Cattle Kate

by Jana Bommersbach

  On Sam Johnson: He was the Durbin Precinct voting judge and foreman of the Bar II Ranch on Pete Creek. Historian Ruth Beebe shared with Hufsmith the story of him turning back when he found they were after Ella.

  On the newspaper men knowing of the lynching: On November 2, 1889, the Carbon County Journal reported that Speer told the coroner that he and Fetz watched the entire thing. Furthermore, he admitted he told cowboys that afternoon that Jim and Ella had been lynched—because that’s what he was told by the vigilantes before they left the newspaper office. “When pressed to tell where he got his information, [Speer] replied that there were some things connected with the case which he did not care to talk about,” the paper reported. This information didn’t emerge until it was too late—nobody realized these two men also were eyewitnesses to the abduction and well knew what the outcome would be.

  Another eyewitness, although he never came forward at the time, Dan Fitger admitted to his family years later that he saw the abduction and lynching. Fitger, then a working cowboy, said he was plowing a hay meadow when he saw Tom Sun’s white-topped tandem-seated buggy and watched all afternoon as the lynching party moved down the river bottom. He also watched Frank Buchanan skulking behind the caravan. This story came from his daughter, Helen, who shared it first with historian Ruth Beebe. Dan Fitger later became Natrone County assessor. “If this story is true, he could have changed history,” Hufsmith notes.

  On Buchanan: Frank Buchanan gave detailed interviews with the sheriff and newspapers on what happened that day. The death scene portrayed here follows his recollections. He reported Ella Watson laughing at her killers, “There’s not enough water in this river to give a land hog a decent bath.”

  On Bothwell being sweet on Ella: Meschter notes an “elderly gentleman from the upper Platt River country” advanced this as a theory on the lynching. He says the man told him that Bothwell had proposed marriage to Ella and believed, “the hanging, then, was Bothwell’s infantile reaction to destroy what he couldn’t have and to erase the humiliation of rejection by someone clearly his inferior.”

  On Ralph Cole: At an inquest, Ralph Cole recounted how the boys ran in with news of the abduction and he ran to retrieve the horses left behind when Jim was kidnapped.

  On the posse: All historical accounts note Deputy Sheriff Philip Watson deputized an acting coroner and brought the posse to the Sweetwater Valley. Historians differ if he took them out to the hanging site in the middle of the night, or if he waited for first light, but common sense says that after an exhausting day in the saddle, they waited.

  On the inquest: A coroner’s inquest was held after the burial, with eyewitness testimony given by Frank Buchanan, Gene Crowder, John DeCorey, and Ralph Cole. The coroner ruled that Ella and Jim had been hanged by the six men.

  Chapter Seventeen—The Man with the Pen

  On Ed Towse: Historians are united in their disgust at the stories written by this journalist, who had worked in Rawlins before he joined the Leader in Cheyenne. Some suggest he was on the payroll of the stock growers. His only real claim to fame is that he is the reporter who told the most fanciful lies about Ella Watson and James Averell.

  On Ed Slack’s article: This is quoted verbatim from the article printed in the Cheyenne Daily Sun of Tuesday, July 23, 1889.

  On Ed Towse’s original article: This is quoted verbatim from the article printed in the Cheyenne Daily Leader, July 23, 1889. In addition, the editor and part-owner of the Leader, John Carroll, offered an editorial the same day titled “Protecting Themselves.” It read:

  “The lynching of a man and woman on the Sweetwater is but a natural outgrowth of the extraordinary conditions of affairs which have existed there and elsewhere in the territory for several years past. Notwithstanding that the large cattle companies contribute greatly to the taxable wealth of the various counties, that they add to the business of the counties by purchasing supplies and to its wealth by the sale of their cattle, things have come to such a pass that they cannot secure protection for their property.

  “In Rawlins recently several trials resulted in the most shameful travesty of justice. In Fremont County, out of sixteen cases, there was not a single conviction. In Johnson County there were no convictions in forty cases and even in this county it has been up to the present almost impossible to secure the conviction of a single cattle thief. In many of those cases the evidence was overwhelming.

