The Record and the Rope
Levi Boone Helm (1828–1864) left no letters, no diary, and no confession anyone thought worth copying down in full. What survives of him comes almost entirely from other people: the men who arrested him, the men who hanged him, and the chroniclers who wrote up the frontier afterward. Accounts of his youth describe a reckless show-off who could throw a Bowie knife into the ground and snatch it up from the saddle at a full gallop, and who once rode his horse up the courthouse stairs to harangue a sitting judge.
Nathaniel Langford, who knew the Montana camps, recorded Helm boasting that he had killed many men and had at times been "obliged to feed on some of 'em."
Chronology
Levi Boone Helm is born in Lincoln County, Kentucky, to Joseph B. Helm and Nancy Wilcox Helm.
The family settles in Jackson Township, Monroe County, Missouri.
Helm marries Lucinda Frances Browning. Their daughter, Lucy, is born. Lucinda later petitions for divorce.
Helm stabs his cousin Littlebury Shoot, is pursued, convicted and committed to an asylum, and escapes.
Robberies and killings reported in California and Oregon.
Snowbound on the road to Fort Hall. John W. Powell finds Helm at an Indian camp and takes him to Salt Lake City.
Gold on Grasshopper Creek; Bannack rises. In Florence, Idaho, Helm shoots an unarmed man known as Dutch Fred, and is later freed after witnesses are paid off.
Time in Texas; drifts north again.
Idaho Territory is organized.
Gold in Alder Gulch; Virginia City grows up along it.
George Ives is tried and hanged at Nevada City. The vigilance committee forms.
Sheriff Henry Plummer is hanged at Bannack.
Helm is hanged at Virginia City with Jack Gallagher, George Lane, Frank Parish and Haze Lyons.
Montana Territory is created.
Thomas J. Dimsdale publishes The Vigilantes of Montana.
Nathaniel P. Langford publishes Vigilante Days and Ways.
Dates marked c. or given as periods are approximate. Early accounts disagree on many particulars; treat specifics as reported rather than proven.
Further Reading
- Thomas J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana (1866)
- Nathaniel P. Langford, Vigilante Days and Ways (1890)
- Emerson Hough, The Story of the Outlaw (1907)
- R.E. Mather and F.E. Boswell, Hanging the Sheriff (1987)
- Frederick Allen, A Decent, Orderly Lynching (2004)