Why I wrote No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy

 

by Jean Henry Mead

I was researching a Wyoming centennial history book during the mid-1980s, by reading 97 years’ worth of microfilmed newspapers. During that period I read about a young woman named Ellen “Ella” Watson, who had been hanged by cattlemen along with homesteader James Averell. The lynchers claimed that the pair had been running a rural bawdy house and taking cattle for Ellen’s services.

They called Ellen “Cattle Kate” and vilified her by claiming that she was not only a prostitute but a rustler. The Cattlemen’s Association, headquartered in Cheyenne, controlled a local newspaper and reports of the hangings were published worldwide, resulting in considerable condemnation that a woman had been hanged, despite the cattlemen’s claims.

I was mystified by the newspaper reports of 1889, when the murders took place, and decided to write a novel about it, someday. When I learned that Thomas Watson, Ellen’s father, believed the lies, I thought they must be true. A number of writers had written about the hangings from the cattlemen’s point of view, and western films had been produced, portraying Ellen as a pistol packing outlaw. That didn’t jibe with news reports from the Casper Weekly Mail, which published James Averell’s “letters to the editor,” complaining that greedy cattlemen were gobbling up all of Sweetwater Valley, so they could graze their cattle on government land, without paying for it.

James and Ellen had legally filed homesteads under the Desert Land Act, which happened to be located in Albert Bothwell’s hay meadow. Aha, I thought, there’s more to this story than the cattlemen claim. But finding out more about it would require more time and travel than I could spare at that time. Later, George Hufsmith’s nonfiction book was released and I was able to write my novel. Hufsmith had been commissioned to write an opera about the hangings, and was so intrigued that he spent the next 20 years researching and interviewing residents of Sweetwater Valley, who had intimate knowledge of the people involved as well as the real reason for the hangings.

To my surprise, Hufsmith discovered the wedding licence that James and Ellen had filed in Lander, Wyoming, and the fact that they kept their marriage secret, so the government wouldn’t take Ellen’s homestead land away from her. Only single women could own homestead land.

Because I didn’t want to end my novel with the Averell’s deaths, I wrote the story mainly from the viewpoint of a single woman homesteader, a neighbor of the Averells. From my research I learned that some 200,000 single women filed for homestead land of their own. Many of them married before they proved up on their land, but quite a few persevered, and even thrived, alone on their land.

The historical mystery/suspense novel can be purchased on Kindle and will be available in a print edition before the end of March.

The "Cattle Kate" Hangings

by Jean Henry Mead

When I read Mark Danielson's article about the "Misinformation Highway," I was reminded of the "Cattle Kate" hangings and well-placed lies that ruined a couple's reputation for more than a century. Many conflicting reports have been published since James and Ella Watson Averell were hanged on July 20, 1889, by prominent Wyoming cattlemen. Although most people agree the hangings were deplorable, rumors still persist that the Averells were guilty of illicit activities.

James, “Jimmy” Averell, a slightly-built, well-educated Canadian emigrant, served as justice of the peace in his home district of Rawlins, Wyoming. He later relocated to the Sweetwater Valley where he ran a general store, post office, and saloon which catered to cowboys, settlers, and Oregon Trail travelers. Averell was “well and favorably thought of in Rawlins,” according to a Laramie Boomerang news article published two weeks after the hangings.

James and Ella had filed on adjoining homestead claims that had previously been grazed by Albert Bothwell, one of the men who later hanged the couple. The Bothwell Brothers owned large herds of cattle and were also promoting a town bearing their name in Sweetwater Valley, where they reportedly planned to locate not only the county seat but the state capital as well. Although they hired a promoter to sell lots in the non-existent town, they just weren’t selling to out-of-state buyers.

To complicate matters, James Averell had the annoying habit of writing letters to the editor of the Casper Daily Mail, accusing three prominent cattlemen of attempting to illegally take over large tracts of land bordering the Sweetwater River. The letter Averell wrote on February 8, 1889, undoubtedly signed the couple’s death warrants.

Much has been written about how Ella Watson was dragged from her small cabin and forced into a buggy, later accompanied by her husband. They were then herded by at least six cattlemen to a remote spot where they were hanged from a scrub pine tree in Spring Creek Canyon, several miles from home. A witness claimed that he tried to stop the hangings and watched helplessly as the Averells were pushed from a rock and strangled, their feet only inches from the ground.

Those responsible claimed that the Averells were rustlers and that Ella accepted calves in exchange for her “favors.” She has since been referred to as “Cattle Kate.” Witnesses to the couple’s abduction and hangings mysteriously vanished or died under questionable circumstances.

The cattlemen were brought to trail and acquitted because no witnesses could be found to testify. Following the trail, A. J. Bothwell bought the combined 320 acres the Averells had homesteaded, although there was considerable condemnation in newspapers across the country for “the barbaric hanging of a woman in Wyoming.”

