A Tenderfoot in Montana.A Tenderfoot Tenderfoot told that cowpunching is a cinch, is badly hurt when he tries it and is tossed. [Am. Balladry: “The Tenderfoot”] See : Gullibility In Montana Francis M. Thompson Montana Historical Society Press PO Box 201201, Helena, MT 59620-1201 0972152229 $14.95 1-800-243-9900 www.montanahistoricalsociety.org Aptly edited and with an informative introduction for contemporary readers by Kenneth N. Owens, A Tenderfoot In Montana: Reminiscences Of The God Rush, The Vigilantes vigilantes (vĭjĭlăn`tēz), members of a vigilance committee. Such committees were formed in U.S. frontier communities to enforce law and order before a regularly constituted government could be established or have real authority. , And The Birth Of Montana Territory The Montana Territory was an organized territory of the United States that existed between 1864 and 1889. The territory was organized out of the existing Idaho Territory by Act of Congress and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 28, 1864. is Frank Thompson's autobiography detailing his experiences in the upper Missouri country at the beginning of the Montana gold rush. Avoiding the Civil War, Thompson had headed west aboard a steamboat steamboat: see steamship. steamboat or steamship Watercraft propelled by steam; more narrowly, a shallow-draft paddle-wheel steamboat widely used on rivers in the 19th century, particularly the Mississippi River and its tributaries. from St. Louis in 1862, arriving at Fort Benton (in what would eventually become the Montana Territory) and lived their for two and a half years searching for gold, running a Bannack mercantile business, traveling to the Pacific Coast, serving in Montana's first territorial legislature, and speculating in mining properties. Having a relationship with sheriff Henry Plummer, Thompson draws upon his intimate personal knowledge of one of the deadliest incidents of vigilante vigilante n. someone who takes the law into his/her own hands by trying and/or punishing another person without any legal authority. In the 1800s groups of vigilantes dispensed "frontier justice" by holding trials of accused horse-thieves, rustlers and shooters, and justice in American frontier history. A Tenderfoot In Montana is a welcome and informative contribution to 19th Century American Western History Studies collections and highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in how the Montana Territory developed during the mid-1860s. |
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