Submitted Photo A map of Dakota Territory shows the Mouse River Loop and Devils Lake, with Pierce County in the middle. Vigilantes confronted horse thieves and sheriffs did their best to maintain order in the area’s early days.

To many Pierce County residents, local history brings to mind scenes resembling Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie.”

But before North Dakota became a state and hundreds of homesteaders came, the area more closely resembled the Wild West.

Ron Berget, who grew up in central North Dakota, has written a story of the rough and tumble old west that existed in pre-statehood days in “The Montana Stranglers in Dakota Territory.”

Horse thieves, cowboys, Native American tribes and vigilantes often passed through the land known today as Pierce County in search of opportunities.

Some wanted to make quick money; others wanted to hunt buffalo. Others wanted revenge.

Horse thieves enroute to Canada tangled with a group of vigilantes from Montana in the mid1880s in present-day McHenry County. Both groups left their marks on North Dakota history.

They used landmarks with names some North Dakota residents don’t recognize today as places to camp, or in some cases, hang prisoners.

Childhood interest

Berget said his story is the result of decades of research that began as a hobby.

“I’m 68, so it was a while back, but growing up with John Wayne on television, when you were a kid, you wanted to be a cowboy,” Berget said. “You always thought of the old west and those stories as being from Montana or Arizona or somewhere farther west than Turtle Lake, North Dakota.”

But stories he had heard growing up in McLean County from his dad and others showed him the old west was closer to home than he had thought.

He heard from his dad about a piece of land called Hangman’s Point on the shore of Crooked Lake near his family farm.

It was where vigilantes killed accused horse thieves, although not by hanging.

“There were wagon rut trails and arrowheads, and there were really vague stories about some of these things,” he said. “I was really curious. I saw buffalo wallows and you could see traces of the past on our farm. I always grew up fascinated to know what the story was behind all of that.”

“I spent my adult life reading about North Dakota history,” he said. It’s a hobby, so I would just read whatever I could get my hands on,” he said. And I thought, “Whoa, that was where the old west happened.”

“This was the very old west that you see in the movies,” he said. “All of the elements you find in the old west genre, all of those elements were there in central North Dakota in spades in the 1860s, 70s and 80s. So, it’s a really fascinating history and I don’t think people are quite aware of it.”

“The Montana Stranglers in Dakota Territory” centers on the capture of three accused thieves and their murders in a time when, according to Berget, author Mark Twain nicknamed America “The United States of Lyncherdom.”

Old West injustice

In the book’s opening scene, two men discover the bodies of Stanley Ravenwood, John Bates and Francis Gardipee while fishing in Crooked Lake in 1886.

Berget builds the story of the three murder victims accused of stealing horses, giving readers a glimpse of places like Devils Lake, Minnewaukan and the Towner area as they appeared before North Dakota became a state.

The story unfolds almost like a novel until charts and back notes remind readers people like Gardipee aren’t literary characters, but actual inhabitants of the land around Pierce County more than a century ago.

Gardipee’s story begins in the Turtle Mountain area and northern McHenry County, where he lived with his wife on their ranch.

“That’s where the Ojibwe, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation is near there,” he said.

“Those are the people I talk about in the book, the Metis, people who are mostly mixed with French trappers and the Ojibwe and Cree people,” he said. “Those are his people.”

“Pierce County, that area was where the Metis would hunt buffalo every late summer around July,” Berget said. “The buffalo would come up along the Missouri River and migrate along Dogden Butte and into McHenry and Pierce Counties. That was a crossroads of all kinds of stuff that happened in that area.”

Gardipee’s story is one of injustice. His ranch lay adjacent to land owned by Edmund Hackett, McHenry County’s first commissioner, who met up with members of the Montana Stranglers and told them his neighbor was a horse thief.

The Stranglers took Gardipee prisoner before executing him and two other men, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. They later moved to Canada.

Story grows

Berget said he pursued his hobby mostly as a reader and researcher. He had a few chances to see the land where the subjects of his book traveled after he received his degree in fish and wildlife management from UND and went to work in Devils Lake as a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Later, he moved to Texas to attend the Texas Theological Seminary. After being ordained as an evangelical pastor, he moved to Minnesota. He now works to train ministers to serve in Asia.

Over the years, he has continued pursuing what he calls his “on again, off again” interest in history. He said his hobby has become easier since the advent of the internet and online newspaper archives.

However, he said, “All the information has piled up over the years.”

“Then, one day, I sort of woke up and said, ‘This is a really fascinating story that nobody has ever put together in one book before. Somebody should write a book about this.'”

Berget said he had read stories about the Montana Stranglers’ exploits in Montana, but no one had written about their activity in northern Dakota Territory.

“So, I thought, ‘What the heck? This could be a bucket list thing,'” he said.

Work comes to print

Berget sent a draft to The History Press. “Immediately, they got back to me and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to get published.'”

His finished book came in October 2022, complete with historical photographs and charts detailing each act by the Montana Stranglers and other vigilante groups.

Berget said he had more stories of local history in the works.

He also hoped his book would right a wrong from 140 years ago.

“Just the injustice of it, particularly for (Gardipee),” he said, “because he just wasn’t guilty of anything.”

“I’m pretty sure Hackett just wanted his land,” he added. “Everything’s too coincidental for that not to be true. I think Hackett had him killed.”

“That made me mad when I put that story together, so to some extent, this book is like getting justice for this guy,” he added. “It was like I wanted to tell this story to get that out there, to let people know this wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.”

“There’s another book’s worth of stuff that continues with the same kinds of themes, cattle drives, the open range, ranching, all of those themes were here in the 1880s in North Dakota,” Berget said.

He said his book has received lots of attention in the Turtle Lake area.

He added he had the opportunity to meet some descendants of his book’s subjects, including members of the Rosenkranz family, whose Towner-area ancestors had tried to help Gardipee escape the vigilantes. He also got in touch with a descendant of Flopping Bill Cantrell, the leader of the Stranglers whose moniker came from the way he chopped wood.

Berget said he hadn’t been able to locate any of Gardipee’s descendants.

“My story would make a great novel, but I don’t like novels,” Berget added. “I’d rather read the real history and make up the real novel in my mind.”

“The Montana Stranglers in Dakota Territory” is available at area bookstores or online at montanastranglersindakotaterritory.com; amazon.com or arcadiapublishing.com. Autographed copies are also available at montanastranglersindakotaterritory.com.