the local Native American tribes. In 1867, Montana pioneer John Bozeman was allegedly killed by a band of Blackfeet, who attacked other settlers as well. Meagher responded by organizing the Montana Territory Volunteer Militia to retaliate. He secured funding from the federal government to campaign against the Native Americans, but was unable to find the offenders, or retain the militia's cohesion. He was later criticized for his actions. Meagher called Montana's first constitutional convention to develop a constitution as a step toward statehood. Not enough residents voted for the constitution and statehood to qualify. In addition, copies of the constitution were lost on the way to a printer, and Congress never received copies for review. Montana gained statehood in 1889, more than 20 years after Meagher's death. Disappearance In the summer of 1867, Meagher traveled to Fort Benton, Montana, to receive a shipment of guns and ammunition sent by General William Tecumseh Sherman for use by the Montana Militia. On the way to Fort Benton, the Missouri River terminus for steamboat travel, Meagher fell ill and stopped for six days to recuperate. When he reached Fort Benton, he was reportedly still ill. Sometime in the early evening of 1 July 1867, Meagher fell overboard from the steamboat G. A. Thompson, into the Missouri River. The pilot described the waters as "instant deathwater twelve feet deep and rushing at the rate of ten miles an hour." His body was never recovered. Some believed his death to be suspicious and many theories circulated about his death. Early theories included a claim that he was murdered by a Confederate soldier from the war, or by Native Americans. In 1913 a man claimed to have carried out the murder of Meagher for the price of $8000, but then recanted. In the same vein, American journalist and novelist Timothy Egan, who published a biography of Meagher in 2016, noted that his political nemesis, Wilbur Fisk Sanders, was in Fort Benton at the same time. Egan hypothesized that Meagher may have been set up for murder by his Montana political enemies or powerful and still active vigilantes. In 2008, John T. Hubbell suggested that Meagher had been drinking and fell overboard. Other hypotheses included the possibility that he had been weakened by dysentery or that his fall was a suicide. A fictionalized account shown on Death Valley Days (1960) had him survive the assassination attempt because