Sheepshooters' War

Last updated
Sheepshooters' War
Dead sheep Willow Creek Oregon 1904.jpg
Slaughtered sheep near Willow Creek, Oregon, in 1904.
Date18951906
Location Oregon, USA
Deaths~3 [1]

The Sheepshooters' War was an armed conflict fought in central and eastern Oregon. Like other range wars in the Old West, the war pitted cattlemen against sheepherders. Because the cattlemen were unwilling to share the open range with the sheepherders, due to concerns about overgrazing, they formed paramilitary organizations with the goal of eliminating the flocks of sheep and anyone who attempted to stop them. Between 1895 and 1906, the Sheepshooters, as they were called, slaughtered at least 25,000 sheep. A few men were also killed during gunfights or related incidents. [1] [2]

Contents

The war

Since the cattle industry arrived first in Oregon, the cattlemen, or cattle barons, held a monopoly on Oregon's pasturelands in the east of the state. So, when they arrived, the sheepherders quickly became a threat to the cattle industry. Sheep were known to strip a valley clean of all vegetation, leaving it barren and desolate, while cattle ate only grass, leaving behind weeds, which held down the topsoil and allowed grass to regrow. Some cowboys even asserted that sheep stunk very badly and left behind smelly fields that cattle would not use. Water was also a concern, sheep polluted water holes to a point that cattle couldn't drink from them without becoming ill. The cattlemen weren't entirely guiltless themselves; even though the open range meant public land, the cattlemen were known for fencing off territory that didn't belong to them, in order to prevent sheepherders, or other ranchers, from using the resources. By the early 1880s, sheepherding was becoming more and more popular in Oregon, but the cattlemen and the newcomers seemed to coexist mostly peacefully until 1895, when the first Sheepshooters group was formed in Grant County. Calling themselves the "Izee Sheepshooters," the cowboys began attacking sheep camps and establishing deadlines, a type of border in which sheep were not allowed to cross. Because the Izee cowboys were successful with their campaigns, a "Sheepshooters Association" was formed in neighboring Crook County and another in Union County. According to the Insiders' Guide to Bend and Central Oregon, all of the sheepshooters agreed that "if a sheepherder was killed during a mission, he would be buried on the spot" and "if one of their own were killed, he would be brought home to be buried, with no mention of how he met his demise." Also, "if any association member was captured by the law [police] and brought to trial, he was duty-bound to lie on the witness stand about his involvement with the group." [3] [4] [5]

Usually the sheepshooters would launch a surprise attack on a camp, capture the herders, and then shoot or club all of the sheep. Often the herders were beaten, but occasionally there were small shootouts. According to William R. Racy, a rancher interviewed by author Richard Negri, he met an old sheepherder who was the victor of one of the gunfights, though the story has not been confirmed. [2] [6]

William R. Racy said the following:

I was working for a sheepman up in Oregon, and I noticed this one man never said a word. An old man to men then, I was only fifteen, but he was sixty, sixty-five, possibly even seventy. I was night-herding the sheep this time, lambing time. All I do is ride around the herd to heep the coyotes shoved back from getting any lambs. I was talking to the herder one day, and I said, 'Do you know this fellow?' He said yes and told me his name. And I said, 'Well what gives with him? I have known him for about three months now, and I have never heard him say a word.' So then this herder told me the story. Now, this was back years ago, back during the cattle and sheep wars. He was running his sheep up on this high desert in Oregon. Three cowboys came through, and they caught him and they beat him half to death. They got him on his hands and knees and made him walk around his herd of sheep and baa like a sheep. When he got to the farthest side of the herd, they'd had their fun and turned him lose. Well, he crawled back through his herd and got back to his camp. He revived himself as best he could, and he got his saddle horse and his rifle, and he went after them. He caught up with them and he killed one, wounded one, and captured the third one. When they [the local authorities] had the trial he was acquitted with self defense. But they went out and got the wounded man and the dead man. The wounded man told him (they got sent to the penitentiary), 'When I get out of jail I'm going to kill you, boy, for sending me to the penitentiary.' Well, right then the herder was a young man, only in his late teens, maybe twenty or so, and he didn't think too much about it. As time went on that bore on his mind and he pulled some strings, and he got the man paroled. Then as time went on it started to bore on his mind of killing that man, and he turned into a vegetable. And that was what he was when I knew him. So you see, even in the rough days of the cattle wars you can't kill a man and brush it off like a soar throat. On the range that's a pretty serious offense. [6]

