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| Author | Asa Mercer |
|---|---|
| Subject | Johnson County War |
Publication date | 1894 |
Banditti of the Plains is a book written by Asa Mercer about the 1889 to 1893 Johnson County War in Wyoming, United States, where wealthy cattle ranchers intent on controlling limited resources enlisted hired guns to fight smaller settlers and homesteaders. [1]
The title of the book was taken from a now-forgotten Western titled The Banditti of the Range.[ citation needed ]
It is written from the perspective of Mercer, who had come to Wyoming to edit the North West Live Stock Journal , the official publication of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA), which represented the monied interests intent on controlling the cattle industry. As the events of the range wars unfolded, Mercer came to sympathize with the homesteaders and turned against the WSGA. The book reflects his pro-settler view and is an important document of the events.[ citation needed ]
The first edition of the book is one of the rarities of western Americana. Immediately after it was printed, the Wyoming cattlemen objected and sued. The court ordered it destroyed. While the books were in the court's custody, a number were stolen and smuggled to Denver and later bound. For many years, the Wyoming Stockgrowers' Association, their sympathizers, and their descendants destroyed every copy they came across. Surviving copies are rare, and in 2016 copies were listed for prices between $1,250 and $6000. [2] The second edition simply disappeared somewhere between Denver, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association was rumored to have hijacked and destroyed the second printing as it was being shipped.[ citation needed ]
Mercer saw his printing press in Cheyenne burned down; he was harassed, arrested, jailed and had the plates of his book destroyed. His writings were seized in the mails as obscenity; his business was ruined.[ citation needed ]
Mercer's main views of the Johnson County War were ultimately proved true, and never again did the cattle barons attempt to invade Wyoming.[ citation needed ]
Thanks to republication in 1954 by the University of Oklahoma Press, with a foreword by William H. Kittrell, the first edition text is now readily available, having appeared in paperback in 1976.[ citation needed ]
In "Stick to Your Guns", a November 12, 2012, episode of the reality television series Pawn Stars , a visitor to the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas brought in an 1884 .45 Colt revolver that belonged to Sheriff Fred Coats, which was accompanied by a copy of Banditti of the Plains. The seller pointed out that Page 140 of the book mentions that Coats was one of three men involved in an assault during the Wyoming Range Wars. [3]
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese ; the tribes merged in the early 19th century. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. The Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family.
The Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River and the Wyoming Range War, was a range conflict that took place 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, who invaded 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 which ended when the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison relieved the two forces, although further fighting persisted.
Kaycee is a town in Johnson County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 247 at the 2020 census. It is home to a museum that preserves the cattle ranching heritage of the area, especially the history of the Johnson County War.
Asa Shinn Mercer was the first president of the Territorial University of Washington and a member of the Washington State Senate.
Thomas Horn Jr., was an American scout, cowboy, soldier, range detective, and Pinkerton agent in the 19th-century and early 20th-century American Old West. Believed to have committed 17 killings as a hired gunman throughout the West, Horn was convicted in 1902 of the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell near Iron Mountain, Wyoming. Willie was the son of sheep rancher Kels Nickell, who had been involved in a range feud with neighbor and cattle rancher Jim Miller. On the day before his 43rd birthday, Horn was executed by hanging in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Nathan D. Champion — known as Nate Champion — was a key figure in the Johnson County War of April 1892. Falsely accused by a wealthy Wyoming cattlemen's association of being a rustler, Champion was the first person targeted by a band of hit men hired by the wealthy cattle barons. In reality, Champion was simply a small rancher who stood up against the big cattlemen's practice of claiming all unbranded young cattle on the range. He is celebrated for his heroic stand in his besieged cabin and for a heartfelt letter written at the time describing the events.
