Financial History Issue 133 (Spring 2020) | Page 10

EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Montana artist Charlie Russell’s painting, “Waiting for a Chinook,” depicts the disastrous winter of 1886–87.
they often stayed nearby their owner’s
homestead, and good homesteaders kept
a close eye on their unbranded property.
Nevertheless, these open range assets were
routinely rounded up, branded and sold at
the WSGA auction.
Tensions began to mount as small
ranchers chafed at the brazen actions of
the WSGA. The WSGA, on the other
hand, failed to distinguish between rus-
tlers and honest homesteaders. In the
WSGA’s eyes, a homesteader was a rustler.
The large cattle ranchers in Johnson
County had yet to experience a drought.
That changed in the summer of 1886
when the spring rains failed to material-
ize. To make matters worse, overgrazing
was becoming an issue. The once seem-
ingly inexhaustible grasslands began to
show strain as more and more cattle were
released on the open range.
Ranch managers and the cowboys who
worked for them hoped the summer drought
would be relieved by a mild winter, but it
was not to be. Those who experienced it
remembered that winter as “The Great Die-
up.” Heavy snows began in November with
a slight lull in early December. The snows
returned with a vengeance in late December
and did not abate until March. Cattle losses
were horrendous. According to historian
John Davis, “probably 50% of the range
cattle in Wyoming and 75% in Montana”
were lost. Large outfits with absentee owners
were hit hardest. 3 Clay wrote, “The cowmen
of the West and Northwest were flat broke.
Many of them never recovered. They had
not the heart to face another debacle… Most
of the eastern men and the Britishers said
‘enough’ and went away.” Moreton Frewen
never returned to Wyoming after 1886.
Plummeting cattle prices and the con-
tinuing drought after a catastrophic winter
spelled disaster for the cattle industry.
Wages had already been cut by $5 a month
in the spring of 1886. 4 Most cowboys work-
ing for the large outfits were seasonal
employees who were laid off during the
winter. Traditionally, an unemployed cow-
boy could “ride the grub line,” which
meant free room and board at the various
ranches that would likely hire them back
in the spring. This practice ended when the
wage cuts went into effect, forcing many
out-of-work ranch hands to resort to rus-
tling to make it through the winter.
Since few ranch jobs were available in
the spring of 1887, many former ranch
employees turned to the Homestead Act
of 1862 for relief. Under the Act, any male
citizen over the age of 21 could, for a small
processing fee, claim 160 acres of feder-
ally owned land. If the claimant improved
the land and lived on it for five years, he
8    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Spring 2020  | www.MoAF.org
received title to the property. 5
Of course, these cowboys knew the
country well, and they tended to home-
stead in areas on the open range that were
key to the success of their former employ-
ers. Large cattle ranchers, who depended
on access to free federally owned lands
and often acted as if they owned the
open range, were incensed at the audacity
of Johnson County homesteaders. They
retaliated by refusing to hire any cowboy
who owned his own cattle.
The WSGA aggressively pursued per-
ceived rustlers, but they were unable to
get convictions in local courts because the
local jury pools were usually sympathetic
to the rustlers. Frustrations mounted on
both sides, and it was only a matter of time
before blood was spilled.
The first deaths occurred in the summer
of 1889 in central Wyoming when WSGA
members wrongly hanged homesteaders
Ella Watson and Jim Averell for cattle rus-
tling. Adding insult to injury, the WSGA,
through the Cheyenne media, mounted a
national slander campaign against the two
unfortunate victims. The violence would
move to Johnson County in 1891 when two
honest men were dry gulched. 
Brian Grinder is a professor at Eastern
Washington University and a member
of Financial History’s editorial board.
Dr. Dan Cooper is the president of Active
Learning Technologies.
Notes
1. According to Knowlton, “Over the next
four months Macdonald would talk to
anyone who knew anything about the
emerging American cattle trade—ranch-
ers, farmers, beef packers, and regulators.
He traveled 11,420 miles by train—averag-
ing 22 miles per hour, at a cost of 3½ cents
a mile, visiting most of the states in the
West and the Midwest.”
2. John Clay wrote of Edinburgh:
The financial officers of that conserva-
tive old city had found a new mine to
exploit. The drawing rooms buzzed with
the stories of this last of bonanzas; staid
old gentlemen who scarcely knew the
difference betwixt a steer and a heifer
discussed it over their port and nuts. Mr.