The conflict didn't reach its height until after the turn of the century and most of the violence occurred in the High Desert, between the Cascades and the Blue Mountains. By 1898, the Cascade Range Forest Reserve was expanding its boundaries. This meant that sheepherders, who had used the area unmolested for years, were now suddenly forced to go elsewhere to raise their animals. Many headed east towards the Blue Mountains, an area already exploited by cattle. Over time, the influx of sheep into the Blue Mountains area led to overgrazing. Deadlines were established and large sheep massacres became very common. Sometimes the cowboys left notices attached to a tree that marked the boundary. A typical notice would be similar to the following: "Warning to Sheep Men – You are hereby ordered to keep your sheep on the north side of plainly marked line or you will suffer the consequences. Signed Inland Sheep Shooters." One of the largest sheep massacres occurred in 1903, on the High Desert near Benjamin Lake. Nearly 2,400 sheep were "herded off a rimrock" and those that survived the fall were shot to death. In 1904, over 6,000 sheep were killed in three central Oregon counties, although the secretary of the Crook County Sheepshooters Association claimed that his men had killed between 8,000 and 10,000. The only known human death attributed to the conflict occurred on or about March 4, 1904. John Creed Conn was neither a cattleman or a sheepherder, but a storekeeper from the town of Silver Lake. He was, however, the brother of a district attorney and member of a prominent family. Though investigators concluded that the death was a suicide, Conn's body was found outside of town, seven weeks later, with two bullet holes in the chest, wounds that the doctor who performed the autopsy said could only have been caused by another person. [3] [5] [7] [8] [9] [10]

The war ended in the latter half of 1906, when the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve was created by the Department of Agriculture and when the United States government began establishing grazing allotments. Because the cattlemen and the sheepherders were no longer sharing the same land, there was no more reason to fight each other. [3] [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnson County War</span> 1888-1893 range conflict in Johnson County, Wyoming

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 former 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 stand-off. The siege ended when the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison relieved the two forces, although further fighting persisted in the following months.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Horn</span> American outlaw

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Range war</span> Conflict over control of range land used for grazing

A range war or range conflict is a type of usually violent conflict, most commonly in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the American West. The subject of these conflicts was control of "open range", or range land freely used for cattle grazing, which gave the conflict its name. Typically they were disputes over water rights or grazing rights and cattle ownership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank M. Canton</span>

Frank M. Canton was an American Old West fugitive who had a career as a deputy U.S. marshal under an assumed name. Although an ex-sheriff stock detective in Wyoming, Canton and his associates were accused of operating more by assassination than the law. Extrajudicial measures such as the lynching of Ellen Watson inflamed public opinion against the long-established big ranchers Canton worked for, and to re-establish control over grazing they funded an all-out assault on those small operators considered to be rustlers. Canton directed Frank Wolcott's imported gunmen in their planned vigilante campaign, known as the Johnson County War, which was quickly ended by a local posse. Finding himself a marked man in Wyoming, Canton considered it opportune to leave the state. He spent most of the rest of his working life in law enforcement for the court of hanging judge Isaac Parker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cattle drives in the United States</span> Movement of cattle by herding over land

Cattle drives were a major economic activity in the 19th and early 20th century American West, particularly between 1850s and 1910s. In this period, 27 million cattle were driven from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipment to stockyards in Louisiana and points east. The long distances covered, the need for periodic rests by riders and animals, and the establishment of railheads led to the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perry Owens</span> American lawman and gunfighter of the Old West

