Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War

The Korean War is something that most Wyomingites don't particularly associate with our state, but the war did have a noticeable impact on the state, and Korea has been in the news a lot recently, so now might be a good time to take a look at it.

 Official painting of the Wyoming Army National Guard depicting Wyoming's 300th AFA in action.

Part of the reason that we don't think much of the Korean War and Wyoming, is that we don't think much about the Korean War at all.  The Korean War is one of several wars that have been tagged "forgotten wars" and, in the case of Korea, it's really true.  Perhaps that was inevitable, coming between World War Two and the Vietnam War, as it did.

Wyoming's role in the Korean War is tied closely to the the decline in the Army's conventional war fighting abilities that followed World War Two.  The largest war ever fought, World War Two was the largest conventional conflict of all time but it ended with the use of two nuclear weapons.  Given that, the immediate assumption by the American military was that the age of conventional warfare had ended and that any future war, of any kind, would be a nuclear war.  The Army was allowed to atrophy as a result.  Between 1945, when World War Two ended, and 1950, when the Korean War started, the Army's training in conventional warfare dramatically declined.

An end to conventional warfare turned out to be a massively erroneous assumption, and the place we learned that was in Korea.

That the US would fight a war in Korea was something that, moreover, seemed an impossibility in 1945, when events took us there for the first time in the 20th Century.  The US had actually fought in Korea once before, but in the 19th Century, oddly enough, when the Marine Corps landed briefly in Korean in an obscure punitive expedition.  It was World War Two, however that brought the US back onto the Korean Peninsula, but only due to the end of the war.

Korea itself had been a Japanese possession since 1910, when the Japanese simply made a fact out of what had been the case following the Russo Japanese War.  Korea had been more or less independent prior to that, but heavily influenced by its much more powerful neighbors.  The Russo Japanese War effectively ended Korean independence in favor of the Japanese.  The Japanese dominance was not a happy thing for the Koreans.  Korea remained a Japanese possession up until after World War Two, when it was jointly occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, splitting the country in half.  The US had no intention to remain there but the original concept of uniting the country in a democratic process fell apart, and the Soviets and the US left with the country divided.  The US had weakly armed the South and failed to provide it with heavy weapons. The North, on the other hand, was heavily armed and trained by the Soviets, who left the North with the means, and likely the plan, on how to unite the peninsula by force.  In 1950, North Korea invaded the South with a well equipped and well trained Army.  They faced a poorly trained South Korean Army.

Soon after that they, quite frankly, faced a poorly trained American Army.  The US hadn't really given much thought to South Korea after leaving it, but the fall of China, followed by the Berlin Blockade, followed by shocking early revelations about Soviet espionage inside the US, followed by the development of the Soviet bomb, suddenly refocused attention on a country that now seemed to be a dagger aimed at Japan.  President Truman made the immediate decision to send the U.S. Army into South Korea to turn the North Koreans back.

That Army, however, wasn't the same Army the US had in 1945 after the defeat of Germany and Japan.  After VJ Day the U.S. had rapidly demobilized.  Moreover, convinced that all future wars would be nuclear in nature, the U.S. had let the Army deteriorate markedly.  It was poorly trained and not all that well equipped in some ways.

The intervention in South Korea required the call up of numerous Army National Guard units, and Wyoming's 300th Armored Field Artillery was one of them. Deployed in February 1951, the unit made up of young recruits from northern Wyoming and World War Two veterans proved to be a very effective one.  It achieved a fairly unique status in May 1951 at Soyang with the unit directly engaged advancing enemy infantry, a very rare event in modern combat and a risky one at any time.  The unit came out of the Korean War with Presidential and Congressional Unit Citations in honor of its fine performance in the war.  The individual Guardsmen of the 300th AFA largely came home after completing a combat tour, at a little over a year, but the called up unit remained in service throughout the war.  Other Wyoming Army National Guard units were also called up in this time, but only the 300th AFA was sent to the Korean War.

The Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Bomber Squadron from Wyoming was called up. The new Air Guard saw combat service for the first time in the Korean War.  Nine Wyoming F51 pilots were lost serving in the unit during the war.

Of course, many Wyomingites served in the war by volunteering for military service, or by being conscripted during the war.  Like earlier wars, Wyomingites volunteered in high numbers.

Sidebar: The Vietnam War In Wyoming

Just below I posted an item on the Vietnam War, and reconsidering it in context.  Indeed, enough time has passed now that the war can probably properly be put in context, which would, in my view, require pretty much tossing out all the existing histories and starting afresh.  Not that this is that unusual.  I've long thought that no accurate history of an event can be written until at least 40 or 50 years have passed since it occurred.  the Vietnam War ended 40 years ago for the United States, and a little under that for North and South Vietnam.

What did this controversial war mean for Wyoming? 

It's easy to think that it wasn't an event that impacted us in any special way, but every world event impacts a region in its own unique way. the Vietnam War is not an exception.