The Colorado Piedmont is an area along the base of the foothills of the Front Range in north central Colorado in the United States. The region consists of a broad hilly valley, just under 5000 ft in elevation, stretching north and northeast from Denver in the valley of the South Platte River, as well as along the Arkansas River valley southward from Colorado Springs. The name Colorado Piedmont also refers to the physiographic section of the Great Plains province.
The Colorado War was an Indian War fought in 1864 and 1865 between the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brulé and Oglala Sioux peoples versus the U.S. Army, Colorado militia, and white settlers in Colorado Territory and adjacent regions. The Kiowa and the Comanche played a minor role in actions that occurred in the southern part of the Territory along the Arkansas River. The Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux played the major role in actions that occurred north of the Arkansas River and along the South Platte River, the Great Platte River Road, and the eastern portion of the Overland Trail. The United States government and Colorado Territory authorities participated through the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment, often called the Colorado volunteers. The war was centered on the Colorado Eastern Plains, extending eastward into Kansas and Nebraska.
Ellen Liddy Watson was a pioneer of Wyoming who became known as Cattle Kate, an outlaw of the Old West, although the characterization is a dubious one, as subsequent research has tended to see her as a much maligned victim of a self-styled land baron. Watson had acquired homestead rights on land with water resources vital to the wealthiest rancher in the county, Albert Bothwell, when she was accused by him of cattle rustling. She was abducted from her home and lynched along with her husband by Bothwell and some other ranchers he had incited against her. The bodies were left hanging for two days, and the reputation that attached to her until recently was quickly established by newspaper publicity. Accounts of Watson as a rustler are now regarded as highly biased. Her life has become an Old West legend and inspired a number of television and film accounts.
The Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) is an American cattle organization that started in 1872 among Wyoming cattle ranchers to standardize and organize the cattle industry but quickly grew into a political force that has been called "the de facto territorial government" of Wyoming's organization into early statehood, and wielded great influence throughout the Western United States.
There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. Evidence from what is now Yellowstone National Park indicates the presence of vast continental trading networks since around 1,000 years ago.
Chief Niwot or Left Hand(-ed) was a Southern Arapaho chief, diplomat, and interpreter who negotiated for peace between white settlers and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush and Colorado War.
The Goodnight–Loving Trail was a trail used in the cattle drives of the late 1860s for the large-scale movement of Texas Longhorns. It is named after cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving.
The following works deal with the cultural, political, economic, military, biographical and geologic history of pre-territorial Wyoming, Wyoming Territory and the State of Wyoming.
The Northwestern Livestock Journal (1883–1892) was a weekly newspaper from Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was published by Mercer & Marney, specifically Asa Shinn Mercer. It was a public relations vehicle for cattle interests. After the Johnson County War, Mercer switched sides and recounted the invasion in the week's columns on October 12, 1892, just three weeks before elections. Denounced as the author if not the instigator of the plan, two years later he wrote The Banditti of the Plains from the opposing side. His newspaper office was torched and the book's entire second edition was hijacked en route from Denver.
The 1892 Wyoming gubernatorial special election was held on November 6, 1892. Republican Governor Francis E. Warren, who was elected in 1890, resigned several weeks into his term after being elected to the U.S. Senate by the state legislature, elevating Secretary of State Amos W. Barber to the governorship and triggering a special election for the balance of Warren's term.
Agnes Wright Spring was a journalist, writer and historian from Wyoming who wrote books focusing on Wyoming and Western history.
Martin Van Buren Boughton, more commonly referred to as M. V. Boughton, was an American pioneer and politician who served as the 7th Mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The Siege of the TA Ranch was a siege and the climax of the Johnson County War, which happened on April 11–13, 1892 in the TA Ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming.
The Battle of Suggs, also known as the Suggs Affray or the Suggs Affair, was a shootout between Buffalo Soldiers and Wyoming homesteaders in Suggs, Wyoming on June 17, 1892. The skirmish was part of a larger conflict known as the Johnson County War fought from 1889 to 1893 between wealthy ranchers and settlers of modest means who the former accused of being rustlers.