2004
Vigilante Fiction, Vigilante Fact - Part 2
Historians have been writing about the
exaggerated, treatment, the myth of the old west has been given; that
gun-slingin’, posse chasin’, bushwhackin’, cowboys and Indians are
simply unsupported mythology.
But historic revisionists need to be careful
not to sanitize reality. There were isolated periods of time when
violence and pure, unvarnished terrorism were rampant.
It was 1881 that vigilante justice was formed in the heart of Oregon’s
Ochoco country, and Prineville was the organizational
center.
Following an
incident in Prineville, in which one man was gunned down and the other
lynched, vigilantes began sending letters inviting recipients to leave
the country or face death. A crudely drawn skull and cross bones
signature punctuated each letter. Some, few who received the threats
were likely rustlers and thieves, but others were simply ranchers and
neighbors who opposed the violence and refused to join the ranks of
the masked riders who reign terror, would last two more years.
At the same time
another group emerged in Prineville called the “stock association”,
thought by some to be a cover for the vigilantes. Openly demanding,
the group allowed that no movement could take place on rangeland
without an order from them. Jim Blakely, a rancher much admired
locally, ignored the stockmen. “I was born in this Oregon country,”
Blakely wrote, “and I’ll be damned if anyone is going to tell me when
I can go out after my own stock.”
Blakely responded
by arming his riders and made sure the town knew it. His riders were
never openly challenged, but they were the reported targets of several
failed ambush attempts.
During this period,
Prineville had become a widely respected horse-breeding center.
Saloon keep Til Glaze was a leader in equestrian events and he kept
his stock ranch operating at Black Butte. The best of the breed were
tested at horse races during the summer and the vigilantes frequently
influenced the outcome of those events, by intimidating jockeys to
throw the races.
A young rider named
Charles Luster was told by the vigilantes to throw a race. Betting
heavily on another horse, the vigilantes lost when Luster ignored
their warnings and rode to victory. Luster would die for his
defiance, but he would not die alone.
Al Swarts, a family
man who had befriended Luster, kept a small ranch outside of
Prineville. Vigilantes claimed he made his own herd grow by rounding
up strays and changing the brands with a running iron. He was shot in
the back while playing cards at Burmeister’s saloon.
That same night
masked riders caught up with jockey Luster and a local boy named
William Huston who was born and raised on Willow Creek. The two were
hung from a juniper tree then shot in the back of the
head.
Like modern day
terrorist the vigilantes publicly claimed credit for the lynching,
posting notices that Swarts, Luster and Huston, were executed for
running cattle out of the country. But men like Jim Blakely also knew
that Swarts had been openly critical of the vigilantes for their role
in the lynching of W. H. Harrison earlier that year.
The reign of terror
continued. Bushwhackers killed Steve Staats from ambush near Powell
Butte. Diminutive Shorty Davis, a well-liked rancher on the Crooked
River disappeared mysteriously one day, never to be seen again.
Blakely began
organizing a counter group called The Citizens Protective Union.
Meeting at night, the group was quickly nicknamed the “Moonshiners.”
Their mission in the beginning was simply to observe the movements of
the nightriders. The “Moonshiners” became an early warning system,
thwarting the moves of the vigilantes against defenseless ranchers and
settlers.
It was the death of
the Mogan brothers that finally united the Ochoco against the
vigilantes.
On June 7, 1882,
Mike Mogan was confronted in Burmeister’s Saloon by 17-year-old J.M.
“Mossy” Barnes. Mossy was son of the local Justice of the Peace and a
friend of the influential Colonel Bud Thompson.
Mossy demanded six
dollars he claimed Mogan owed him. Mogan didn’t have the money and
Barnes shot him. Barnes high tailed it to hide out at Black Butte
until it was safe to go back to Prineville, for a hearing that
acquitted him.
Later, Mike Mogan’s
brother Frank, believing the gun to have been provided by Thompson,
threatened to kill the Colonel.
Nearly a year
later, Frank Mogan was gunned down by Colonel Thompson. The Thompson
version of the encounter finds Frank Mogan drawing first, not clearing
his gun fast enough, and falling in a hail of bullets fired by
Thompson.
But Jim Blakely, a
witness to the shooting at Dick Graham’s Saloon, said Thompson shot
Frank Mogan in the back of the head, then emptied his gun into Mogan’s
body.
Despite the
testimony of Blakely the Grand Jury investigating the crime found “Not
a true bill”. Despite the court findings of his adventures with the
vigilantes, Thompson had been receiving bad press, particularly from
Portland’s Oregonian newspaper. His brother, a local court judge,
gave him simple and straightforward advice: “Get out of town.”
But before Thompson
could leave, Blakely summoned all 75 of his “Moonshiners” for a
daylight ride down the main street of Prineville. Witnesses called
the sight “the ride of the Crooked River Cavalry.” All 75 stopped in
front of the vigilante’s hangout, Burmeister’s Saloon.
Blakely shouted to
the gunslingers inside that if there were another death in the Ochoco
at the hands of the masked riders, retribution would be swift. All of
them were now known to the “Moonshiners” and each of Blakely’s riders
had the name of a vigilante to execute.
No one left the
Saloon to challenge the small army of determined citizen waiting
outside. By one simple act the vigilante movement was broken.
Indian fighter and
one time newspaper publisher Thompson slipped out of town quietly for
California. In Alturas he succeeded in forming another group of crime
fighting vigilantes. He died shortly after the turn of the century,
victim of a gunshot wound inflicted by a “mentally deranged escapee.”
“Mossy” Barnes,
despondent over his role in the death of Mike Mogan, hung himself in
the attic of the family home.
Neither Thompson
nor Barnes succeeded in extinguishing the Mogan Family line. Before
his death, Frank Mogan married Mike’s widow. Their grandson, Farley,
would become Superintendent of the Oregon State Police.
Blakely was elected
sheriff of Crook County in 1884, but only served two years before
leaving the area for the Wallowas where his reputation followed him
and he served four more years as a peace officer. He died in 1953,
more than 100 years old.
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