I was angered when I first read an account of the hangings, so I did some extensive research, intending to write a book about the tragedy. One day, while in a store in Casper, I met a nephew of Ella Watson, who swore that his great-aunt had been a fallen woman who accepted cattle for her services. A heated argument ensued, but the nephew stubbornly clung to the legend of "Cattle Kate."

How long does it take for rumors and untruths to die? And should we believe anything we hear or read from questionable, unconfirmed sources?

A Much More Difficult Time

by Ben Small

I paid another visit to my friend John Weber just outside Tombstone. He’s the licensed rattlesnake hunter I mentioned in a prior article. But this time I went not for rattlesnake wallets, although I bought some for family members, but for his outdoor museum. John and I spent a couple hours staring at the implements he’s collected, evidence of the hard life experienced by desert settlers during Tombstone’s boom time. I also spent some time at Wyatt Earp’s house, a small two room house with no kitchen or bathroom. For meals, Wyatt and his live-in mate, had to cross the street to Virgil Earp’s home where family meals were cooked. That house burned down in 1998 and wasn’t rebuilt. It’s a vacant field now.

Here’s a section of Wyatt Earp’s wallpaper.













And here's one of Earp's buggies. Wyatt sold it when the Earps left Tombstone, and the not-for-profit that runs his house was able to track it and buy it back and restore it. Note: no shock absorbers.








Yuk. But Tombstone wasn’t a “feel good” sort of place in the 1880s, unless you were Ed Schieffelin and his partners, who were among the few who actually made money from the mines. They cashed in early for what now would approximate one billion dollars.
For the rest, Tombstone was, indeed, the “Town Too Tough To Die.”

These pictures show various tools used to de-horn and remove testicles from bulls. Evidently, from the number and variety of these in John's collection, this was a regular activity in Tombstone days. Don't know why I took pictures of so many of them. Maybe I identify with the bulls...









Here are some actual Tombstone posters which were nailed to posts throughout the town. These are the real thing, not something printed up post-period.



















Branding was the name of the game for both ranchers and rustlers in those days. Cattle were free-range, so branding was essential. Problem was the rustlers were excellent at making their own brands, which would duplicate an existing brand but add a bar or circle, so the rustlers could claim the cattle were theirs. And cattle farming or stealing was profitable; the miners needed food. So, naturally, John Weber has many brands, some of which are remarkably similar. While I've got pictures after pictures of these different brands, I'll just flash one for you.
















Of course, as shown by one of the posters above, Tombstone was a gun-free town, unless you were a Clanton or McLaurey and you wanted a gunfight over the issue. But outside town, hog-legs and Winchesters were essential tools. Between the Apache, rustlers and mine raiders, this was a very dangerous territory. John has some cartridges from the period.

Everyday existence in Tombstone was a struggle. There was no water; it was carried in from the San Pedro River via wagon and cost 3c/gallon. Ironically, water led to the closing of the mines in 1887, just nine or so years after the town was founded. The Tombstone silver mines were not closed because of the plunge in silver prices, as is commonly stated. The mines were flooded when a massive 1887 earthquake tore open a fault and part of the underground San Pedro flow streamed upward.

When a cattleman, miner or traveler had to spend a night in the desert, there was the issue of what to do with the horses? Unless one was staying along the river where large mesquite or cottonwood trees would provide a tie-up, the traveler had to carry the means for keeping his horse nearby. But the river was an especially dangerous area, because brigands, marauders and predators (mountain lions, rattlesnakes and bears) prowled the river banks. So it was much safer to sleep out in the desert. But how to tie up the horses? Here's an example of how that was done. The traveler would screw these posts into the ground and tie his horse to it.

















If you were a miner or a cattleman who caught a claim jumper or rustler, and you didn't shoot him, you had to have some way to keep the bad guy captive until the town or county marshal could take over. Here's one way this was done.


The miners were afraid to leave their mines, lest claim jumpers settle in, so the miner had to keep nearby all his pots, pans, tents, and mining equipment. So much like the movies, travelers during this period usually trailed a mule laden with all this hardware. Here are some of the things those poor beasts had to carry.











If you happen to travel to Southern Arizona, I highly recommend visiting John Weber's outdoor museum and rattlesnake crafts store. Admission is free, and what you see will leave lasting impressions. Contact John at http://www.rattlesnakecrafts.com/. You may recognize him; he's been on both The Today Show and PBS.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of the entrance to his museum. It's quite a place, and a reminder that no matter how tough we think times are now, they were much more demanding a hundred twenty-five years ago...



Note: Sorry for the dis-jointed positioning of some of these pictures. This was the best I could do given the limitations of Blogger.