Pickett Corral
Nellie Ireton Mills. All Along the River/Territorial and Pioneer Days on the Payette. Privately printed for Payette Radio Limited, p. 49f:
The three types of criminals causing the most trouble were: (1) horse thieves, preying on the packers and other travelers on the Basin road, and on the ranchers; (2) road agents, or highwaymen, who operated in gangs ready to pounce on packers and others transporting gold from the Basin, making it extremely difficult for the miners to get their dust to the banks in Portland; (3) peddlers of bogus gold dust, The chief rendezvous in the valley for these deperate men was at Pickett Corral, five miles above Emmett near the present Plaza Ranch, just before the road took to the hills. Here, in a natural rocky recess, stolen horses were hidden and outlaws of various kinds built several buildings and corrals. Here they met to plan their forays - men with criminal records from all over the West.
The lawless element quickly took over the natural recess at the base of the foothills, five miles above the present Emmett, and built the notorious Pickett Corral rendezvous, headquarters for thieves, bandits, murderers, bogus-dust operators, and all outlaws, under guise of a "stopping place." Near the pine-log station was a corral built of ten-foot logs standing on end. An underground passage is said to have connected the house and corral The following names have sifted down through the years as proprietors of the place: John Price, Sam Wakefield, Lew Roadpath, Paddy Miles, and Scotty Wooley.
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Pickett's Corral Idaho State Historical Society Reference Series, No. 253:
"Picket's Corral, located at the head of the valley east of Emmett, is a natural lava rock corral. Tradition identifies this as the base for a band of horse thieves who operated in the vicinity when settlement began in the valley below. At the time of the gold rush of 1862-1864, the corral provided an ideal base for such a gang. Well concealed, it receives a limited water supply from a small stream which flows through the corral from the center of a rock wall. W. J. McConnell, a member of the Payette vigilance committee and later a United States senator and governor, remembered Picket's Corral as a hideout not only for horse thieves, but for bogus dust peddlers as well. McConnell also explained how his vigilantes succeeded in breaking up the Picket Corral gang and the Washoe Ferry outlaws. The Payette vigilantes took credit for making the area safe for the law abiding citizens."
See Early History of Idaho, by William John McConnell for his account
Boon Helm
Nellie Ireton Mills. All Along the River/Territorial and Pioneer Days on the Payette. Privately printed for Payette Radio Limited, p. 81:
According to all historical accounts, the West had no more hardened, heartless criminal than Tex Boone Helm. He was known and feared all over Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the coastal states, and was a member of the outlaw Plummer gang.
Perhaps slightly before the Fullers settled on the island or about that time, one of the West's most noted criminals established his wife and small daughter in a cabin there. It is supposed that he was connected in some manner with the and was a member of the outlaw Plummer gang. Many historical writers say he was hanged at Virginia City, Montana, but Emmett people who knew Mrs. Helm, say this was a mistake and that his wife had later word of him in Walla Walla. Coming from a respectable family in Illinois and evidently a nice woman, Mrs. Helm believed his stories of business taking him away, etc., and that it was often necessary for him to make long night rides to visit his family. A pioneer resident who saw him once, described him as a tall, fine-looking, well-dressed man, riding a splendid black horse. Left without funds, his wife began to work for Emmett people and soon, at the Fullers' urgent suggestion, moved from the island into town. Later she went to live in Boise and sent her little daughter to her family in Illinois. Before too long, a well-known Boise resident assisted her in packing her valise when she left for Walla Walla to try and contact her husband, in whom she still seemed to have at least a remnant of faith. She never was heard from again and the mysterious fate of Boone Helm and his wife is still unknown. Several letters were received by Boise people from texie, the little daughter, as she tried in vain to locate her parents.
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Helm background
Banditti of the Rocky Mountains and Vigilance Committee of Idaho; Anonymous, Notes and Bibliography by Jerome Peltier, p. 110:
Jack Gallager, Boon Helm, Hays Lyons, Charles Skinner, and a fellow by the name of Red, were arrested, all of whom had been previously condemned by the Committee.
These notorious roughs were now marched, one after the other, into P. Fout’s store!9, where an officer of the Committee read the sentence of death to each, as they passed in. Here they were guarded until a temporary gallows could be erected, which was immediately done in front of Mr. Wilson’s store, in this wise: A post was erected in the street opposite, and at a reasonable distance from Mr. Wilson’s sign- post; a cross-beam was then made fast from the top of the sign-post to the other, and the victims brought forward.
Standing upon the scaffold erected for the occasion, with hemp nooses that were soon to environ their necks, dangling above their heads, and surrounded by an enraged multitude, yet unshaken and complacent, they stood, as though it was but an every day occurrence, although in the very jaws of death, and when asked if they had anything to say before their execution should take place, Boon Helm jestingly, and as a last request, asked for a glass of liquor, which was immediately presented to him, whereupon he turned to his comrades and drank their health, then returning the glass, he again turned upon his heel, and said to his comrades, “boys, I’ll meet you in hell in five minutes.”
Whether he kept his promise, or not, the writer is unable to say; but one thing we do know, and that is this, that during the following five minutes, their hands were tied behind them, the above mentioned nooses hastily adjusted about their necks, the scaffold knocked from under them, and the five, side by side, were swinging between the heavens and the earth, while their souls were launched into the shoreless regions of eternity, and thus ended the bloody career of five of the most reckless characters that ever infested any country.
