Conflict Between Cowboys and Homesteaders
One conflict between cowboys and homesteaders is captured in this secondary source.
American exploration and settlement of the Great Plains took in several waves during the 19th century. It started with explorers like mountain men. These scouts came with pack trains of animals to trap, and they lived very similar lives to the Native people they traveled among. Next, came the Oregon Trail migrants. These people were only passing through, but the system of road ranches and Army forts constructed to aid them survived for years and years. By 1865, a number of towns had also sprung up on the mountainous edges of the Plains. Towns like Denver, Virginia City, and other mining towns existed on the fringes. Next, came the cattlemen. These entrepreneurs capitalized on the Great Plains’ geography.
Now to be honest, the beef industry in the Great Plains is older than 1865. The Spanish had established missions on what is now the Plains in the 1600s. Although the history of the cattle industry doesn’t follow a straight line to the post-Civil War cattle drives, it is always active. It was a way for people to use the one resource this region had in abundance: grass. Open-range ranching operations spread over vast areas to utilize the grasslands. Officially, nobody owned the range. It was American government land that people were utilizing. Unofficially, a range was controlled by certain individuals in the area. Many of the first great ranches in American history operated by controlling open range. The system of open-range ranching established a profitable industry on the Plains. However, the Homestead Act of 1862 threw a wrench in the system.
The Homestead Act of 1862 gave people the chance to own 160 acres for a small fee and a few year’s commitment. Essentially, the US government was giving away land that it obtained in events like the Louisiana Purchase. This was a rare opportunity for many families of the time. The chance to own land simply didn’t happen. Many immigrants and farmers who rented land in eastern states flooded west to stake their claim. However, there was a problem.
The cattlemen who first settled the Plains had come to feel a sense of ownership of the land. Why wouldn’t they? Many of them had to fight hard to survive. Just because they had free grass doesn’t mean it was cheap. Read the biographies of any old cattleman, and you’ll find they showed tremendous grit and determination to establish themselves in an often hostile environment. If you are interested in this time period, Elmer Kelton’s Stand Proud is one fictional story that reflects on the difficulties these first cattlemen faced. Like any good fiction, there is a lot of truth in it. Despite the cattleman’s determination, the reality was they had no legal claim to the land they had come to control. They watched droves of simple homesteaders flood their old range, break the sod, and build their modest homes.
As you might expect, this created some tension between the two groups. In addition to the land conflict, there was also a cultural divide between the two groups. Needless to say, the wide-ranging cowboys and the home-bound homesteaders didn’t always see eye-to-eye. This transition period from open range to private ownership is often pockmarked by conflicts between cowboys and homesteaders. One such conflict was chronicled by Solomon Butcher.
A Solomon Butcher photograph of a homesteading family.
Solomon Butcher was a photographer who is best known for his photos of sod houses he captured. He also published a book titled Pioneer History of Custer County (available for free on Google Play). In this book, he describes the plains as he saw them, and relates other stories he had heard. One such story is the entertaining story of a conflict between cowboys and homesteaders. Starting on page 185, Butcher wrote:
“Early in the fall of 1884 a few settlers located homesteads in the northeast corner of the Brighton Ranch Company's pasture, on Ash creek. This pasture was about fifteen miles square and extended several miles south of the Loup River almost to Broken Bow, and was enclosed with a wire fence. The land being government land, and subject to entry, these settlers served notice on the ranch company to remove their fence from about their claims within thirty days.
“The company paid no attention to this request, and at the expiration of the time the settlers made a raid on the fence and appropriated the posts to make roofs for their sod houses. Roofs in those days were made by laying a large log, called a ridge log, lengthwise of the building at the top. The fence posts were then laid up to form the rafters, to which brush was fastened, the whole being covered with one or two layers of prairie sod, coated with several inches of yellow clay procured from the canyons, which turned the water effectually.
“In a short time after the appropriation of these posts the foreman of the ranch had the settlers arrested and taken to Broken Bow for trial. The sheriff had no sooner departed with the prisoners than the second foreman of the ranch rigged up two large wagons, drawn by four mules each, and proceeded to the houses of the settlers, accompanied by a number of the cowboys. They drove up to a house, took a team and large chain, hitched onto the projecting end of the ridge log, and in about three seconds the neat little home was a shapeless mass of sod, hay, brush and posts mixed up in almost inextricable confusion. The ranchmen then culled their posts from the wreck and loaded them into the wagons, when they went to the next house and repeated the operation, leaving the occupants to pick their few household goods out of the ruins at their leisure. The boys were having great fun at the expense of the settlers, cracking jokes and making merry as the work of destruction went on. After destroying several houses in this manner they proceeded to the claim of a Mr. King, and Mrs. King, seeing them approaching, met them with a shotgun and dared them to come on. Had it been Mr. King, the invitation would possibly have been accepted, but the cowboys were too gallant to enter into a quarrel with a lady, and withdrew without molesting her.
“In the meantime a boy of the settlement had been dispatched to Broken Bow on the fastest pony that could be procured, to secure help, and quite a posse of men from the town started for the scene of action. The foreman of the ranch, who was in Broken Bow at the time as complaining witness against the settlers, heard of this and sent one of his cowboys in haste to warn the second foreman of the impending invasion. This messenger arrived at the settlement in advance of the citizens and gave the alarm. The housewreckers were thoroughly scared, and turning the heads of their mule teams towards the South Loup, applied the whip freely. As the mules began to run over the rough prairie the posts began to fall off the wagons, and as the teams began to show signs of weariness the cowboys began to heave off more posts to lighten the load as they bumped along, leaving a trail behind them like that of a railroad construction gang.
“Arriving at the ranch, they turned out their mules, secured their Winchesters and made a break for the hills on the south side of the river to await developments. When the posse of rescuers arrived at the little settlement and found the invaders gone, they did not follow them, but returned to Broken Bow. The cowboys remained in the hills two days, watching for the approach of the enemy in vain.
“The ranch company failed to make any case against the settlers, it being shown that the ranch pasture was government land and that the claims were lawfully held by the homesteaders, who had a perfect right to remove the fence which enclosed their property. The prisoners were accordingly released and were not again molested. The second foreman of the ranch was subsequently arrested for tearing down the houses of the settlers, tried at Broken Bow, found guilty, fined $25 and costs and confined one day in the county jail"
This secondary source from Solomon Butcher can offer us an insight into the conflict between cowboys and homesteaders. The Brighton Ranch had fenced in a large tract of their range with hopes of retaining ownership. This was a common practice after the invention of barbed wire in 1874 and the increased surge of homesteaders. The idea was that if they could fence the range, and hold it long enough, they might be able to somehow establish legal title. Homesteaders, however, generally disputed those claims and wanted access to their homesteads. In this case, the dispute ended without any casualties. That wasn’t always the case though. There are cases like the killings between the Olivies and homesteaders Ketchum and Mitchel. In that story, both sides lost lives in a series of events that display the grisly reality of life on the frontier.
Hopefully, this story from Solomon Butcher can help you better understand how conflicts between cowboys and homesteaders may have unfolded. It is a story that not only shows the roots of the conflict but also how the land disputes were sometimes handled. This era in history is just one chapter in the American settlement of the Plains.
