J. L. "Pete" Howard, Justice of the Peace
E-mail: tetonjp@3rivers.net

Choteau's Hanging Tree - a story of quick frontier justice...continued

"I was still asleep all this time. Then Maggie woke me up and took me around to the kitchen door, and we stood outside the door ... Stewart was trying to open her trunk, which was kept under the kitchen table, where she kept her jewelry and other things. Well, while he was looking through her trunk he forgot about us. Maggie was smart and whispered to me loud enough for him to hear but making believe she did not want him to hear her 'let's go out and hide under the house'. Then she grabbed me and we ran for a fork of the Muddy that had run dry, about 150 feet away, jumped down a steep bank, run across the river bed, climbed the other side of the bank and the other side was all thick with timber so thick we could hardly get through. That was about 4:30 in the morning. So we stayed all that day and all that night until we smelled smoke and she said 'he set the house afire'. He thought we were under the house and was burning it.

Maggie spotted our horse and we started to the Kennerly sheep ranch, and we met Mr. Kennerly on the way. He sent us to his ranch, and he went on to the Agency to look for this man. We finally got to the sheep ranch, 30 miles, tired out, sick. We stayed all night. The next day, they brought us to the Agency. They brought us into the store and they had this Stewart there eating his breakfast, and when I saw him I asked why they were feeding him. They asked me why and I said, 'he killed my mother (I called Mrs. Armstrong mama), and Maggie pointed her finger at him and said 'you are the one that killed her' ... Stewart dropped his knife and fork. He thought we were dead. So that night about 10:30 we could hear the cowboys yelling and they got the sheriff's buggy and held him up. Took the prisoner away and hung him to a tree.

"They asked him if he had anything to say. He said 'no, just be sure and break my neck'.

Brackett E. Stewart was hanged from a cottonwood tree on the Teton River about 2 1/2 miles from town. He was taken down and buried at the foot of the tree in a shallow grave with the toes of his boots protruding. The following poem was written on a board and nailed to the tree.

Here lies buried beneath this tree
The remains of Stewart, Brackett E.
He gave up Christianity to become a beast
And was hung from the limb that's pointing East.

The tree, for many years known in Choteau as "The Hanging Tree", was eventually struck by lightning and destroyed.