It hadn’t been the first worm in the Wyoming cattle. In 1892 there was bloodshed, which took the U.S. Calvary to subdue. What would become known as the Johnson County War, or the War on Powder River, the Wyoming Range War, or the Western Civil War of Incorporation, a fight between smallholdings settlers against large well-established cattlemen. It culminated in a lengthy shootout between the local ranchers, a band of hired gunslingers, and a sheriff's posse. Home on deranged.
In Wyoming’s early days, land was public domain, freely available to homesteading and stock-raising. Large numbers of cattle, turned loose by large ranches, roamed the range. Before roundup, calves were branded, sometimes furtively. Trust your neighbor. But brand your cattle. The only way to tell a fake brand was to kill the calf, and examine the inside of its hide, to see if the brand went all the way through. Suspected cattle rustlers were lynched. Herd sizes, and the doctrine of Prior Appropriation, who had been the first to settle the land, determined property and usage.
The largest ranching outfits banded together to monopolize large swaths of rangeland, and discourage new settlers. No rancher has the right to sell, or own, what God meant to be free. The range must always remain open. The richest and most influential cattle barons formed the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA). They overstocked the range and hired detectives to investigate any theft from their holdings. In August of 1883, Johnson County newspapers, owned by the tycoons, claimed that Buffalo was ‘the most lawless town in the country,’ a haven for ‘range pirates’ who ‘mercilessly’ stole big cattlemen’s livestock. Well the neighbors stopped by yesterday while I was outside choppin' wood, They filled me in on a local news, ain't none of it sounded good, Said, there had been some cattle stealin' by some no count outlaw bands, We'd all been branded rustlers by the big ranchers of this land.
As the petri dish grew more crowded and noisy, tensions rose between the many small homesteaders and the few large meat magnates. The weather finished off the last of the harmony.
A bad drought hit the grasslands in the summer of 1886. It was so hot you could pull baked potatoes right out of the ground, so dry the catfish were carrying canteens, so dusty the rabbits dug their holes six feet in the air. Maybe not, but white Arctic owls made their first appearance, muskrats built taller and thicker houses, and the beavers were busier than their namesake. A blue haze arrived at the end of summer. It lifted to altitude in October, moving out of the way of the worst winter in Wyoming history.
January brought tornados of white frozen dust, and the Moon of Cold-exploding Trees. Cows were so starved it took three of them to make a shadow. Steers were so thin you could read the brand off the other side. Maybe not, but the mercury plunged to fifty below zero, and blizzards blew thousands of frozen carcasses into the rivers. Armed bands of rustlers roamed across Wyoming and Montana. The old buffalo pickers of the plains reappeared, collecting for the fertilizer factory bone yards. Banks failed, stockyards closed. Only the men with the bark on came back. Well, it was us against the cattlemen and the years just made it worse,
First the drought and then the tough winter, Johnson County had been dealt a curse.
The big owners of the big herds were in big trouble, and deeply resentful of anyone who might challenge their unfettered right to run their cattle on public land. They appropriated terrain, tightened the water supply, forced settlers off their property, and burnt their buildings. Excesses on public land were excused as self-defence against rustling. Montana and Wyoming ‘declared war’ on the rustlers.
On July 20, 1889, six cattlemen lynched two homesteaders in Carbon County. Ellen Watson, the ‘Queen of the Sweetwater,’ hadn’t worn enough clothes to dust a fiddle, and may have accepted maverick cows for her favours. Wild Bill Hickok may have got it right. When you begin a cattle drive you can’t expect to say you are finished until you have visited a fancy woman and played some games of chance. She was hung with her partner, storekeeper Jim Averell. The double lynching enraged local residents.
Emotions revved higher with every additional body found. Agents of large stockholders killed alleged rustlers from smaller ranches. Buffalo sheriff Frank Canton, once a WSGA detective, was rumoured to be behind several of the deaths, and became a virtual prisoner in his own more than a one horse town.
By 1891, a local settler named Nate Champion had become the leader of a new group of small independent Johnson County ranchers, the Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers' Association (NWFSGA). When they announced plans to hold their own roundup, the WSGA told them to cease all operations, and formed an assassination squad under the old Buffalo sheriff, Frank Canton. After hanging a horse trade named Tom Waggoner, they declared Nate Champion ‘King of the Cattle Thieves.’
