Johnson County War
The Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River and the Wyoming Range War, was a range war in Johnson County, Wyoming from 1889 to 1893. The conflict began when cattle companies started ruthlessly persecuting alleged rustlers in the area, many of whom were settlers who competed with them for livestock, land and water rights. As violence swelled between the large established ranchers and the smaller settlers in the state, it culminated in the Powder River Country, when the ranchers hired gunmen to invade the county. The gunmen's initial incursion in the territory alerted the small farmers and ranchers, as well as the state lawmen, and they formed a posse of 200 men that led to a grueling standoff, ending when the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison relieved the two forces, although further fighting persisted.
The events have since become a highly mythologized and symbolic story of the Wild West and over the years variations of the story have come to include some of its most famous historical figures. In addition to being one of the best-known range wars of the American frontier, its themes, especially class warfare, served as a basis for numerous popular novels, films and television shows in the Western genre.
Background
Conflict over land was a common occurrence in the development of the American West, but became particularly prevalent when large portions of it were settled by new immigrants for the first time through the Homestead Acts. It is a period that one historian, Richard Maxwell Brown, has called the "Western Civil War of Incorporation", which the Johnson County War was a part of. According to him, this period lasted from the 1850s to the First World War, pitting powerful corporations and government-affiliated individuals who sought to incorporate the frontier into the market, against modest and independent groups such as Anglo-American homesteaders, Native Americans, and Hispanic settlers, resulting in violent conflicts such as the Indian wars and the range wars. This contributed to the West's reputation for violence.In the early days of Wyoming, most of the land was in public domain, which was open to stock raising as an open range and farmlands for homesteading. Large numbers of cattle were turned loose on the open range by ranches. Each spring, round-ups were held to separate the cattle belonging to different ranchers. Before a round-up, an orphan or stray calf was sometimes surreptitiously branded, which was the common way to identify the cow's owners. However, as more and more homesteaders called "nesters" and "grangers" moved into Wyoming, competition for land and water soon enveloped the state, and the large cattle companies, also known as “cattle barons”, reacted by monopolizing large areas of the open range, preventing homesteaders from using it. The often uneasy relationship between the wealthier ranchers and smaller settlers of relatively modest means steadily aggravated after the harsh winter of 1886–1887, when a series of blizzards and temperatures of, followed by an extremely hot and dry summer, ravaged the frontier.
Thousands of cattle were lost in the calamity, forcing the surviving cattle barons to cut wages and lay-off many of their cowboys. In turn, these cowboys filed for homestead, further increasing competition. To protect whatever livestock remained, the cattle barons reacted with a catch-all allegation of rustling against their competition. Hostilities worsened when the Wyoming legislature passed the Maverick Act, which stated that all unbranded cattle in the open range automatically belonged to the large ranchers. The cattle barons also held a firm grip on Wyoming's stock interests by limiting the number of small ranchers and grangers who could participate, including in the annual round-ups. They also forbade their employees from owning cattle for fear of additional competition, and they threatened anyone they suspected to be rustlers. Although at a financial disadvantage, the homesteaders outnumbered the cattle barons significantly, and they tried to use this to win court cases by participating in the jury. However, records showed that they were still not successful.
Wyoming Stock Growers Association
Many of the large ranching outfits in Wyoming were organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and gathered socially at the Cheyenne Club in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Comprising some of the state's wealthiest and most influential residents, the organization held a great deal of political sway in the state and region. The WSGA organized the cattle industry by scheduling roundups and cattle shipments. The WSGA also employed an agency of detectives to investigate cases of cattle theft from its members' holdings. Grangers and rustlers often intermixed with one another in the community, making it more difficult for detectives to differentiate the criminals and the innocent homesteaders.Rustling in the local area was likely increasing because of the harsh grazing conditions, and the illegal exploits of organized groups of rustlers were becoming well publicized in the late 1880s. Well-armed outfits of horse and cattle rustlers roamed across various portions of Wyoming and Montana, with Montana vigilantes such as the infamous Stuart's Stranglers declaring "War on the Rustlers" in 1884. Bandits taking refuge in the infamous hideout known as the Hole-in-the-Wall were also preying upon the herds. Frank M. Canton, Sheriff of Johnson County in the early 1880s and better known as a detective for the WSGA, was a prominent figure in supposedly eliminating these criminals from Wyoming. Before the events in Johnson County, Canton had already developed a reputation as a lethal gunman. At a young age he had worked as a cowboy in Texas, and in 1871 he started a career in robbery and cattle rustling, as well as killing a Buffalo Soldier on October 10, 1874. Historian Harry Sinclair Drago described Canton as a "merciless, congenital, emotionless killer. For pay, he murdered eight—very likely ten—men."