Commodore Perry Owens was an American lawman and gunfighter of the Old West. One of his many exploits was the Owens-Blevins Shootout in Arizona Territory during the Pleasant Valley War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pleasant Valley War</span> Arizona range war (1882–1892

The Pleasant Valley War, sometimes called the Tonto Basin Feud, or Tonto Basin War, or Tewksbury-Graham Feud, was a range war fought in Pleasant Valley, Arizona in the years 1882–1892. The conflict involved two feuding families, the Grahams and the Tewksburys. The Grahams were ranchers, while the Tewksburys, who were part Native American, started their operations as cattle ranchers before branching out to sheep.

<i>Heaven with a Gun</i> 1969 film by Lee H. Katzin

Heaven with a Gun is a 1969 American Western film starring Glenn Ford and directed by Lee H. Katzin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diamondfield Jack</span>

Jackson Lee "Diamondfield Jack" Davis was pardoned for the 1896 Deep Creek Murders in Idaho and would later strike it rich in Nevada, where he established several mining towns, one named after his nickname "Diamondfield".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ranch</span> Large area of land for raising livestock

A ranch is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of farm. These terms are most often applied to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Western Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called ranchers, cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is also a method used to raise less common livestock such as horses, elk, American bison, ostrich, emu, and alpaca.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empire Ranch</span> United States historic place in Pima County, Arizona

Empire Ranch is a working cattle ranch in southeastern Pima County, Arizona, that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In its heyday, Empire Ranch was one of the largest in Arizona, with a range spanning over 180 square miles (470 km2), and its owner, Walter L. Vail, was an important figure in the establishment of southern Arizona's cattle industry. It is currently owned by the Bureau of Land Management with a grazing lease to a private operator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheep wars</span> Grazing rights conflicts in the Western United States

The sheep wars, or the sheep and cattle wars, were a series of armed conflicts in the Western United States fought between sheepmen and cattlemen over grazing rights. Sheep wars occurred in many western states, though they were most common in Texas, Arizona, and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado. Generally, the cattlemen saw the sheepherders as invaders who destroyed the public grazing lands, which they had to share on a first-come, first-served basis. Between 1870 and 1920, approximately 120 engagements occurred in eight states or territories. At least 54 men were killed and some 50,000 to over 100,000 sheep were slaughtered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deep Creek murders</span> Unsolved 1896 murders of two sheepherders in Idaho, United States

The Deep Creek murders were the culmination of a minor sheep war in the borderlands of Idaho and Nevada in 1896. On or about February 4, 1896, two Mormon sheepherders were killed by an unknown assailant while they were camping along a creek in what was then part of Cassia County, Idaho.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open range</span> Rangeland where cattle roam freely regardless of land ownership

In the Western United States and Canada, open range is rangeland where cattle roam freely regardless of land ownership. Where there are "open range" laws, those wanting to keep animals off their property must erect a fence to keep animals out; this applies to public roads as well. Land in open range that is designated as part of a "herd district" reverses liabilities, requiring an animal's owner to fence it in or otherwise keep it on the person's own property. Most eastern states and jurisdictions in Canada require owners to fence in or herd their livestock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aztec Land & Cattle Company</span> Historic land company in Arizona

Aztec Land and Cattle Company, Limited ("Aztec") is a land company with a historic presence in Arizona. It was formed in 1884 and incorporated in early 1885 as a cattle ranching operation that purchased 1,000,000 acres in northern Arizona from the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. It then imported approximately 32,000 head of cattle from Texas and commenced ranching operations in Arizona. Because Aztec's brand was the Hashknife, a saddler's knife used on early day ranches, the company was known more famously as The Hashknife Outfit. The company has been in continuous existence since 1884.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spring Creek raid</span>