In the early morning of November 1, 1891, WSGA paid killers burst into Nate’s tiny cabin next to the Middle Fork of Powder River in the same Hole-in-the-Wall country that had once been the hideout of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two members of the five-man squad, which were able to squeeze into the cabin, held pistols on Champion and his visitor, and demanded that he ‘give it up.’
Nate stretched and yawned while reaching under a pillow for his own revolver. The intruders fired at point-blank range, leaving powder burns on Champion’s face. But all the shots fired had missed. Champion’s return fire caught one in the arm and the other in the abdomen, a mortal wound. The rest of the assassins fled, but Champion got a good look at one of them, Joe Elliott. In the public investigation that followed, one of squad members admitted the names of the entire party to two witnesses, ranchers John A. Tisdale and Orley ‘Ranger’ Jones. Johnson County authorities filed attempted murder charges against Joe Elliott, and local newspapers pushed for charges against the wealthy cattlemen believed to have employed the assassination squad.
On Dec. 1, 1891, both witnesses were murdered. Then there came the story about the two dry gulch attacks, Ranger Jones and John Tisdale had been both shot in the back. The resultant uproar in Johnson County and the demand for justice became the focus of the community. Joe Elliott was bound over for trial and, with Champion’s testimony, seemed likely to be convicted.
But in Chicago, a hundred years later, I had learned from a group of Texan cardiologists, inquiring about the limited resources in my small regional hospital on Vancouver Island. You can’t run with the big dogs, if you pee like a puppy.
The cattle barons declared that Buffalo was a rogue society in which rustlers controlled politics, courts and juries. The WSGA, led by a rough North Platte rancher named Frank Wolcott, secretly planned, organized and financed an invasion of Johnson County. Wolcott had once offered a Texan visitor some carrots.
“Where I come from,” The Texan said. “We feed these to the hogs.”
“So do we.” Said Wolcott. “Have some.”
Frank Canton was selected to lead an expedition of fifty-two men, twenty-three gunmen from Paris, Texas, four cattle detectives from the WSGA, Idaho frontiersman George Dunning, Wyoming State Senator Bob Tisdale, water commissioner W. J. Clarke, two statesmen who had organized Wyoming's statehood four years earlier, surgeon Dr. Charles Penrose, and reporters from the Cheyenne Sun and the Chicago Herald.
On Tuesday April 5, 1892, a special private Union Pacific train rode secretly north from Cheyenne. It had one engine, a passenger car, a baggage car, several stock cars filled with horses, and three freight cars loaded with guns, ammunition, dynamite, tents, blankets and wagons. At 3 am, just outside Casper, the men switched to horseback, cut the telegraph lines to Buffalo, and continued north.
The first target of the invaders was Nate Champion. The invaders quietly surrounded his KC ranch, and waited for daybreak. Nate and his three guests had enjoyed a night as fine as a frog hair split four ways, killing a bottle of snake juice, and thumbing through the latest Montgomery Ward catalogue. Two of his visitors were captured as they emerged to collect water at dawn, and the third, Nick Ray, was shot inside the cabin doorway. He died a few hours later.
Champion, besieged inside, kept a tragic journal. Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now. I wish there was someone here with me so we could watch all sides at once… Well, they have just got through shelling the house like hail. I heard them splitting wood. I guess they are going to fire the house tonight. I think I will make a break when night comes, if alive. Shooting again. It's not night yet. The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.
Nate was shot as he ran from the burning cabin. They pinned a note to his bullet-riddled chest. Cattle Thieves Beware.
“On to Buffalo!” Yelled Wolcott. Then, last night at supper time riders stopped by chance, They said cattleman and their hired guns just burned the Kaycee Ranch, Two men had died this mornin', shot down in the snow, Now the vigilante army was on the march to Buffalo.
The fracas had not gone unnoticed, however, and a local rancher, Jack Flagg, rode to Buffalo, where the sheriff raised a posse of two hundred men over the next twenty-four hours. They caught up with the invaders early on the next morning, and trapped them inside a log barn at the TA Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek. One of the WSGA group escaped from the fusillade, and rode hard to reach Wyoming Governor Barber by the next day. Barber sent President Benjamin Harrison a telegram.