In many people's recollections, the Vietnam War at home is remembered in terms of civil protest.  This isn't really the case for Wyoming.  Volunteer rates for the service in Wyoming were remarkably high, keeping a tradition in Wyoming that goes back to statehood and which continues on today.  Even for wars where public enthusiasm was high country wide, such as World War Two, volunteering for service occurred at a higher rate in Wyoming than elsewhere.

This doesn't mean, however, that everyone in Wyoming was uniformly for the war.  Indeed, I can recall the house of a friend of mine where the parents had put up an antiwar poster on their front door, in a very suburban neighborhood, but that was very much an exception to the rule.  For the most part, Wyomingites support the war, if not always enthusiastically.  This too was the case with Wyoming's representation in Washington, which supported the war throughout its course.

Wyoming actually contributed to the war effort in a bit of a unique, if somewhat hidden and now mostly forgotten manner.  The Wyoming Air National Guard's 187th Aeromedical Transport Squadron flew missions in and out of Vietnam in support of the war.  The widely held belief that Guardsmen and Reservists didn't serve in the war is in error, and it is particularly in error in regards to the Air National Guard, which saw short deployments and missions of this type.  The Wyoming Army National Guard, however, like most (but not all) Army National Guard units was not called up during the war.  It was over capacity during the war, like all Guard units, which did in part reflect a desire by some of its members to fulfill an anticipated military service requirement which was unlikely to send them overseas.  In sharp contrast to this, however, following the war every Wyoming Army National Guard unit would have a very high percentage of Vietnam War combat veterans.

Wyoming's Vietnam veterans did well in Wyoming following the war, figuring as significant figures in every walk of life.  The war did change Wyoming in subtle ways, but they were subtle indeed.  Never a state that opposed the war, the influence the general atmosphere had on the state's youth never deterred them from volunteering for military service at any point, but it did make such things as mandatory high school Junior ROTC sufficiently unpopular that Natrona County High School, which had that requirement throughout its history, abolished it just after the war.  By and large, however, the view of Wyoming to the war was cautious, but cautious support.

October 26

1865  Companies A, C, F, and G of the 6th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry arrived at Platte Bridge Station, Wyoming.  They were certainly very far from home.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1880  The Cheyenne Club incorporated.

The Cheyenne Club was a legendary early Cheyenne institution, with many significant Wyoming figures visiting the club, depicted here in as the second building from the right in the row of significant Cheyenne buildings.  It was ornately furnished and courtly conduct was expected within it.  By some accounts, plans for the Johnson County War were developed there, although that is not necessarily undisputed.

1889  Governor F. E. Warren addressed citizens in Lander on the topics of the constitution and citizenship.   Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1942  The Torrington Post Office robbed. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1956  USS Crook County decommissioned.

1976   Yellowstone National Park was designated an International Biosphere Reserve.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1909  Frederic Remington died in Connecticut at age 48.

2010  It was reported that Wyoming mystery writer C. J. Box donated his papers to the University of Wyoming.

Charles James Box is fairly unusual for a widely popular "Wyoming" writer, in that he is actually from Wyoming, which most nationally read "Wyoming" authors have not been in recent years.  Box was born in 1967 and lives outside of Cheyenne.  He's the author over a dozen novels, most of which are in a series featuring a fictional Wyoming Game Warden, Joe Pickett, as the protagonist.  While I haven't read any of the novels, the choice of a Game Warden as the protagonist is an insight that would perhaps be unique to a Wyoming author.  Box worked a variety of jobs, including that of cowboy, correspondent, and columnist, before his novels allowed him to be a full time writer.

In contrast, the very widely popular "Wyoming" author Craig Johnson, who is also typically mentioned in that fashion, "Wyoming author", was actually born in Huntington, West Virginia and lived in a wide variety of places.  He's lived, however, in Ucross for the past 25 years, so he's been located in Wyoming for at least half of his life, however, and worked some iconic Western jobs in his youth, I believe.  Ironically, Johnson's series of novels based on the experiences of a fictional sheriff in a county loosely based on Johnson and Sheridan Counties, are more widely popular than Box's novels, which are written by an actual native Wyomingite.  Johnson's novels have recently been made into a television series which is popular with Wyomingites and one can even now observe election bumper stickers for the fictional sheriff of the fictional town.  According to some who have read them (which I have not) at least a few place names in the books are real.  One such place is the Busy  Bee cafe in Buffalo.

For a period of time Annie Proulx was cited as being a "Wyoming author", which is far from correct for the Norwich Connecticut born author of "The Shipping News", amongst other novels.  She has had a residence in Wyoming since 1994, however.  At one time she was indicating that she was going to relocate to New Mexico, although I do not know if she did, and she lives part of the year in Newfoundland.  Proulx made some comments noting that residents of Wyoming near her residence in Wyoming lacked in some degree of friendliness, and her novel "Brokeback Mountain" was not well received in Wyoming.  Proulx is perhaps unique in that early in her career she was frequently cited as being a "New England author" and then later as a "Wyoming author".

