Because of his great contribution to the state’s early years, Granville Stuart is revered today as “Mr. Montana.” Among the first to prospect for gold in the vast wilderness that would one day become the state of Montana, he and his brother James are credited with igniting the great Montana gold rush of the early 1860s by describing their findings in a letter to another brother in Colorado. Granville was at the boom mining camps of Bannack in 1862 and Virginia City in 1863 and played a prominent role in the activities of the vigilante organization that put an end to the depredations of the outlaw gang led by the notorious Henry Plummer.

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In the years following, he wore many hats, earning his living as a merchant, sawyer, gunsmith, butcher, horsetrader, blacksmith, banker, real estate speculator, rancher, diplomat, historian and writer. He still found  time to serve two terms in the territorial council, once as its president.

But it was as a cattleman that he is best remembered. He introduced cattle to Montana Territory as early as 1860. Entering into partnership with three others in the establishment of the DHS Ranch in 1879, Stuart assumed the duties of superintendent and general manager. He made his ranch headquarters on Ford’s Creek, about 20 miles northeast of Lewistown, Montana Territory. The military established Fort Maginnis (1880-90) on DHS land to protect Judith Basin settlers from Blackfeet and Sioux. By 1883 Stuart was ranging 12,000 shorthorns and making a nice profit for the firm.

But his herd tally at the fall roundup that year showed that cattle rustlers had taken a toll of at least 3 percent. Other ranchers experienced a similar loss.

Some of the shrinkage, Stuart knew, could be attributed to small, independent ranchers who routinely augmented their relatively minor cattle holdings by additions from the herds of the big stockmen. Stuart could find some humor in this type of rustling activity, as he wrote many years later: “Near our home ranch we discovered one rancher whose cows invariably had twin calves and frequently triplets, while the range cows in that vicinity were nearly all barren and would persist in hanging around this man’s corral, envying his cows their numerous children and bawling and lamenting their own childless fate. This state of affairs continued until we were obliged to call around that way and threaten to hang the man if his cows had any more twins.”

Of more concern to Stuart and the other big stockmen were the well-organized gangs of thieves operating in that wild and sparsely populated country without fear of interference by the law. These gangs, they knew, were responsible for most of the cattle theft. When members of the Montana Stock Growers’ Association met in Helena in October 1883, leading their agenda was the question of how to deal with this organized rustler threat. They debated the issue but, reaching no agreement, tabled the problem until the spring 1884 meeting.

Although no plan for decisive action was reached at that fall meeting, members did agree to gather as much identification information as possible about the rustlers, particularly their leaders, and their various headquarters locations.

At the April 1884 meeting, the stockmen, although united in their determination to solve the outlaw problem, could not agree on the proper course of action. As Stuart remembered:

Some of the members were for raising a small army of cowboys and raiding the country; but the older and more conservative men knew that would never do.

I openly opposed any such move and pointed out to them that the “rustlers” were strongly fortified, each of their cabins being a miniature fortress. They were all armed with the most modern weapons and had an abundance of ammunition, and every man of them was a desperado and a dead shot. If we had a scrap with them the law was on the side of the “rustlers.” A fight with them would result in the loss of many lives and those that were not killed would have to stand trial for murder in case they killed any of the “rustlers.” My talk did not have the conciliatory effect that I expected and seemed only to add fuel to the fire. The younger men felt that they had suffered enough at the hand of thieves and were for “cleaning them out” no matter what the cost.

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