From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library:

When the following Walla Walla story appeared in the Washington Statesman August 23, 1862, the town was newly incorporated and, with a population inching toward 1000, the largest city in Washington Territory.

If there was ever any doubt that Washington was part of the Old West, this article will put that to rest. When a newspaper actually promotes a little “judicious hanging” you know you are reading about lawless times:

Horse Thieves.

 Horse thieves are becoming, in this particular locality, a most intolerable nuisance. Many of the finest horses in the country have already been taken, and the prospect is highly favorable, if things keep on in this way, for the mysterious disappearance of the remainder. During the week past, some twenty-three horses have been stolen from persons living in town and near by in the country. So far, the owners have been unable to recover them, or get any traces of the direction taken by the thieves. It is supposed, from the fact they have never been seen driving off the horses, that they at once proceed with them to the mountains, where they remain until the accustomed few days search for the animals is over, and after thus eluding the vigilance of pursuers, select their opportunities for getting them out of the country and to a market. The fact that bands of a dozen horses have been driven from one ranch, proves that horse stealing has become a professional business with a class of men, and it is also evident that their arrangements for the disposition of these stolen animals are pretty thoroughly perfected, as they have hitherto escaped suspicion.

 That our country is infested with bands of thieving scoundrels who follow stealing for a living, we have almost daily evidences; and having thus far failed to detect and bring them to punishment, the adoption of some means whereby this result can be attained, becomes a matter of serious concern on the part of the people generally as the property of all is liable to be taken.

 How to catch them, or their ring-leaders, is a more difficult question we apprehend in the public mind, than the manner of their punishment when once caught. We should advise an organization of men for the purpose of hunting out the hiding-places of these desperadoes, as the only effective method of procedure. Until this is done, we have no hope of either bringing the thieves to punishment, or of recovering the animals stolen. As to the manner of punishment, we should advise a little “judicious hanging” in the case of every horse thief caught. While we are not generally in favor of the infliction of this kind of summary punishment, we believe the circumstances of the present time call for and justify more effective and sure means of punishing these offenders than the slow and very uncertain course of the law secures. We have to deal with a horde of desperate outlaws, who set law at defiance, and laugh at its puny efforts. Gathered from all points of the compass, they are no doubt acting in concert in inaugurating a high-handed system of plunder, which if allowed to develop itself, will render property totally insecure throughout the upper country. Our jails and county prisons are but so many escape-places for these desperate characters, every one of whom has a friend on the outside who is ready to furnish the appliances for effecting an escape. A speedy check must be placed upon the proceedings of these dastardly scape-graces, or the most deplorable results will follow their operations.

 The Washington Statesman is one of the newspapers we have digitized here at WSL.

Within three years of the above article, a vigilance committee was created in Walla Walla and it had a brief but very effective record of accomplishment. William D. Lyman in his Lyman’s history of old Walla Walla County : embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties (1918) explained:

The general supposition is that the most prominent citizens of Walla Walla were either actively or by their support concerned in the organization. They had secret meetings and passed upon cases brought before them with great promptness, but with every attempt to get out the essential facts. In case they decided that the community would be better without some given individual, that individual would receive an intimation to that effect. In case he failed to act upon the suggestion within a few hours, he was likely to be found adorning some tree in the vicinity of the town the next morning. Although to modern ideas the Vigilantes seem rather frightful members of the judiciary, yet it is doubtless true that that swift and summary method of disposing of criminals was necessary at that time and that as a result of it there was a new reign of law and order.

 WSL has also digitized Mr. Lyman’s work.

According to Robert Bennett in his Walla Walla monographic set (1980), at least a dozen men were either shot or hung as a result of vigilante justice. A favorite hanging tree “with a peculiar bend in it” on South Second St. near the cemetery burned to the ground in 1921, erasing one of the last witnesses to the season of frontier justice in Walla Walla.