The Spring Creek raid, also known as the Tensleep Murders or the Tensleep Raid, occurred in 1909 and was the last serious conflict during the Sheep Wars in Wyoming, as well as the deadliest sheep raid in the state's history. On the night of April 2, the sheepherder Joe Allemand and four of his associates were encamped along Spring Creek, near the town of Ten Sleep, when a group of seven masked cattlemen attacked them. It remains uncertain as to whether or not an exchange of gunfire took place between the two parties, but evidence suggests that Allemand and two of his men were executed while the remaining two escaped unharmed. Two sheep wagons were also destroyed by fire and about two dozen head of sheep were shot to death. Seven men were arrested for the crime, two of whom turned state's evidence and were acquitted. The rest were found guilty and sent to prison for sentences ranging from three years to life in prison. The conviction of the Tensleep murderers effectively put an end to the killings on the open range and exemplified the arrival of law and order in a region that still retained its rugged frontier environment after the end of the 19th century. Although there continued to be sheep raids in Wyoming into the 1910s, there were no more deaths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roba Ranch</span> United States historic place

The Roba Ranch is a pioneer ranch located near the small unincorporated community of Paulina in Crook County, Oregon. The ranch is named for George and Mary Roba, sheep ranchers who acquired the property in 1892. Most of the important ranch buildings were constructed by the Roba family between about 1892 and 1910. Today, the ranch covers 1,480 acres (6.0 km2) and is privately owned. The ranch was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

<i>In Old Montana</i> 1939 film

In Old Montana is a 1939 American Western film directed by Raymond K. Johnson and starring Fred Scott, Jean Carmen and John Merton. It is about the conflict existing between sheepherders and cattlemen in the nineteenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Brown (rancher)</span>

William Walter Brown was an American pioneer rancher in central Oregon. He owned two large ranches between Burns and Prineville, Oregon. Together, his properties comprised one of the largest privately owned sheep and horse operations in the United States. He was known as the Horse King of the West and the Millionaire Horse King because over 10,000 horses carried his Horseshoe Bar brand. Brown was also a well-known philanthropist who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a wide range of religious and educational institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pecos War</span> 1876-1877 range war in Pecos River, New Mexico

The Pecos War, also known as the War of the Pecos and the Chisum War, was a range war fought by cattle baron John Chisum against neighboring small ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans from 1876-1877 along the Pecos River in New Mexico. The conflict was caused primarily by competition: Chisum believed that his livestock and other resources were being depleted upon by people he alleged to be rustlers. At the same time, Chisum was also fighting Mescalero Apaches from the nearby reservations who were said to prey on his herds.

References

  1. 1 2 Engeman, Richard H. (2009). The Oregon Companion: An Historical Gazetteer of the Useful, the Curious, and the Arcane. Timber Press. ISBN   0-88192-899-2.
  2. 1 2 Cole, Leslie; Jim Yuskavitch; James Yuskavitch (2002). Insiders' Guide to Bend and Central Oregon, 2nd. Globe Pequot. ISBN   0-7627-1057-8.
  3. 1 2 3 "Feuds & Range Wars - Sheepmen vs. Cattlemen" . Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  4. "Sheep Wars: Information at Answers.com" . Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 "Bowman Museum - Crook County History - Time Capsule Stories". Archived from the original on April 26, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  6. 1 2 Negri, Richard (2008). Tales of Canyonland Cowboys. Applewood Books. ISBN   1429090596.
  7. "Oregon History Project". Ward Tonsfeldt & Paul G. Claeyssens. 2004. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  8. "The Madras Pioneer - Madraa, Oregon". Finn J.D. John. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  9. Tupper, Melany (2010). The Sandy Knoll Murder, Legacy of the Sheepshooters. Central Oregon Books LLC. ISBN   0-9831691-2-8.
  10. Terry, John; Oregonian, Special to The (2011-05-07). "Who killed John Creed Conn? Old Oregon murder mystery may finally be solved". oregonlive. Retrieved 2021-12-29.