Another "Wyoming author", Alexandra Fuller, is actually a Zimbabwean ex-patriot, which her most significant work, "Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight", would make plain, if her thick English like accent did not.  Fuller is the author of a book attempting to reflect the true story of a young man who died in the oilfield due to a tragic accident, but at least in my view, interviews of her tend to very much reflect an outisders view of her adopted state.  Fuller doesn't claim to be a Wyoming native by any means, but at least in the one book attempts to present insights on her adopted state. Here too, I haven't read the book.

Independent writer and author of a book generally critical of Wyoming's politics and economy ("Pushed Off The Mountain, Sold Down The River), Sam Western, likewise lives in Wyoming, but is not, I believe, from here.  Western is frequently quoted within Wyoming, but the author built his career as a magazine writer for a variety of magazines, including Sports Illustrated and The London Economist.  His book on Wyoming's economy brought him to the attention of Wyomingites, where he's remained, and is still frequently debated.  At least one insightful criticism of the book noted that the main point of the book seemed to be that Wyoming wasn't like every other US state in terms of its economy, which would be true, but which would raise more questions than it would answer.  I also haven't read this book.

This even extends to newspaper columnists, to a degree, although its easier to find Wyoming authors in the newspapers.  An example of the ex-patriot columnist, however, would be provided by the Casper Star Tribune's Mary Billiter, who is a relocated Californian.  Her columns (which I find to be repetitious and maudlin) have brought her enough attention that she was put on a board of some type by Governor Mead recently, although I don't recall the details.  She is also the author of a novel, although I know none of the details about it.  In spite of my criticism of her I'd note that she does not claim to be a Wyoming author.

Coming closer to home, author Linda Hasselstrom is sometimes noted as being a resident of the state, which she is, but she doesn't claim to be a Wyoming author. She's a South Dakotan who writes on ranch topics from a woman's prospective, which reflects her background.  I probably ought not to note her in this list, but her status is kind of interesting in that her youth and early adult years associated with ranching would be quite familiar to Wyomingites, and she has had long residence here, but she's mostly noted as being in another genre, which is "women ranching authors".

Even such legendary (at least at one time) figures such as Peggy Simpson Curry, who occupied the position of Wyoming's Poet Laureate, are not actually Wyomingites by birth.   Curry was born in Scotland, but she grew up in North Park Colorado, where her father worked for a ranch.  She did live, however, in Casper for many years, and on Casper Mountain as well.  As a slight aside, I recall Curry reciting poetry at Garfield Elementary School in Casper when I was a child, where she was introduced as the state Poet Laureate. She scared me to death, as she had a sort of odd high pitched matronly voice and recited her poetry very loudly.  From a child's prospective, that didn't work well.  Curry was also celebrated in Walden Colorado, where she grew up, and is noted as a Western author, which reflects her overall life.

A more recent Poet Laureate, Charles Levendosky was born in the Bronx and moved to the state to work for the Casper Star Tribune when he was in his 30s.  Governor Sullivan, also from Casper, made the appointment and Levendosky was well known in Wyoming academic circles at the time.  He was a pretty powerful columnist for the Star Tribune at a time in which they had some very respected columnists, a status which, in my view, they no longer occupy as strongly.  In the same era the Tribune had a well respected local physician, Dr. Joseph Murphy, who doubled as a columnist. Dr. Murphy was indeed not only from Wyoming, but from Casper.

The point of all of this, if there is one, is not to suggest that only Wyomingites can write about Wyoming.  But, rather, to point out an odd phenomenon regarding written works and the American West in general, and more particularly Wyoming.  It's been long the case that many widely read authors on Western topics are either arrivals to the region, or emigrants from it who no longer reside there.  Mari Sandoz, for example, was a Nebraska native, but left the state and then wrote about it.  Wila Cather is likewise associated with Nebraska, but spent her adult years outside of the state.   Aldo Leopold grew famous with "A Sand Country Almanac", which remains a classic, but Leopold was from the Midwest, not New Mexico. Wyoming has produced one notable fiction writer in recent years, C. J. Box, but oddly he's the least widely read of authors sometimes cites as being "Wyoming authors", with most of the other individuals who are referred to in that fashion having ties to other regions.

What does this mean, if anything?  Well, it might not mean anything at all.  American society is highly mobile, far higher than most others.  We'd expect a German author, for example, to have been born and raised in Germany, or an Irish author to have been born and raised in Ireland.  But Americans are nomadic.  For that reason, perhaps, we shouldn't really be surprised by this phenomenon.  

