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 and its adjacent areas from 1889 to 1893. The conflict began when cattle companies started ruthlessly persecuting alleged rustlers, 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.

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 −40 to −50 °F (−40 to −46 °C), 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.

Many of the large ranching outfits in Wyoming were organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (the WSGA) 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."

The term "Johnson County War" has been in use as early as April 23, 1892 during a report on the war by the Colorado newspaper Weekly Gazette. Author D.F. Baber used the term "Johnson County Cattle War" in his 1947 book about the conflict. Many writers of the time such as Asa Mercer and Owen Wister, dated it strictly to April 5–13, 1892, specifically during the Invasion. Historian R. Michael Wilson agreed on this narrow definition, reasoning that only the deaths that happened in Johnson County, of which the conflict took its name, should be counted; barring the violence that happened in other Wyoming areas such as Natrona County and Weston County.