A decent, orderly lynching: the Montana vigilantes, by Frederick Allen. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004, p. 244f.
The fifth man marked for execution by the vigilantes had perpetrated no known crimes in the Montana gold camps, but his past was so appalling that it seems accurate to say he was condemned on general principle. Boone Helm had killed a friend in his native Missouri with a knife in a fit of drunken meanness, had killed another man in a bar fight in California, and most infamously had survived a horrific, snowbound winter in the Sierra Nevada mountains by means of cannibalism, which he freely admitted and occasionally bragged about. As Dimsdale put it, "Helm was the most hardened, cool, and deliberate scoundrel of the whole band, and murder was a mere pastime to him." Nathaniel Langford, another chronicler of the period, called Helm "one of those hideous monsters of depravity whom neither precept nor example could have saved from a life of crime." His very existence seemed to frighten the vigilantes to the point they were determined to elimimate him. The sixth and final man on the list, William Hunter, was accused vaguely of having robbed an unnamed Mormon miner on the road to Salt Lake City. Hunter escaped from Virginia City on the same night the vigilantes sentenced him to death, quite possibly because some of them disagreed with the decision and tipped him off. In his memoirs, Pfouts claims that around this time a man named Harrison "fired off his pistol and swore he would kill me and others," but it proved an empty threat and Harrison was not targeted by the committee.
At ten o'clock, the executive officer of the committee, James Williams, gathered a large force at the foot of Wallace Sueet and dispatched them to find and arrest the wanted men. "I saw them march in perfect order up the street a hundred yards or so, halt and receive some orders, and disperse in squads," settler Chauncey Barbour recalled. One of the units, led by Wilbam "Old Man" Clark, entered a saloon called the California Exchange and emerged moments later with Jack Gallagher in custody. Frank Parish was taken in a store, George Lane at his cobbler’s bench, Boone Helm in the street in front of a hotel, and Hayes Lyons in a cabin above town, cooking breakfast. None of them resisted arrest, a phenomenon Clark dismissed as showing they were cowards when sober. Fortunately for the vigilantes, Helm was suffering from a badly infected finger on his right hand and wore a sling when he was detained, or he might have tested Clark’s notion.
At gunpoint, the five captured men were brought before Pfouts and his committee in a store on Wallace Street and confronted with the findings against them. All professed innocence, and Helm earned a place in Montana legend by offering to swear on the Bible that he had done nothing wrong. Fascinated by what they considered a brazen display of apostasy, the vigilantes produced a copy of the Good Book, which Helm made a show of kissing. "I am as innocent as the babe unborn," he swore. "I never killed anyone, or robbed or defrauded any man." He then asked one of the members of the executive committee if he could speak with him in private. Taken into a smaller back room, Helm asked if there were any possible way he could escape execution. Told there was not, he confessed to the two earlier killings in Missouri and California and also admitted breaking out of jail in Oregon. But he insisted he had no association with Henry Plummer and no involvement in crime in the Montana gold camps. Pressed to admit anything he knew about the sheriff and his alleged criminal conspiracy, Helm answered, "Ask Jack Gallagher. He knows more than I do."
According to Dimsdale, the vigilantes had arranged to place all of the captives within earshot of each other, and Helm’s accusation provoked an angry, profane outburst from Gallagher, who was hidden behind a partition. The interrogation of the prisoners, meant to turn them against one another and provoke accusations and confessions, yielded mixed results. Parish admitted complicity in the recent crime wave, disclosing that he had participated in the holdup of the stagecoach carrying "Bummer Dan" McFadden. “Until his confession,” Dimsdale wrote, "it was not known that he had any share in the robbery of the coach." . . On his way out of the store, Gallagher briefly broke free, pulled a knife from his clothes, and tried to place it to his throat, meaning to kill him- self rather than suffer the stigma of being hanged. But he was disarmed, and Helm warned him to get a grip and "not make a damned fool" of himself. "There’s no use in being afraid to die" Helm said.
Helm alone seemed intent on treating the occasion with rude, stoic humor. After the interrogations, the others had asked for prayer or the chance to write a letter or settle their affairs; Helm asked for a shot of whiskey. Now, in the street, he cast a sidelong glance at the handsome U.S. cavalry coat Gallagher was wearing, "Jack!" he called out. "Give me your coat. You never gave me anything," Helm spoke to several men he recognized in the crowd, saying to one, "They've got me this time!" and to another, "They've got me sure!" Tiring of the sanctity of the farewells, he barked to the vigilantes; "I wish you'd stop this damned foolishness and take me on and hang me. I don’t want to stand here all day in the cold."
The death throes of the first two men did nothing to discourage the defiance of Helm "Kick away, old fellow." he called to Gallagher. "I'll be in hell with you in a minute." Then he shouted to the crowd, "Every man for his principles! Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Let‘er rip!" With the name of his beloved president of the Confederacy still echoing from his lips, Helm was dropped, dying quickly as the noose snapped his neck. Parish, who had remained quiet through the entire ordeal, asked that a handkerchief be tied over his head. This was done, and he, too, died cleanly. On the way to the gallows, Lyons had asked to say farewell co his mistress, a request the vigilantes denied, fearing the effects of tears and sentiment on the crowd. Now he simply asked that she be given his gold watch. And he asked chat his body be taken down and given a decent burial. With these final words, Lyons joined the others.
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