War
Early killings
On July 20, 1889, a range detective from the WSGA named George Henderson accused Ella Watson, a local rancher, of stealing cattle from a fellow rancher by the name of Albert John Bothwell. The cattlemen sent riders to seize Watson before capturing her husband Jim Averell as well. Both of them were subsequently lynched. This gruesome act was one of the rare cases in the Old West in which a woman was lynched, an event that appalled many of the local residents and paved the way for future events in the war. County Sheriff Frank Hadsell arrested six men for the lynching and a trial date was set. However, before the trial, threats were sent to the witnesses who were to testify against the aggressors. One of those witnesses was young Gene Crowder, who mysteriously disappeared under unknown circumstances before the trial. Another, Averell's nephew and foreman Frank Buchanan, disappeared from the county as well after a shootout with unknown suspects, and was presumed to be hiding or murdered. Ralph Cole, another nephew of Averell's, died on the day of the trial from poisoning.Enemies of the WSGA soon fought back. Henderson, the range detective who had accused Watson, was murdered near Sweetwater Creek in October 1890. The cattle barons soon tightened their control and hunted down those who tried to oppose them. The double lynching of the Averells was followed by the lynching of Tom Waggoner, a horse trader from Newcastle, Wyoming, in June 1891. A friend of Waggoner named Jimmy the Butcher, who was once arrested for rustling cattle belonging to the Standard Cattle Company, was also murdered. Range detective Tom Smith killed a suspected rustler, and when he was indicted for murder, political connections to the WSGA secured his release. These killings precipitated more hostilities and violence in the years to come.
After the lynchings of their prominent competitors, the WSGA's control over the range was undisputed, until a group of smaller ranchers formed the Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers' Association to compete with the WSGA, led by a local cowboy named Nate Champion. Upon hearing this, members of the WSGA immediately viewed the new association as a threat to their hold on the stock interests. The WSGA then blacklisted members of the NWFSGA from the round-ups in order to stop their operations. However, the NWFSGA refused the orders to disband and instead publicly announced their plans to hold their own round-up in the spring of 1892.
Soon, the prominent cattlemen sent out an assassination squad to kill Champion on the morning of November 1, 1891. Champion and another man, named Ross Gilbertson, were sleeping in a cabin near the Middle Fork of the Powder River when a group of armed men went inside. Only two were able to fit into the small cabin while four others stood by outside. Champion was immediately awakened by the intrusion, and as the gunmen pointed their weapons at him, Champion reached for his own pistol hidden under a pillow and a shootout commenced. Champion successfully shot two of the gunmen, mortally wounding and killing assassin Billy Lykins. The rest of the assassination squad subsequently fled. Champion was left uninjured except for some facial burns from gunpowder. In a subsequent investigation of the attack, the names of those involved were leaked to two ranchers: John A. Tisdale and Orley "Ranger" Jones. However, both men were ambushed and murdered while they were riding, which outraged many of the small ranchers and farmers in the county.
Invasion
The WSGA, led by Frank Wolcott, hired gunmen with the intention of eliminating alleged rustlers in Johnson County and breaking up the NWFSGA. By that time, prominent names in Wyoming started taking sides. Acting governor Amos W. Barber supported the cattlemen, who blamed the small ranchers and homesteaders for the criminal activity in the state. Former cowboy, Indian War veteran, and Sheriff of Buffalo, William "Red" Angus, supported the homesteaders, and believed that the cattle barons were abusing the homesteaders.In March 1892, the cattlemen sent agents to Texas from Cheyenne and Idaho to recruit gunmen and finally carry out their plans for exterminating the homesteaders. This group became known as the "Invaders". The cattle barons had always used hired guns from Texas to take out suspected rustlers and scare away the nesters in Wyoming. One particular act of violence perpetrated by the Texans was recounted by cowboy John J. Baker, where the Texans ambushed and killed nine trappers whom they mistook for rustlers in Big Dry Creek, Wyoming. They received a $450 bonus for the slaughter.
Soon, 23 gunmen from Paris, Texas, and 4 cattle detectives from the WSGA were hired, as well as Wyoming dignitaries who also joined the expedition. State Senator Bob Tisdale, State Water Commissioner W. J. Clarke, as well as William C. Irvine and Hubert Teshemacher, who had both been instrumental in the organization of the State of Wyoming four years earlier, also joined the band. They were accompanied by surgeon Charles Bingham Penrose as well as Ed Towse, a reporter for the Cheyenne Sun, and a newspaper reporter for the Chicago Herald, Sam T. Clover, whose lurid first-hand accounts later appeared in eastern newspapers. A total expedition of 50 men was organized which consisted of cattlemen, range detectives, and the 23 hired guns from Texas. To lead the expedition, the WSGA hired Frank M. Canton. Canton's gripsack was later found to contain a list of 70 county residents to be either shot or hanged, and a contract to pay the Texans $5 a day plus a bonus of $50 for every rustler, real or alleged, they killed. The group became known as the "Invaders", or alternately, "Wolcott's Regulators".
John Clay, a prominent Wyoming businessman, was suspected of playing a major role in planning the Johnson County invasion. Clay denied this, saying that in 1891 he advised Wolcott against the scheme and was out of the country when it was undertaken. He later helped the Invaders avoid punishment after their surrender. The group organized in Cheyenne and proceeded by train to Casper, Wyoming, and then toward Johnson County on horseback, cutting the telegraph lines north of Douglas, Wyoming, in order to prevent an alarm. While on horseback, Canton and the gunmen traveled ahead while the party of WSGA officials led by Wolcott followed a safe distance behind.