Traps for Klondikers, the newspaper story of Soapy Smith's shell and pea operators.

Operating a shell and pea game
One of the Soap Gang
along the trail

(Click image to enlarge)

RAPS FOR KLONDIKERS.

Soapy Smith's shell and pea operators in Alaska

      From the day that Soapy Smith arrived in Skagway, Alaska his gang operated the old shell and pea swindle in town and along the White Pass and Chilkoot trails with great success. In fact, they became so well known that nearly every city newspaper covered the plight of those taken in by the hucksters. One might think that all that coverage would have educated enough of the stampeders to stay away from the confidence game, but there were plenty of dupes for the taking and this was solely Soapy's domain. Any con men arriving in Skagway could not work without Soapy's permission and a generous piece of the profits.
     The May 23, 1898 edition of the Daily Republican of Monogahela, Pennsylvania published detailed account of the shell and pea men working the trails, their method of operations and how they lured the victims into playing their games of no chance.

TRAPS FOR KLONDIKERS.

______________

THE TRAILS TO THE GOLD MINES

SWARM WIT SWINDLERS.

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Ingenious Snares That the Sure-Thing

Gamblers Set for the Unwary — A

Spell-binder Who Carries a Bogus

Pack — The Shell Game — Salted Mines.

     Since the grass has begun to grow too short for them in town, some of the confidence workers who still remain at Skagway, Alaska, have taken to the trails, where they continue to set snares for the dollars of unwary Klondikers. On the Skagway trail the sure-thing gambler seldom goes higher than the foot of White Pass summit. Half a dozen or so of the tribe usually travel together, sharing as the close of the day the profits of the tricks they have turned. One of the party is chosen as active operator. His necessary qualifications are a capacity to judge human character and a tongue that is gifted with glibness.

     The successful confidence operator is best described by the term spellbinder. His confederates—the steerers—carefully disassociate themselves from him whenever a possible victim is in sight. The better to disguise his wolfish character the steerer frequently dons the sheep’s clothing of a packer. It is no uncommon incident on the trail to see two or more notorious bunco steerers faring along, one after the other, apparently heavily burdened with packs which, if analyzed, would prove to be nothing more than straw or ships in canvas sacks. A little ahead of them always is the operator, equipped with a small portable table, three shells and the elusive pea.

     When the first one reaches the manipulator of the ancient, but to the victim ever new, game, he stops, watches and listens, and finally lays down his pack as if to rest and be amused. Steerer No. 2 follows his example, as do the others in turn. By the time the prospector victim arrives he finds a spurious Klondiker just winning a bet from the shell game player amid the half-envious congratulations of his confederates.

     “Well, well, this is my unlucky day, “ says the man with the table, “but I’ll give some other gentlemen a chance to win with the little pea.”

     Back and forth and round about go the little shells again, a glimpse of the pea being given the watchers at seductively frequent intervals. Another steerer guesses its location and wins a greenback or two.

     “If you fellows are hitting me too hard,” dubiously comments the operator, “I must size up my roll before taking any more bets.”

     He opens a well-lined pocketbook, an, while his attention is taken up with its contents, one of the steerers slyly raises the shell under which the pea is hidden. That catches the outsider, unless he be invulnerable against the temptations of bunco.

     Laying his finger on the shell indicated to him, he offers to bet $10, $20, $50, or a higher sum that it covers the pea. His bet is taken, the shell is lifted, and the pea proves to be somewhere else. Usually the victim makes a second, and perhaps a third, bet in the hopes of retrieving his loss, always with the same result. A witness to one of these episodes tells of having seen a prospector who had lost $90 sit upon his pack and burst into tears. He said that his last dollar had gone on the game.

     Still higher up the trail that same day a man who runs a tent restaurant bet and lost $20, but the shell-game player was glad to disgorge it when the victim’s wife, a 200-pound lady of German nativity, seized him by the coat collar and screamed lustily for help. …

     On the Skagway trail the shell game is not in operation regularly. The men engaged at it are supposed to be a detachment of “Soapy” Smith’s gamblers. Those who operate in Dyea, Sheep Camp and along to the base of Chilkoot are under the leadership of Tom Cady, a notorious Colorado camp confidence man. …

     As United States Deputy Marshal [John] Cudihee is now the sole guardian of the peace for Skagway and Dyea, it is almost impossible to keep the sure-thing gamblers and others of their ilk off the trails …”

The Daily Republican

May 23, 1898

     Near the end of the article there is mention of Tom Cady, "a notorious Colorado camp confidence man," as being the "leader" in Dyea. As the town just outside the entrance to the Chilkoot trail, and being only five miles away from Skagway, it is plausible that Soapy maintained operations and control of the criminal underworld in Dyea as well as in Skagway. Having men on both trails meant close to double the profits as only working one of them would provide, thus logic would suggest that Soapy would divide and divvy up responsibility to men he could trust. The fact that Tom Cady has a well-known and detailed history with the Soap Gang beginning in 1892 it seems very likely that Cady was working for Soapy in Alaska.

The original article.

(Click image to enlarge)

Tom Cady: pp. 79, 210-11, 229, 250-51, 253-57, 260, 264, 362, 450.

"Jefferson Randolph (“Soapy”) Smith II was an American, 19th-century confidence man, gambler, and crime boss par excellence–perhaps the most accomplished street hawker and all-round bunco artist of his day."

—Alias Soapy Smith

AUGUST 14

1805: A peace treaty between the U.S. and Tunis is signed on board the USS Constitution.

1831: John Xavier Beidler is born. He is best known for being a zealous vigilante in Montana.

1848: The Oregon Territory is established.

1849: Congress creates the Oregon Territory, made up of today's states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming.

1851: John “Doc” Holliday is born in Griffin, Georgia. Most famous as a combatant at the gunfight by the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881.

1864: During a Civil War battle with Union forces in Missouri, Confederate guerrillas, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, 16-year-old Jesse James, Tucker Hill, and Arch Clement are wounded. Frank James takes his brother, shot through the right side of his chest, to the Carroll County home of Dr. John H. Rudd.

1864: Fort Collins, Colorado Territory is established to guard the Overland trail.

1868: Ten settlers are killed in Indian raids along the Republican and Saline Rivers in Kansas.

1880: Virgil and Morgan Earp help a Fort Grant sheriff locate a rustler in Arizona Territory. The thief surrendered “when a six-shooter was run under his nose by Morgan Earp.”

1883: “Big Ed” Burns, Soap Gang member, escapes an arresting Denver police officer while still wearing handcuffs.

1885: The Denver Rocky Mountain News recognizes con man Soapy Smith as a new power in Denver’s criminal underworld.

1888: A patent for the electric meter is granted to Oliver B. Shallenberger.

1890: A horse thief is dragged into Prescott, Arizona Territory and killed for stealing cattle.

1896: Gold is discovered in Canada's Yukon Territory, in the Klondike. Within the next year more than 30,000 people rush to the area to look for gold. The rush ends the economic “Panic or 1893.”

1900: The U.S and seven other nations end the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreigners.