Assimilating the Frontier Code in Society

Eventually the western cattlemen's associations added the Code of the West to their body of strictly enforced rules that covered matters such as cattle breeding, land use and water rights.This helped the Code work well enough in the general population, but there was a dark side to the Code as well.

Wherever the law was weak or men were impatient with the delays to enforce the Code laws, vigilantes stepped in to "hurry things along."  A powerful ranch owner who insisted on the strict standard of behavior on his own lands and with his own cowhands, took revenge when his cattle were stolen by professional rustlers.  He hired gunmen to shoot suspected cattle thieves before the law could solve the problem.  Sometimes they got the wrong man, sometimes it was just an excuse to frighten off legitimate ranchers.

The spiraling vengeance of the West's blood feuds found its basis in the belief that cattle and sheep could not co-exist on the same open range.  Sheep ranchers were not welcome anywhere near a cattle ranch.  It wasn't until the turn of the century that it was discovered that if properly handled, there was no reason why cattle and sheep could not share a range.

Such was the economic case in the 1880s of the Tewksbury-Graham feud in Arizona that ended up taking over 25 lives.  What began with family quarrels soon became linked with the bitter struggle for the use of the open range by cattle and sheep.  The Grahams and their allies supported the cattle owners, the Tewksburys, the sheepherders.  During one bloody raid on Tewksbury land, a determined Tewksbury woman marched out amid flying bullets to bury one of her clansmen.  The firing immediately stopped to allow her to do her duty...after all, the Code of the West did not allow shooting unarmed females.

Next time...The End of an Era
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 20, 1833,  President Benjamin Harrison is born in North Bend, Ohio. You might say he came from a political family...at the time of his birth, Harrison’s father was serving Ohio in the United States House of Representatives, while his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was serving as a senator from Indiana and only eight years away from becoming America’s ninth president. His great-grandfather and namesake, Benjamin Harrison, had served as governor of colonial Virginia and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.