It might also mean something a bit deeper.  Perhaps those who come from the outside are particularly attuned to the nuances of anyone culture.  That is, perhaps, things that are really unique to many people are not to people living an experience.  It's often been noted, for example, that one of the best (supposedly) anti-war books is The Red Badge of Courage, even though the author had not experienced war at the time he wrote.  Maybe a really experienced person can no longer note what's unique about his experience, although plenty of books in that same arena, such as Leckie's "A Helmet For My Pillow" or even Maldin's "Up Front" would suggest otherwise.  Having said that, I think I've come to that conclusion with historical novels, one of which I've been trying to write.  After really studying it, I'm fairly certain that many of the routine things a person would experience in any one era of history are novel to people in later eras.  It's hard for the writers to note those, however, because unless they've experienced them in a non routine fashion, they won't even know about them.  That's what caused me to create my Lex Anteinternet blog, in an effort to learn and explore those details.

However, if there's an element of truth in that, it certainly isn't universal.  Texas has produced a large number of writers over the decades that had a deep understanding of that state, or the West in general.  J. Frank Dobie, for example, was a Texan and his work "The Voice of the Coyote" remains an absolute classic.  Larry McMurtry, perhaps best known for his novel "Lonseome Dove", wrote what may bet he most insightful and accurate novel of modern ranch life ever written, "Horseman, Pass By" (the basis for the movie "Hud").  University of Nebraska professor and Nebraskan author Roger Welsch has written a series of brillian entertaining books on Nebraska themes.  So clearly a local observant writer can indeed write insightful works of great merit.

I guess, in the end, that's the point of this long entry.  Not to criticize outside authors, resident or note, who have written on the state, but rather to point out there are not doubt some great authors from here, many probably slaving away, who, hopefully, will have their works see the light of day, or at least the black of print.

Sidebar: Native Americans in Wyoming.

As followers of the blog know, I have, over the past few months, posted a few items on certain ethnic groups that have had a prominent role in Wyoming. Some may have wondered why, in doing that, I haven't posted any on Native Americans, or as the Canadians like to call them, the First Nations.  I don't have a really good excuse, other than its actually a surprisingly complicated topic and somewhat difficult to do.

 Bannocks in Jackson's Hole, 1895, by Frederic Remington.

It would be tempting to post one with this title, but I'm not going to, other than to introduce this topic, as it would be unfair to the various tribes that have in the past, or presently called Wyoming their home.  It's common to see terms such as "Plains Indians" and the like to describe the native inhabitants of any one region of the upper West, but the fact of the matter is that Indian tribes represent a group of ethnicities, rather than one single one.  Still, as an introduction, it makes sense to at least handle the topic collectively to get it rolling.

In the popular imagination, Pre Colombian North American was populated by rather fixed Indian populations.  In reality, however, this was far from true, and this was particularly untrue in the arid West.  Native populations were not only aboriginal, they were in a near constant state of migration, albeit slow migration, prior to their contact with European Americans, or even after it.  We know, for example, that both the Navajos and the Apaches are Athabaskan peoples, whose nearest ethnic relatives live in the Canadian far north.  The Navajos first, and the Apaches after them, started migrating south at some point for reasons not known, and when the Spanish first contacted them they were still on their way south.  Their cultural memories still retained memories of great white bears and fields of migrating birds, things their ancestors had observed in the far North decades and decades prior, but not so many prior that the memory was not retained. And so too with many other Indian cultures.

For the most part, the history of Indians in the West begins wit their first contact with Europeans operating out of the United States, Mexico or Quebec.  What occurred prior to that is a bit murky.  We know that Wyoming, in ancient times, had populations of natives that built pit houses, a practice not engaged in by any of the later tribes, and which may very well have been constructed by the ancestors of a people that had moved far to the south by the time the Corps of Discovery made the first U.S tour of the area. That early history is important, however, in that  these people left some sort of a record of their presence.  Seemingly living in a somewhat wetter era, they lived in a less nomadic manner than their later ancestors, and had seasonal fixed dwellings.  Theories exist as to who they may have been, and we don't really have a very solid idea of what people or peoples they were, other than that they were there.  They also seem to have been the first people to leave a record in stone, such as with the Medicine Wheel, with such structures remaining in use by later peoples, who perhaps conceived of them differently.  Research goes on, and perhaps some day we'll know a great deal more than we currently do.

More recently we know that Wyoming was the home of certain tribes in the 18th Century who remained in the 19th Century.  The Shoshone, a people speaking an Utzo-Aztec language, was one of those groups, and perhaps the most dominant.  

The history of the Shoshone will be dealt with in a separate entry, given that their presence in the state is so significant, and it will have to suffice here to simply note that this people had a long and significant presence in the state.  They still do, as they are one of the two tribes that have, as their reservation, the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The Crows, or Absarokas, likewise had a long history in the state..  The Crows speak a Siouian language and were a significant Plains people whose range stretched far into Wyoming when European Americans first entered the state.  Like the Shoshone, and the other peoples mentioned here, they'll be addressed separately.  It's interesting to note, however, that the Crows and Shoshone fought each other prior to European American contact, but they were both allies of the United States in the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s, as the jointly attempted to arrest the progress of the Sioux and Cheyenne in entering the state.  Unlike the Shoshone, the Crows do not have a reservation in Wyoming, but they still have some presence, and the major Crow reservation is located just over the Montana border.

