“THE MAKERS AND MAKING OF MONTANA, OREGON, WYOMING”: NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD’S VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS, 1890

LANGFORD, Nathaniel Pitt. Vigilante Days and Ways. The Pioneers of the Rockies. The Makers and Making of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Boston: J.G. Cupples, 1890. Two volumes. Octavo, original russet pictorial cloth, patterned endpapers.

First edition of this “regional classic in the literature of the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest,” with 15 engraved plates.

Concentrates on Montana vigilante justice, relations with the Native Americans, the exploration of Yellowstone, the Gold Rush, and many other defining events of the early West. “One of the best works on the Montana vigilantes and the Plummer gang of road agents” (Adams, Six Guns, 606). “Much and valuable frontier history is to be found in this work, in which the author presents with clear view the strange scenes and singular characters of that strongly colored period” (Cowan, 134). Suffering from poor health, Langford traveled from the Midwest to the Western territories as third in command on Fisk’s Northern Overland Expedition of 1862. Eventually, he left the main party and headed for the outpost of Bannack in present-day Montana, which became a crucial stopping point during the Gold Rush, which began the year he arrived. “In the early years the area experienced more than a hundred acts of violence, mostly robbery but some homicides, and a number of miners, most or all of them masons, copied the example of San Francisco… and formed a committee of vigilance to bring order to a lawless area still without police or judges. Langford served on the executive committee of the Montana vigilantes. His 1890 two-volume reminiscence, Vigilante Days and Ways, was a popular book that has become a sort of regional classic in the literature of the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. Although the author was still secretive about ‘Judge Lynch’ 30 years after the application of lynching law to Montana and refused to name his vigilante colleagues… Langford’s vigilantes brought to justice the most notorious gang of outlaws headed by the crooked sheriff Henry Plummer, whom they hanged in Bannack on 10 January 1864” (ANB). After Montana became an official U.S. territory, Langford became a controversial political personality, drifting in and out of office as U.S collector of internal revenue and nearly becoming governor of Montana. However, Langford’s most lasting fame is as one of the early explorers and founders of Yellowstone National Park, as well as its first Superintendent. Howes L78. Jones 1661. Graff 2390. Soliday II:775. Eberstadt 105:184.

Interiors fine; most minor rubbing to spine ends. A bright, clean copy in fine condition.