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The story begins like a cinematic cliche from a Hollywood Western but plays out like a Greek tragedy. Act one: A professional gambler and a cavalry trooper confront each other in a frontier saloon. The source of contention? The affections of a “fair, but morally frail, damsel.” Their conversation becomes tense, then angry, laced with profanity. Suddenly, the gambler draws a pistol, fires a single shot, and mortally wounds the soldier. Act two: A few days later, the trooper’s comrades break into the county jail, drag the gambler to a corner of the courthouse square, and lynch him. Act three: The county judge convenes a grand jury which indicts a half dozen troopers for first-degree murder. He empanels a jury and gavels in the trial. Witness after witness provide alibis for the soldiers. Finally, the jury files into a private room to deliberate. What will follow? Law or retribution? Is this a scene from Hang ‘em High? Rio Bravo? The Many Who Shot Liberty Valence? Who plays the lead role? John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Stewart?
No. These events occurred in Walla Walla in 1891, even before onions, even before grapes. The Walla Walla lynching was an act of vigilante justice. Vigilantism, when private citizens took the law into their own hands, reflected the belief that existing legal systems could not maintain law and order in the rough and chaotic life of the frontier. The resulting trial, however, was an act of civilization, proving that a sophisticated Walla Walla community could achieve justice through law and not retribution.
Terry Gottschall taught European history for forty-one years before retiring from Walla Walla University in 2019. He still practices the craft of history with research interests in early Walla Walla baseball and 19th-century German naval operations in East Asia. He and his wife Merry reside in Walla Walla, where they entertain their four grandchildren all too rarely!
An earlier version of this presentation appeared as “Let the Law Take its Course’: Vigilante Justice in Walla Walla, 1891,” Columbia 26 (2012): 20-27.