The Sioux, a collection of closely related people, and the Cheyenne, a group that was allied to them, likewise had a major role in the state.   Neither group had a long history in the state, or perhaps even any history, when European Americans first entered Wyoming. The Sioux and the Cheyenne were, rather, invaders, and highly successful ones at that. That too is part of the story.  Interestingly, their alliance was one that overcame an ethnic divide between the people, as the Cheyenne spoke an Angonquian language, not a Siouian one.  The Cheyenne, for their part, were a stunningly wide ranging people whose presence stretched northward into Montana and southward down to Oklahoma.  As with the Crows, neither the Sioux nor the Cheyenne have reservations in Wyoming, but they do have ones nearby, with there being a Sioux reservation in South Dakota and a Cheyenne reservation in Montana, respectively.

The Arapaho were another group that were allied to the Sioux, and their ancestry may have, at one time, united them with the Cheyenne, although that is not known.  They'd entered the state prior to European contact, but they too were relatively recent arrivals.   The Blackfeet, who were present in northern Wyoming, were closely related to them, and in fact may have really been the same people.  The Arapahos were such a a small group that the Indian Wars were particularly perilous to their survival, which they recognized, and they are the other Wyoming tribe which is present on the Wind River Reservation today.

Paiutes and Utes also entered Wyoming, although more on its fringes. These people, who seem to be rather ignored in the history of the Plains, also spoke a Utzo Aztec language and therefore are related to the Shoshones in some fashion.  Of course, not too much can be placed on mere language groups, as English and German are both Germanic languages in the Indo European Language group, which has not meant for historic alliances.

The Comanche had their origin in Wyoming, as will be seen in the history of the Shoshone, a fact largely obscured by their later history. And the Cherokee crossed it and left their name in the form of a trail.

A group largely and unfairly ignored in Wyoming's history is the Metis.  We associate the Metis, a "mixed" group of people, mostly with western Canada today, but their range stretched far to the south and into the Powder River Basin.

As we progress though this story and try to make it complete, we will not cover every single group.  As can be seen, some peoples had tangential roles in Wyoming.   The Shoshone and Arapaho must be covered, of course, and will be treated to separate entries. So too will the Cheyenne, Sioux and the Crows. 

Sidebar: The British in Wyoming

Some time ago I did an entry here on the Irish in Wyoming, which has turned out to be one of the most popular threads on the blog.  People must research the topic and hit it.  Shortly thereafter I did one on Hispanics in Wyoming.  I've been meaning to follow up with a couple of other ethnicity based threads, but haven't had a chance.

Now, however, everyone in the United States is being bombarded 24 hours around the clock by the news of England's Prince William and Princess Kate having a baby. Why this deserves this level of attention, I have not a clue, but none the less, it's a Big Deal, at least to the press, and apparently some Americans. Given that, perhaps this is a good time to examine the topic of the British in Wyoming.

 Abbotsbury England, ca 1905.

When I used the term "British" here, I use it advisedly. That is, I'm not using the word British as Americans sometimes do to mean English.  I mean, rather, people from Great Britain, but not Ireland, which has already been addressed.  This may be, quite frankly, somewhat unfair, but I don't think it is entirely, and this topic has to be handled this way for reasons I'll detail immediately below.  In order to get to that, however, I have to run very briefly through a very partial and incomplete synopsis of the history of the British, in an extremely brief and unfair fashion, as that story ultimately impacts the history of Wyoming. For those who have an interest of the history of the British themselves, I'd recommend the still good, but dated history by Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples or, for those who read blogs (and of course you are) or why enjoy podcasts, there's Jamie Jeffers entertaining, monumental and ongoing effort The British History Podcast which has its own blog and forum.

 Portland England.

The fact that I have to start which such a disclaimer, let alone address part of the history of the United Kingdom, probably demonstrates that this story is a bit more difficult to address, and subtle, than the story of the Irish in Wyoming (who were, at one time, one of the peoples of the United Kingdom). That is, it's obviously a different story, as I've had to start off with the disclaimer that I'm not dealing with a single culture, like the Irish, but more than one and that I have to cover their history a bit to get there. That's because the influence of the British in general and the English in particular has been overarching in American history; indeed to such an extent that it's difficult to overstate it, even if we don't commonly even notice it all that much.

 Aberystwith, Wales.

