The Need of Organized Government

This last was not accomplished without serious disturbance. More than once there were encounters between members of the Claim Club and the claim jumpers, wherein weapons were discharged and blood shed, although no lives were taken.

It was fortunate for us who had settled in Auraria and Denver with the intention of making our homes there, that we had cool-headed men among us, who were determined there should be no lawlessness in either settlement, so far as it could be avoided.

While stories of bloody affrays in different localities of the mining country were commonly heard, our own settlements were free from such scenes, until one day when a desperate man, named Carl Wood, made an attack upon Mr. Myers of the Rocky Mountain News, attempting to kill him because of something that had been published in his paper.

Wood was ejected from the settlement, as the claim jumpers and the turkey stealers had been; but when a man by the name of James Gordon deliberately killed Jacob Gantz, our people at once organized a provisional court, appointing a judge and selecting a jury of twelve citizens, to try the prisoner for his life.

After this semblance of a government, for it was only a semblance, the citizens set about ridding the settlements of other undesirable individuals, and in several cases such severe punishment was dealt out that it began to seem as if we should be able to govern ourselves without going through the form of electing legislatures and establishing courts.

During all this time I heard much discussion of the benefits of a territorial government, preparatory to the entrance of Colorado into the Union as a state; but that was a matter in which I took little interest, it shames me to say, for even with all these examples of law breaking, I failed to realize how essential it was to our future prosperity that we should settle all questions by proper legal procedure.