OUTLAW LOSES 7 YEARS'
SIEGE
Wisconsin's
Famous court Defier Faces Trial for Life Six Hour Battle Beat Dietz Fusillade
of a Thousand Shots and Illness of His Wife Necessary to Compel Surrender
of Defender of Cameron Dam and Spurner of Eight Indictments
After seven years' defiance of state and
federal authorities John H. Dietz, known throughout Wisconsin and adjacent
commonwealths as "the outlaw of Cameron dam," is not only in jail, at the
little logging camp of Winter, but is charged with the slaying of a deputy
sheriff by a coroner's jury.
Not only is the famous outlaw of the northern Wisconsin woods facing a
trial for murder, but two members of his family as well his wife, Mrs.
Hattie Dietz, and his son Leslie as none of the successful attacking party
can tell who fired the shot which killed Deputy Oscar Harp.
Thus the end of a prolonged battle draws near one in which several men
have been slain and many wounded. Throughout Dietz, beleaguered though
he was in his log castle, has retained not only the spoils of victory from
the opposing corporation, but the sympathy of the loggers and woodsmen
generally.
The warfare arose over Dietz's contention that the Cameron dam, on the
Thornapple river, was on his property, and he refused to allow the Chippewa
Log and boom company to float several winters' cut of logs unless toll
was paid.
Courts successfully
Defied.
He was fought in the courts by the lumber company, but defied bench warrants
and held off officers who attempted to serve them with a shotgun.
Then Dietz won, and the lumber company paid him a large sum to have the
logs sent through the dam.
Then there were township wrangles, and in all there were eight indictments
against Dietz. A few days before the final assault on the Dietz home
deputies fired upon three of the outlaw's children, wounding a son, Clarence,
and a daughter, Myra, but Leslie escaped and gave the alarm to his father.
Dietz did not surrender until his cabin and every other building in his
clearing had been riddled with bullets. For six hours and five minutes
every volley fired by the attacking forces was replied to vigorously from
the loopholed wall of the cabin.
Almost every inch of the floor was covered with flattened, twisted bits
of lead that had been bullets until they tore through the cabin walls,
knocking off splinters from the inside and falling harmlessly to the floor.
Sobbing on a chair in one corner of the home, with an apron thrown over
her hear, sat Mrs. Dietz, while Leslie sat on a chair across from her,
scowling savagely, but making no attempt to resist the officers' entrance.
The youngest son, John junior, was called up from the cellar where he had
been hidden from the bullets.
Dietz Only Fighter.
"I don't know how I ever lived through it," sobbed Mrs. Dietz. "It
was terrible. I sat through it all in a corner of the sitting room
with Helen, and we did not move during it all. I did not fire a shot,
nor did the children."
Dietz himself was so weak he could not stand. He had been shot in
the hand, but had kept on shooting his repeating rifle and automatic pistols
until the threatened collapse of his wife brought him to a realization
that his was at best a losing fight.
The battle had been one of the fiercest "last ditch" stands ever made by
a lone fighter against desperate odds. The old homesteader had defended
his cabin and his family with the desperation that pioneer settlers were
wont to display when hostile Indians surprised them and attacked in force.
More than 1,000 shots had been fired into the house by 100 picked sharpshooters.
There was no telling how many times Dietz had replied, but the floor of
the cabin was littered with empty rifle and revolver shells, and the powder
smoke within the house was so dense as to make breathing almost impossible.
NOTE:The
punctuation is transcribed directly from the article.
Transcribed
by Monica Odani, Torrance, California (with roots in Sauk, Columbia, Lafayette,
and Grant Counties, Wisconsin)