It may be best to just start off noting the obvious that the United States had its origin as thirteen states that had been thirteen English colonies.  But that might just be too simplistic. Those thirteen English colonies came about in as part of a colonization policy that was one of the successful examples of three European efforts, the other two being the French effort and the Spanish effort.  Each left their own marks in their own regions.  But even that would be a bit too simplistic, as the efforts sponsored by the English Crown and the British industry resulted in early colonization by two peoples, the English and the Scots, and that itself is part of the story.

The United Kingdom, which colonized the Atlantic seaboard, was the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales at that time.  That was the union of that brought about a single British political entity on a formal basis with presumed finality..  The Act of Union in 1707 ratified what had been the actual fact for some time, which was that England and Scotland were really subject to a singular authority, and in fact their monarchies had been united since 1603.  Union with Ireland didn't come about, as a formal matter (as opposed to the reality of it) until 1801, after the United States had come into being.

 Loch Goil, Scotland/

The peoples subject to that union, while they may have had one singular monarch, were not, and are not, one singular people, which is important to our story here.  The Welsh, Scottish and the English are separate peoples, in terms of their ancient history and culture. The Welsh, it seems well established, were and are descendants of the original British inhabitants of Britain. The Scots, on the other hand, at least partially descend from the Irish, who started to colonize northern Great Britain in their pre Christian era.  The English no doubt descend from the Celts who first inhabited the land, but culturally and at least partially genetically they also descend from the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, Germanic peoples who started immigrating and invading the island in the 5th Century.  And we have some Viking ancestry mixed in, particularly in England, as well, as the Norwegians and Danes in particular were aggressive colonizers themselves in their own era, which was put to an end in 1066 when the descendants of other Scandinavian invaders crossed the English Channel and established themselves as the Norman rulers of England

The English, it seems, have always been the dominant force on Great Britain, since they've been there, and we need not explore how that came to be for our story here. Suffice it to say, the English outnumbered the Scots and the Welsh, and dominated the politics of the island, and even the neighboring island of Ireland, for centuries.   And such was also the case for the culture and ethnicity of the early United States.

The early US, ethnically and culturally, was British.  It wasn't uniformly English, although it certainly was in certain areas, but it was British.  In many regions English immigrants or the descendants of English residents were by far the most numerous colonial inhabitants.  In others, Scots or "Scots-Irish", the descendants of Scottish emigrants settled by the United Kingdom in Ulster between the English and the native Irish, were the majority, as in the Appalachians.  Anyway you look at it, however, in most locations the American populations, save for the native population, was overwhelmingly British.  This meant that, culturally, they looked back to a collective custom of English law and culture and they were overwhelmingly Protestant; being either members of the Episcopal Church or Protestant dissenters from the Church of England in the case of the English, or Calvinist in the case of the Scots or Scots-Irish.

This remained the case well into the early 19th Century and it reflects the makeup of the country at the time the US acquired most of what became Wyoming with the Louisiana Purchase.  It reflected the makeup of the Corps of Discovery, but it also reflected part of the purpose of the Corps of Discovery, as the United States was not only seeking to discover what laid within the new land, but to make a claim to it in an area where the British were already known to be.

In conventional wisdom, the Corps of Discovery was the first time "white", meaning European Americans, stepped foot in the region that would become Wyoming. This, however, was simply not true.  The British had already seen a British explorer cross British North America to the Pacific, and it was feared that British interests were making entries into what had been an unexplored French and Spanish land claim, thereby making it note much of a claim. And the fear was well placed.  The Hudson's Bay Company was already everywhere.

The Hudson's Bay Company was founded on May 2, 1670 and can make a legitimate claim to being the oldest corporation in the world.  Formed as a means of exploiting a vast land grant in British North America, the company's prime interest was in dealing with furs, which it acquired through the use of of French Canadian trappers and Indians who traded with the company.  Occupying an enormous tract of land, in which it built numerous trading posts and forts, it did not content itself with remaining within it, but sent explorers out into neigbhoring lands.  Its exploration efforts took its agents as far south as Texas, and its trappers almost certainly routinely entered Wyoming.

 

Hudson's Bay Company trading post.

Those trappers were French Canadians, where they were not Indians or later Metis, but they were part of a vast English industry which had shareholders extending up to the British monarchy.  It can be legitimately said, therefore, that the first example of British influence in Wyoming came through the Hudson's Bay Company, which sent its trappers into the state.

When the Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific Ocean, it found that a Hudson's Bay Company post was located where its intended camping spot for that winter was, and it had to locate itself in a new location.  But the Hudson's Bay Company's days on American territory were numbered with the arrival of the U.S. Army in the form of Lewis and Clark's expedition.  The first, but not insignificant, era of British presence, in the form of economic interests, was over, but in some ways it would set the pattern, in terms of economics.

