Outlaw Dakota: The Murderous Times and Criminal Trials of Frontier Judge Peter C. Shannon

Rumors of gold in the Black Hills, even before Custer's 1874 expedition, enticed many a fortune seeker to Dakota Territory, where lawlessness ruled the day. To the Dakota frontier in 1873, President Grant sent Peter C. Shannon as the new Chief Justice of the Dakota Territory Supreme Court. A Pennsylvanian, Shannon brought the rule of law, trying murderers, horse thieves, vigilantes, men of fortune, women of the night, and a passel of blacklegs! Among Shannon's most notorious cases were those of Jack McCall, who swung for the assassination of Wild Bill Hickok, the Snake Creek lynching, the murder of Civil War hero Gen. Edwin McCook by Peter Wintermute, the triple lynching at Hangman's Hill in Rapid City, the Independence Day murder at Crow Creek, the doctor-turned-highwayman John Parsons, the Indian Ring run by Dr. Livingston, and gambler George Knowlton's cold-blooded shooting of Black Hills-bound miner David Rauck. Shannon was perhaps too good a judge, for he fell victim to political machinations at the highest levels. Making no pretext of objectivity, newspapers served powerful political factions, attacking judges and politicians alike, and Fanebust makes use of these rich resources to capture the sensationalism that pervaded life in Dakota Territory.