  “The logical result of all this is that the cattlemen have been forced to organize for self protection. The rustlers and maverickers are carrying things with a high hand. Honest men are constantly in fear of their lives and are blind to much crookedness that is going on around them. Rewards aggregating $22,000 are offered by twenty-two different cattle companies for the arrest and conviction of anyone found altering the brands or killing their cattle. Nothing short of heroic treatment, however, seems to have any effect.

  “Meanwhile everybody in the sections under the domination of the rustlers is going around armed to the teeth and red hot times may be expected at any moment.”

  On “The True Story”: This is printed verbatim from the Sun on July 25, 1889, and comes from a telegram by rural newspaperman Bill Barlow, who is best remembered as the “sagebrush philosopher.”

  On Ella being a whore and Jim a pimp: Hufsmith says, “Not one shred of substantive evidence exists to show that those two settlers were anything but hard-working homesteaders, trying to eke out a living from a primitive and difficult environment. In fact, according to their neighbors and contemporaries, they were universally liked by nearly everyone who knew them, even including most of the valley cowmen, except Al Bothwell, of course, and his close friends whose free and legal use of rangeland Jim openly challenged.”

  Sharon Leigh wrote in “Ella Watson: Rustler or Homesteader,” published in the Annals of Wyoming magazine: “On Wyoming’s Sweetwater River in 1889, a homesteading woman and man were hanged by six cattlemen. She was reputed to be a prostitute, he supposedly her lover, and together they were considered cattle rustlers. In reality, they were merely homesteaders, legally settling on available government land which was open range claimed by one of the large cattlemen.”

  On the newspaper’s smear campaign: The historical record is clear that Sun Editor Ed Slack mistakenly linked Ella Watson to someone called Cattle Kate. And then Ed Towse compounded the problem by giving her the mistaken identity of Kate Maxwell. Ella’s father, Tom Watson, told the press that his daughter had spent June and July of 1888 in Kansas with her family, making it impossible for her to be the “Ellen Watson” who was arrested in Cheyenne for drunkenness and prostitution on June 23, 1888.

  •Helena Huntington Smith decries the fanciful lies in The War on Powder River. She writes, “But while in the Leader and elsewhere she ‘died with curses on her foul lips,’ in the Chicago Interocean and Omaha Bee she remembered her mother and asked that her ill-gotten gains be used to found a home for wayward girls….Death itself offered no surcease for the poor wretch as the ‘very best people’ held a witches’ sabbath over her remains and the press tore her to pieces in such an orgy of indecency and fakery as can seldom have been equaled even in the nineteenth century.”

  •Smith also notes that “The Laramie Boomerang, always cynical about the Cheyenne ring and all its works and ways, yawned mightily over the Cattle Kate yarn. ‘Farewell, Cattle Queen Kate!’ it perorated at the close of some editorial remarks, ‘Thou didst never exist, but vale anyway.’”

  •Smith on Averell writes, “If there is virtually no evidence to show that Averell was a thief, there is a formidable body of testimony to show that he quarreled with the biggest stockmen in the Sweetwater Valley, those accused in his lynching. Jack Flagg, who was well acquainted on the Sweetwater, wrote three years later: ‘The reason for murdering him was the direct result of trouble he had with Bothwell over some fine meadow land that Bothwell was holding illegally…’”
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br />   •Smith on overall coverage of the story, claimed: “The [New York] World topped the record for silliness…with a remarkable editorial which proves that even as early as 1889 the myth of the pure cowboy who never kissed anybody but his horse had gained a firm foothold in the East. ‘The cowboys of Wyoming did not like Kate Maxwell’s style, so they lynched her…It wasn’t a very gallant thing for “the boys” to do, but Kate’s methods of getting cattle were not such as to popularize her on the plains. Her social life, too, was a trifle shady, and cowboys are particular.’”