Fur trapping remained the primary European American enterprise in Wyoming up until Western migration really commenced in the 1840s.  By that time, the United States itself had begun to change.  The result of the War of 1812 had been that the US was not to be a solely maritime Atlantic seaboard nation, which was confirmed by the great leap westward caused by the Louisiana Purchase.   The great Irish famine and the European revolutions of the 1840s started a process of German and Irish immigration that would forever change the makeup of the nation, and which was already causing significant domestic turmoil in the nation.  Much of that would come to a head, but not be worked out, during the Mexican War and Civil War.  By the time the Union Pacific came into the state in the 1860s, the United States was a much different nation than it had been sixty years prior.  By that time, the country itself was much less English, although the distinctions between various European cultures was much more significant than it is today.

The next major example of British influence in Wyoming came with the European ranching boom in the 1870s.  And a major influence, with permanent impact, it was.  

Ranching got its start in Wyoming partially due to the efforts of pioneers to provide beef to the Union Pacific and U.S. Army.  But the real expansion of ranching, and ranching as we know it, came with the introduction of Texas herds in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Almost coincident with this, however, British owned companies began to invest in Wyoming ranches, and create Wyoming ranches, creating very British ranching companies on the range.  One of the earliest of this was the Frewan ranch which was one of the very first to enter the Big Horn Basin, entering that area in 1876 and claiming the brand "76" as a result.  Others soon followed.

The first waive of British ranches suffered terribly in the killer winter of 1886-1887.  That winter wiped out many of the early big ranches of all types.  But as severe as that experience was, it did not keep British companies from investing in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota ranches.  Fueled by investors in Great Britain, these ranches could become major ranching operations, such as the VR (Victoria Regina) in central Wyoming.  In northern Wyoming and southern Montana English and Scottish concerns also became significant in horse raising, with one such ranch even today being known as the Polo Ranch, both for the raising of horses and for the fact that it was associated with the game of polo.

At least one British owned operation was associated with the "big cattleman" side of the Johnson County War, but its association with that side of the conflict did not seem to hurt it in its overall operations.  By the early 20th Century many of these operations were well established, and certain communities in Wyoming and Montana had significant English and Scottish ranching populations.  Sheridan County Wyoming was notable in these regards, being a center of horse raising in Wyoming and, not coincidentally, the location of an Army Remount station as late as World War Two.  The British influence lives on today in the form of the still existing Polo Ranch and the Big Horn Polo Club, as well as in the architecture of the very English looking Episcopal Church in that town.  It can't helped be noted that, ironically, Sheridan and Sheridan County are named after the Phillip Sheridan, whose parents were Irish.

St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sheridan.

Southern Wyoming saw its own share of British influence, of a similar if less pronounced nature, at the same time. Albany County saw the Ivinsons come in, which left the town being the seat, at that time, of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming. 

St. Matthews Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie.

Cheyenne, likewise, saw some similar English and British influence, leaving the town with impressive Episcopal and Presbyterian churches.

 

 Cheyenne's St. Mark's Episcopal Church, from 1888.

The Wind River Reservation was the cite of a significant missionary endeavor, sharing that distinction with the Catholic Church.  The Reverend John Roberts is well remembered for his service in that capacity in Fremont County.

Not all of the British influence of this period came from well funded British corporations.  Some came directly from much less well to do British immigrants as well. Scottish immigrants were present, perhaps not unsurprisingly, in the sheep industry but also in the cattle industry..  Casper apparently had a significant enough Scottish population in the early 20th Century that a Presbyterian minister who had hoped to form a church in Douglas Wyoming was sent, by another Protestant clergyman, to Casper on the basis that Casper was a "Scottish town."   Rock Springs Wyoming, which had an economy based on mining at the time, saw a significant immigration by Welsh and English coal miners, although not in the same numbers as Slavic immigrants to the same area. 

Ties with the United Kingdom were still so strong in some quarters that one ranching family that remained operating in Wyoming in the 1970s sent a member to fight with the Royal Flying Corps in World War One. That young pilot, who had been schooled in Canada, and whose family also gave its name it Irvine California, did not make it back.

 

World War One would be the end notable British enterprises in Wyoming.  The war brought about a boom in horse production, but the end of the war resulted in a crash.  The close ties to the UK seemingly went away, where they had existed.

Even if the influence in the ranching industry and through English immigrants largely ceased following 1918, the impacts have not totally gone away and linger here and there in the form of architecture and individual families.  It also exists, of course, as in every US state save for one in the form of the law.  Indeed, Wyoming formally adopted English Common Law early in its history, where it provided:

8-1-101. Adoption of common law.

The common law of England as modified by judicial decisions, so far as the same is of a general nature and not inapplicable, and all declaratory or remedial acts or statutes made in aid of, or to supply the defects of the common law prior to the fourth year of James the First (excepting the second section of the sixth chapter of forty-third Elizabeth, the eighth chapter of thirteenth Elizabeth and ninth chapter of thirty-seventh Henry Eighth) and which are of a general nature and not local to England, are the rule of decision in this state when not inconsistent with the laws thereof, and are considered as of full force until repealed by legislative authority.

