So began Gideon Moody’s introduction to Deadwood and the Black Hills. Replacing Judge Granville Bennett, Moody himself would in the coming years be sent to Washington D.C. as one of the first U.S. senators from the newly-formed state of South Dakota.

Deadwood in its infancy had no lack of people with a vision. Moody was such a person. Born in Cortland, N.Y. on October 16, 1832 to a family of farmers, Gideon Curtis Moody had an insatiable desire for learning. After an academic education, he began the study of law at Syracuse and then moved to Indiana with his wife and daughter. He was admitted to the Indiana bar at 20, and in less than two years he was elected prosecuting attorney of Floyd County and joined an organization of young Republicans in the state. With the South rapidly leaning toward secession, political debate became exceedingly acrimonious and personal. It was in this environment that Moody developed into a formidable debater.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Moody helped raise the Ninth Indiana Infantry. He led his command, later known as the “Bloody Ninth,” at the battle of Shiloh. Promoted to Colonel in November 1862, Moody spent the end of his service on the staff of Gen. George H. Thomas. In 1864, his term of enlistment expired and the war nearing its end, he returned to Indiana with his eyes on the expanding west.

Joining a group of pioneers from New York, including his in-laws, Moody took his wife Helen and three children and headed for Dakota Territory. With no shortage of disputes in this new frontier, Moody returned to his career in law in Yankton, the territorial capital. When Congress appropriated $50,000 in 1865 for construction of wagon roads through the territory, Moody was given the task of supervising the Sioux City to Fort Randall segment. To a large extent he employed the Scandinavian farmers populating the southeastern counties of the territory and so arranged the work of construction that they were able to give their farm duties proper attention. Building the road when farm work was slack and learning that the road could be built for much less than the appropriation, he voluntarily paid the workmen almost double the ruling price for men and teams. This action brought him severe criticism from the War Department, and delayed for many years the approval of his accounts and the payment of his commission on the expenditures. At the same time, the act naturally endeared him to the people of the southeastern counties at a time when farming was a struggle. They remained his firm and faithful friends to the end of his life.

In 1867 Moody was elected to the first of three terms in the territorial legislature. It was only a matter of a few years before George Armstrong Custer returned with his reports of gold in the Black Hills. With the government caught between their treaty with the Sioux and the gold-fevered populace, Moody urged Congress in a letter to consider a new treaty for the Black Hills expansion “at the earliest possible day, if the government wishes to prevent a repetition of the bloody scenes in California between the miners and the Indians, which resulted in the almost total destruction of the latter.” Politics had reached a fevered pitch in Yankton, and not just along party lines. The Capitol Street Gang, led by Wilmot W. Brookings, had gone head-to-head with the Broadway Gang, led by Moody. Brookings was concerned with the continued expansion of the Dakota Southern Railroad and the bond money it was likely to generate. Moody claimed that his faction represented the true Republican rank and file, and that citizens opposed further issuance of bonds to the company. So much tension and personal feuding developed, however, that the faction leaders themselves began to fear that the public squabbles would frighten Eastern investors away from their growing territory. President Grant’s appointments to the Territorial Supreme Court also were at issue, causing Moody to pointedly remark to the U.S. Attorney General, “You pledged us that we should have good men and good lawyers sent to us as judges and we get to constitute our Supreme Court an ass, a knave and a drunkard.”

In 1877, with a new treaty with the Sioux in place and the formal recognition of the Black Hills as part of the territory, Deadwood saw the arrival of Judge Granville G. Bennett. In this first effort to establish law and order in this new mining camp, the judge was assisted and supported by three officers: Sheriff Seth Bullock, District Attorney John H. Barnes, and clerk A. R. Z. Dawson. They were among the first settlers, knew the people well, were familiar with local conditions and were able to give valuable information and advice.

However, Bennett sought and won a seat in Congress the following year, and his seat on the bench was offered to Moody. He packed up his family and journeyed to Deadwood, convening his first court in September 1878. One of the first cases confronting Moody was that of James Leighton Gilmore. He was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of Bisente Orte. Gilmore’s execution in December 1882 granted him the dubious honor of being the first legally executed criminal in the Black Hills.

In fact, it was the prisoner in a cell neighboring Gilmore’s who would ultimately gain more notoriety. Crow Dog, a Lakota Sioux accused of killing another tribal member, was brought before Moody shortly after Gilmore’s case. Although it seemed like a straightforward murder trial on the surface, the underlying issue of U.S. government jurisdiction on tribal lands gave the case national attention. Crow Dog was found guilty and sentenced to hang in Moody’s court, but the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal. The decision was ultimately overturned and Crow Dog was released, with the Supreme Court deciding that American Indians with tribal sovereignty were subject to their own laws.

In the spring of 1879 Moody was on the bench for another murder trial, that of three Homestake employees for the murder of Alex Frankenburg. The three were acquitted and freed on March 20, 1879, thanks to their Homestake-supplied attorneys and a sympathetic jury. Judge Moody publicly censored the jury members for not fixing some of the blame on the trio.

Moody’s integrity became well-known early in his term as judge. This was especially seen during the Ophir vs. Gopher mining suit. The case involved property worth several hundred thousand dollars, and a great array of legal talent was engaged on each side. The litigants on one side were afraid they were losing their case, and determined to secure a decision at any cost. One after another was selected to approach the judge, fortified with a package carefully concealed in an inside pocket, and one after another returned to his cohorts with the report that he was afraid to broach the subject with Moody.

The conspirators then decided to employ for the purpose a resident of Montana who had acquired a reputation for success in such work. He tentatively accepted the job, but after wandering around Deadwood and carefully feeling his way for about a month, he too declined to make the attempt. A final effort was made by retaining one of Moody’s former law partners, who was summoned by letter from his home in North Dakota. When informed of the nature of the service required of him, he threw up his hands in dismay and exclaimed, “My God, men! Do you expect me to tackle that man on any such proposition? Why, I should be in the penitentiary in 48 hours. If that is what you got me here for I might as well leave for home on the coach tomorrow!” He did leave next day. The suit proceeded to a conclusion and the would-be bribers lost the decision.

After five years on the bench, Moody resigned his position and returned to private practice with his son James. Chambers Kellar joined the firm later, and the trio formed the independent law firm of Moody, Kellar and Moody, whose most notable client was the Homestake Gold Mine. Moody’s specialty in corporation law and riparian rights caught the interest of George Hearst, and a partnership was soon struck. The Hearst family was thoroughly Democratic, although they never swayed Moody from his beloved GOP, even though Moody was close enough to the family to serve as confidential attorney to Hearst’s wife at the time of his death.

Over ten years as a major political force in the Black Hills and working for Homestake gave Moody the springboard to the goal he had been wanting for years. The six-year crusade for North and South Dakota statehood finally came to a successful conclusion in 1889 and with it the title of Senator for Moody. Along with Richard F. Pettigrew, Moody secured the state’s first seats on the U.S. Senate. He served in Washington, D.C. until 1891, when he lost a bid for reelection.

Moody spent the next nine years practicing law in Deadwood once more, but by 1900, the aging statesman was showing signs of failing health. He found the climate of California beneficial and had taken to visiting there more often after his daughter and son-in-law moved there from Lead. Moody had a permanent residence built in Los Angeles next door to their daughter, where he spent his final years. On March 17, 1904, Moody died at his new residence from kidney failure.