The Johnson County War

Cattle Barons vs. Small Ranchers and Farmers.  Johnson County Wyoming, 1892.  Cattle barons were outraged when juries failed to convict cattle rustlers and took the law into their own hands.  They hired Texan gunmen to help kill suspected cattle thieves.

On the cattle baron's side were members of the Cheyenne Club, dominated by the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association.  US Senator's Francis Warren and Joseph Carey, along with Governor Amos Barker made sure the state militia did not interfere.  The chief organizers were Major Frank Wolcott and W.C. Irvine.   On the other side were the small ranchers and farmers who were mislabeled the "kings of the cattle thieves".  Nick Ray and Nate Champion were the organizers.

On April 10, 1892, in the seat of Johnson County Buffalo, residents were warned that the area was full of armed cattle baron men.  The invaders fell back to the TA Ranch, 14 miles away from Buffalo where they besieged some 300 small ranchers, and townsmen recruited by the sheriff, Red Angus.

Within  36 hours after the invaders killed two rustlers (Nick Ray and Nate Champion) on Powder River, several hundred cowboys, small ranchers and farmers were up in arms.  They were convinced the cattle barons  were out to eliminate the small man and seize all their lands under the guise of punishing the lawless.  The memory of "Cattle Kate" Watson who was lynched in 1889 for entertaining cowboys and accepting stolen cattle as payment, was still fresh in their minds. 

When Governor Barber called for help from Senators Warren and Carey, they persuaded President Benjamin Harrison to call in federal troops.  The cavalry came, rescued the situation and locked up the men in Fort Russell, Wyoming.  The cattle barons were never tried for murder but public opinion tried and convicted them in the public press and in a book published in 1894 called The Bandits of the Plains, the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming.  Long after the publication, the memory of the Johnson County War was kept alive.

Next time...Land of Violence
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 13, 1878, Kate Bionda, a restaurant owner, dies of yellow fever in Memphis, Tennessee, after a man who had escaped a quarantined steamboat visited her restaurant. The disease spread rapidly and the resulting epidemic emptied the city.

Startin' Up the Ranch

Before the days of the great cattle barons, there was little distinction between a cowhand and a rancher.  Many men were both.  When a would-be rancher was just starting out, he often hired himself out for a season or two to earn money to start a herd.  Once he had enough money for 30 head, he could look for a piece of land in Texas, Arizona, Wyoming or Montana.  Land itself was cheap, even free under the Homestead Act.  Most cattlemen didn't bother with legalities, they just squatted and let their cattle take over the surrounding acres.

Early years for a rancher were rough, waiting for the cattle to fatten and multiply.  The rancher worked alone, no money to hire help, so he rode around his lands keeping watch on his herd.  His home might be a dugout, a buffalo-hide tent, a wagon or a crudely built cabin.  But if he was wise, an initial investment of $100 could turn into $700 in just two years.  Profits went back into the business for the first years until he could build a proper house and hire a few cowhands.

Even when a rancher could hire cowhands, he still continued to work the ranch alongside the men, riding along the edge of unfenced lands.  He participated in the twice yearly round-up, where strayed cattle were rounded-up and new calves were branded.

Reginald Aldridge, visited a ranch in the Texas Panhandle and wrote an accurate description of the layout of a ranch in the late 1800s:  "it was considered the most comfortable in the Panhandle.  There was a good five-room house where the proprietor lived together with his foreman and a woman who cooked.  A little distance there was a smaller house, containing a kitchen and a dining room, and beyond was a picket house where the men slept, one room fitted up as a blacksmith's forge and another as a saddle-room.  There were besides a milk house, a store-room for provisions, a vegetable garden, a small horse pasture and a field of rye.  The owner claimed to have about 2,600 head of cattle."

Next time..."It's a Cowboy's Life
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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 30, 1619, in Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World–the House of Burgesses–convenes in the choir of the town’s church.