  •And it is Smith who is credited by other historians for “destroying” the myth that cattle thieves had free reign over W.T. and the courts looked the other way. “Statements regarding the number of acquittals in cattle-stealing cases were put out by the cattlemen’s propaganda machine…with the most reckless defiance of truth,” she wrote. Not only was this done with the Sweetwater lynching, but was repeated with vigor in 1892 in the most shameful and infamous moment of Wyoming history—the Johnson County War, when cattlemen imported Texan killers to wipe out homesteaders and destroy the town of Buffalo. Many believe Ella and Jim’s murder planted the seed for that war, as cattlemen were emboldened by getting away with their murders. Smith notes the “machine” that claimed as many as four hundred thirty-five righteous rustler cases in Johnson County had resulted in no convictions, but she debunks that story by going to the county court record. In the ten years before the Johnson County War, “the total number of criminal cases in every category, including cattle-stealing, horse-stealing, assault, illegal cohabitation, fornication, murder and ordinary burglary, had barely passed the two hundred mark. So much for the tall tales.”

  •On August 16, 1889, the Casper Weekly Mail said on page one: “The victims of the late hanging party have not yet been proven to be thieves, but on the contrary, there is positive and convincing evidence that neither Averell or the woman ever stole or assisted in stealing any cattle.”

  On newspaper coverage in general: The Wyoming Newspaper Project is a computerized replication of newspapers in the territory, and is available online, so anyone can read all these stories as they were originally published.

  On perpetrating the myth: For many years, the “authority” on the lynching was considered to be Alfred Mokler’s 1923 book, History of Natrona County Wyoming, 1888-1922. But later texts found Mokler’s version to parrot the Cheyenne newspaper view of things, and some historians took him on directly. Daniel Meschter is particularly perturbed by Mokler’s “unreliable” reporting on this case, and takes several potshots at him in Sweetwater Sunset.

  •Dozens of newspaper, magazine, and website articles also parrot the Cheyenne newspaper’s views of the event.

  •“Cattle Kate’s Career: A Blaspheming Border Beauty Barbarously Boosted Branchward,” was the headline in The National Police Gazette in New York on August 10, 1889.

  •Currently on You Tube: “The Surprising Truth About Cattle Kate” by Dr. Franklin Ruehl. Although he has the wrong hanging date, his piece is close to accurate.

  Chapter Eighteen—Pa Wept at Her Grave

  On Pa Watson’s activities: He had someone help him write a long letter about his trip to Wyoming, which was published in the Lebanon, Kansas Criterion on September 20, 1889. Part of his letter is quoted verbatim. He also told of going to Ella’s home and the hanging site.

  On the grave scene: Joe Sharp told his daughter, historian Ruth Beebe, that Ella’s father cried at her gravesite, saying “I wish my little girl had listened to her mother. She told her not to leave home. If she had listened to her mother, she wouldn’t be buried here today.” Beebe shared the story with Hufsmith for his book on the lynching.

  On Gene being fed to wolves: Hufsmith reports this horrible rumor comes from the journals of W.R. Hunt, a former reporter for the Chicago Inter Ocean who quit his job over this lynching. Hunt said he fought his editor over publishing the unsubstantiated stories from Ed Towse, believing Towse was “acting as the official writer—in pay of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.” Hunt came to Wyoming Territory on his own, finding “the people are reluctant to talk, seemed frightened.” He found Buchanan, who was hiding out, discovering the man was waiting to testify and “whittles nearly all the time.” His journal notes that on August 12, 1889, Hunt was in Rawlins. “This town, mostly favorable to Jim Averell and Ella Watson, abounds with bitterness about their fate….both are remembered fondly, even idealized, they have become martyrs of a sort to a cause of conflict brewing in the territory between big-time stockmen and homesteaders….”

  On Ella’s estate: Handwritten court records show the editors of the Sweetwater Chief went on a spending spree at her estate sale and their purchases are accurately reflected in the book.

  On Jim’s estate: Court records show the sale of Jim’s estate included $18.50 for twelve chickens, nine ducks, three sacks of dried fruit, two saws, and one shovel plow.

  On the Watson family being threatened: This was the conclusion of Ella’s great-nephew Daniel Brumbaugh. He told the author that when he discovered his tie to “Cattle Kate,” his cousins told him the family was ashamed that Ella Watson had become a bad woman. But as he researched, he found this conclusion impossible to believe, since the evidence kept growing that she wasn’t any of the things the Cheyenne papers claimed. Considering how viciously the cattlemen slandered Ella, Brumbaugh believed they had threatened Tom Watson, and that accounted for his instructions to never speak of Ella.

