Cattle Kate - Outlaw or Innocent

 

Living in Wyoming, I've heard the story of Cattle Kate. Spending time on the family ranch, we played pretend that we were cattle rustlers (grandpa was not pleased when we would take the horses and rustle his cattle) and one of us was always Cattle Kate, Calamity Jane, and Belle Star.

The truth of Cattle Kate is far less fantastic as the legend and far more tragic.

Wyoming between 1875 to 1900 was well known for its range wars. The Johnson County Cattle War happened in my area. But that is a story for another day. Wyoming was open range and cattle ranches dominated. When the homesteaders started moving in, the cattle barons didn't like it and took matters into their own hands....

Ellen Liddy Watson, known as Cattle Kate, was born in Canada. Ellen was taller than average for a women, (between 5'8 and 6'2) she was said to be an intelligent, charming woman with a pretty smile. She and her family moved to Lebanon, Kansas to homestead. She married Bill Pickle then ran away from him because he was an abusive drunk. She escaped to Red Cloud, Nebraska and became a hotel cook. After divorcing her husband, she went to Denver, then Cheyenne, and to Rawlins, Wyoming to cook at the Rollins House.

She met Jim Averill, who was homesteading 60 miles north of the Sweetwater River. They discussed marriage, but if they married, Ellen couldn't homestead her own place. So they married in secret. Ellen's homestead bordered Jim's place and he built her a cabin. Now each owned 160 acer tracts of land.

Wyoming is well known for land disputes and cattle baron hating homesteaders. Ellen was a victim of this. A cattle baron named Albert Bothwell claimed the land that Ellen homesteaded. He had illegally grabbed about 60 miles of land and didn't want Ellen to take his hay pasture. He rode over to buy her out and she refused.

Bothwell's anger was to be the death of her.

When an wagon train passed by, Ellen purchased  26 of their tired starving cattle and fenced her pasture. Bothwell pinned a scull and cross bones to Ellen's and Jim's doors. A warning they ignored. When Ellen's cattle were healthy and strong she branded them. Now Bothwell would proceed with his plan.

On July 2, 1889, during the neighbor's joint round-up, Bothwell sent word that Ellen had rustled his cattle. Five cattle rancher met with Bothwell and rode over to Ellen's place. The men saw the freshly branded cattle and believed Bothwell's story. She denied the accusation but they threw her into a buggy and headed for Jim's place. They forced him into the buggy an the group rode South down the Sweetwater riverbed toward Independence Rock.

The Cattle Kate Story - Cattle Kate

They were taken to a pine tree, ropes placed around their necks, and pushed off a drop to hang. The story of the actual hanging is quite unpleasant so I will leave that out. The hanging was done in a rush, because ranch hands from Ellen and Jim's ranches followed the lynch mob and a shoot out ensued. The ranch hands eventually gave up and rode away.

None of the lynchers were ever brought to justice. Witnesses were murdered or disappeared mysteriously or were bought off. Cheyenne newspapers, dominated by wealthy cattle interests, trumped up the stories everybody knowns today about Ellen being a dirty whore and rustler, and Jim her accomplice, pimp and murderous lover. So far from the truth, but even back then people loved a racy story and it stuck.

Though in her life Ellen was never called Cattle Kate. The name most likely came from confusion of Ellen with a possibly fictitious woman named Kate Maxwell. A newspaper story in 1889 depicted Maxwell as a heavy drinker who had allegedly shot a man for calling her Katie. Brandishing a six-shooter, Maxwell supposedly took back several thousand dollars that cowboys she employed had lost to cheating faro dealers.

Cattle Kate is just a name that goes with western mythology.

Ellen was the first woman to be hanged in Wyoming and the third in the history of the frontier history of the American West. The other two women were murderers.

There are many variations of the story, and Ellen's background. Some accounts say she ran a bordello and if a cowboy couldn't pay, she would accept cattle. Some resources say that Ellen Watson was confused with Ella Wilson of Fetterman, Wyoming. A prostitute involved in a widely reported incident at at saloon. But no matter how you look at it, an innocent woman was sent to her death. 

top picture from The Tragedy of Cattle Kate | History| Smithsonian Magazine

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