‘About sixty-one owners of live stock are reported to have made an
armed expedition into Johnson County protecting their live stock and
preventing unlawful roundups by rustlers. They are at TA Ranch,
thirteen miles from Fort McKinney, besieged by Sheriff and posse and
by rustlers, said to be two or three hundred in number. The wagons of
stockmen were taken away from them and a battle took place
yesterday, during which men were killed. Great excitement prevails.
Both parties are very determined and it is feared that if successful will
show no mercy to the persons captured. The civil authorities are
unable to prevent violence. The situation is serious and immediate
assistance will probably prevent great loss of life.’
President Harrison did what presidents do. He sent the U.S. Calvary to the rescue. The Sixth arrived at the TA ranch on the morning of April 13 and took custody of the WSGA expedition, just as the posse was about to set the barn on fire. Well the County was in an uproar and every man saddled up to ride, Caught the cattlemen at the TA Ranch and surrounded all four sides, We hailed the house with bullets and swore they were gonna pay, But the cavalry came across the plains and once again they saved the day.
The Army took possession of Wolcott, 45 other men with as many rifles, 41 revolvers, 5,000 rounds of ammunition, and Frank Canton’s gripsack. Inside, they found a list of seventy men to be shot or hanged, ranch houses they had burned, and a contract to pay the Texans $5 a day plus a bonus of $50 for every man killed.
The invaders were taken to Cheyenne and received preferential treatment. They were allowed to roam the base by day as long as they agreed to return at night. Charges were never filed. The perpetrators were released on bail and told to return to Wyoming for the trial. The ones that didn’t flee to Texas went free when the charges were dropped because Johnson County had insufficient resources to pay for the prosecution, said to exceed $18,000. You can’t run with the big dogs. Well, they marched 'em off to Cheyenne, no one went to jail, The cattlemen were all turned loose and the hired guns hit the trail, And I guess the only justice wasn't much to say the least, Last winter me and mine ate mighty fine on the cattle baron's beef.
Local passions remained high for years following the Johnson County War. The discredited 6th Cavalry was replaced by the 9th Cavalry of Buffalo Soldiers, to quell pressure from the local population. Tall tales were spun by both sides, in an attempt to morally justify their actions. The smaller ranchers accused the Old West's most notorious gunslingers of being under the employ of the invaders, including Tom Horn. Horn had worked as a detective for the WSGA in the 1890s but there was no evidence he was involved in the war.
“Killing is my business.” He had said. “Dead men don’t steal no cattle.” Politics was involved. President Harrison, and the ranchers who had hired the gunmen, were Republicans. The Democrats would sweep Wyoming for a long time after the invasion. In 1888, Teddy Roosevelt foretold the end of the open range.
‘In its present form stock-raising on the plains is doomed, and can
hardly outlast the century. The great free ranches, with their
barbarous, picturesque, and curiously fascinating surrounding, mark a
primitive stage of existence as surely as do the great tracts of primieval
forests, and like the latter must surely pass away before the onward
march of our people; and we who have felt the charm of the life, and
have exulted in its abounding vigour and its bold, restless freedom, will
not only regret its passing for our own sakes, but must also feel real
sorrow that those who come after us are not to see, as we have seen,
what is perhaps the pleasantest, healthiest, and most exciting phase of
American existence.’
The most notorious event in the history of Wyoming, open class warfare, and the intervention by the President of the United States to save the lives of hired killers, produced much of, but did not necessarily reflect favorably on, the mythology of American West.
The hero of The Virginian, a seminal 1902 western novel, took the side of the wealthy ranchers. The 1949 novel Shane took the side of the settlers. In the 1968 novel True Grit, the main character was ‘hired by stock owners to terrorize thieves and people called nesters and grangers.’ Baby sister, I was born game and I intend to go out that way. Only John Wayne could have been Rooster Cogburn. Oh, Powder River, you're muddy and you're wide, How many men have died along your shore? When you brand a man a rustler, he's gotta take a side, There's no middle ground in this Johnson County war.
Back at the Winchester, just on closing, our waitress handed Robyn a big styrofoam box to pack her own leftover steak. We put it in the Occidental Hotel fridge, around three corners of creaky floors. Our noisy attempts to retrieve it, before sunrise the next morning, would almost start a second Johnson County War. Never drive black cattle in the dark.
‘Time and space – time to be alone, space to move about – these may
well become the great scarcities of tomorrow.’
Edwin Way Teale
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