  Chapter Nineteen—A Man with Guts

  On Durant’s lawsuit: The records of this suit are contained in large, leather embossed books at the Carbon County Courthouse. Most writers have said the suit just disappeared, but this author found the entire record during a research trip to Wyoming in August, 2009. Durant was the coroner of Carbon County and his legal activities—from settling Ella and Jim’s estates to the lawsuit—are recounted from the public record.

  On John Lacey: The defense attorney for Bothwell and Durbin had been a justice of the territorial supreme court. His law partners included W.W. Corlett of Cheyenne, who had been a territorial delegate to Congress, and John A. Riner, a United States judge for Wyoming, according to “In Old Wyoming,” a popular column by John C. Thompson, in the Laramie State Journal in the 1950s.

  On the safe deposit box: There is no evidence that Ella Watson ever owned a safe deposit box, and her plea that she did could have been a ploy to get her kidnappers to take her to town, where she could get help. But the sale of the cows was witnessed by at least two people, so what became of the bill of sale is a mystery. If she had a safe deposit box in the Rawlins bank, nobody ever came forward to reveal that information.

  On the men going free: Judge Samuel T. Corn presided over the grand jury hearings on October 14, 1889. Lacking any eyewitness testimony, and with the accused now claiming they were innocent, the grand jury could not issue a “true bill” that would have sent the men to trial. All five in attendance—Ernie McLean had long ago disappeared—walked out of the courtroom as free men.

  Chapter Twenty—And in the End

  On the lynchers: The summary of their lives comes from several sources, including Hufsmith and Mescher.

  On Ernie McLean: Meschter found a pay ledger from the Durbin Land and Cattle Company showing John Durbin bought Ernie McLean a twenty-nine-dollar railroad ticket on July 21, 1889, and paid him two hundred forty dollars in advanced wages—“obviously a kind of severance pay to tide McLean over to his next job and to keep him out of Wyoming,” says Meschter.

  On Bothwell’s lack of remorse: In a 1943 article for Annals of Wyoming magazine, A.C. Campbell wrote: “I knew all the lynchers. I was quite intimate with the leader during the later years of his life. If he had any regret for that atrocious deed or any remorse, he successful concealed the same.”

  On the Rawlins mural: The Rawlins Main Street Mural Project is a downtown educational walking to
ur of twelve murals highlighting the history and natural beauty of south central Wyoming. A brochure on the exhibit identifies Mural No. 8 as Cattle Kate. The brochure notes: “This surreal representation of the controversial Cattle Kate was painted by Dianne Johansson. Ella Watson, also known as Cattle Kate, and her husband, Jim Averell, were lynched on July 20, 1889. The left panel of the mural shows a map with significant places and events in their lives marked. Look carefully at the tree on the seam of the left panel to read more information about their story. The right panel portrays four of the men involved. In the center, Cattle Kate looks down from the rocks viewing the place of her death.”

  The mural itself, as viewed by the author, says Ella and Jim were “hanged by greedy land barons.” It focuses its wrath on McLean, Durbin, Bothwell, and Conner, while exonerating Tom Sun, saying he “was against the affair.” The handwritten story on the mural says “Ellen and Jim were married to each other, and their friends and neighbors mourned the tragic murder. Ellen and Jim fed the hungry, clothed the naked and took anyone in.”

  On the Johnson County War: It is almost impossible today to believe what cattlemen did in 1892 in the new State of Wyoming. Claiming widespread rustling, they imported hired Texas gunmen to kill homesteaders and wipe out the town of Buffalo. Worse yet, they were supported by the governor, their congressmen, and President Benjamin Harrison, to the horror of both citizens and history. The War on Powder River by Helena Huntington Smith, is just one of the dozens of excellent books that spell out this historical atrocity.

  On the continuing legend of “Cattle Kate”:

  •“This Day in History, July 20, 1889” on www.History.com calls Ella a “former prostitute from Kansas” and Jim a “saloonkeeper.” It describes Bothwell as “one of the most arrogant cattlemen in the region.”

  •In Saga magazine, November 1956, Jules Archer writes: “Kate was a blonde bombshell who could outcurse, outdrink and outfight any cowhand in the Sweetwater Valley, but she learned the hard way that sex and rustling don’t mix.”