Sidebar: Hispanics in Wyoming

Recently, following St. Patrick's Day, I posted a sidebar on The Irish In Wyoming.  While it is, in no way, an equivalent holiday, we've recently passed Cinco De May, The Fifth of May, and, given as that's a Mexican holiday (although not much observed in Mexico), I'm doing something similar here with an entry on Hispanics in Wyoming.

Starting off here, I should at first note that I debated this title a bit and originally it was titled "Mexicans In Wyoming."  For some reason, the use of the term "Mexican" can be loaded, which certainly is not the intent here.  That is in part because many people have used the term incorrectly in referring to any Hispanic in the United States, a clearly erroneous use.  Additionally, the term is problematic because of the Mexican War.  Everyone was, in terms of citizenship, a Mexican who lived in the Mexican province of Texas, although culturally the fact that Texas had separated in 1836 had a lot to do with cultural identity.  Beyond that, however, after the Mexican War the US occupied new territories which had large Hispanic percentages of population, and who had been Mexican citizens, even if some of those regions had fairly unique Hispanic identities.  With all that being the case, I changed the title.  Be that as it may, the story of Hispanics in Wyoming cannot be separated from Mexico.

When we wrote about the Irish, we noted that we could not really determine when the first Irish American or Irishman set foot in what became Wyoming.  We can't really do that with Hispanics either, but we can say that Wyoming was once owned by Spain, even if the Spanish were not able to extend the control of their empire in North America as far as they claimed.  Indeed, southern Colorado,was really the northern most extent of Spain's empire inside the continent, in spite of occasional claims otherwise.  Trade goods did make it further north, and the Corps of Discovery reported encountering Spanish mules being used by the Shoshones when they came through northern Wyoming.  At any rate, not only the Spanish Mexican colony's province of Texas was part of what would become Wyoming, but Spain also once owned Louisiana, and the Napoleon's transfer of that territory to the United States required a formal transfer of the territory back to France, which all occurred on the same day, oddly enough.

The transfer of Louisiana to the United States did see a population transfer, of course as well, but not one that directly impacts our story here.  Louisiana included both a French and Spanish population, who became subject to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase, but the Spanish population did not have a presence in Wyoming at the time.  This remained the case in 1836 when Texas, which retained title to a southern portion of what would become Wyoming, rebelled against Mexico. And it remained the case at the time at which the United States and Mexico concluded the peace treaty of Guadalupe Hildago.

The Mexican War, however, would be directly responsible for the first Hispanic settlers in Wyoming, as it brought the U.S. Army into Wyoming.  Only shortly after the war ended, the US sent the Regiment of Mounted Rifles to occupy what had been a private fort in Wyoming, so as to secure a part of the early Oregon Trail. That fort was Ft. Laramie, which would go on to have one of the most significant roles of any frontier fort in West.

Cement structures at Ft. Laramie, built by migrants from New Mexico.

When the Army occupied Ft. Laramie its structures were worn and the post was inadequate for its task. Therefore, the Army immediately took to rebuilding the post.

Frontier Army posts are often imagined to be made up of log buildings surrounded by a log stockade, and some were indeed just like that. Only a minority of them, however, had that construction.  Some of the posts, in contrast, were surprisingly substantial and well constructed.  Ft. Laramie was one of these.  In its early days, as a fur company trading post, it was not much more than a simple stockade, but as soon as the Army began to occupy it, that changed.  Part of that change was brought about by the importation of Mexican labor from New Mexico.  And that had to do with Cement.

Cement, as a construction material, dates back to the Romans.  In spite of that, however, it was little used in much of the Western world following the fall of Rome until the late 19th Century, which in part is due to the manufacturing process becoming somewhat obscure, and in part because the types of cement that were commonly known following Rome's decline were slow setting and somewhat hard to make.  Therefore, in the mid 19th Century, cement was uncommon in the United States.  However, for reasons unknown to me, cement remained a construction material elsewhere in the world, including the Spanish world.  While it's popular to imagine everything in New Mexico of this era being constructed of adobe bricks, in fact cement was a common construction material.  With the occupation of New Mexico by the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, this became known to the Army, which was impressed with cement. So, when the Army went to reconstruct Ft. Laramie, it determined to use cement for the new buildings, which in turn required the importation of labor who knew how to make it and build with it. Those laborers were New Mexican Hispanics.

These laborers were, therefore, brought up by the Army in the late 1840s and they gave Wyoming its first Hispanic residents.  The men brought up, who brought up their families, were not men who were employed year around, in New Mexico, as construction laborers, as the area was agrarian and such skills were only part of a set of skills used by agrarian artisans.  Once they completed, their task, therefore, they turned to another part of their skill set, farming.  Through this process, not only did Wyoming receive its first Hispanic immigrants, farming came to the state for the first time.

The Hispanic farms created by the New Mexican ("Mexican") artisans were located some distance away from the fort, on a series of hills visible from the Oregon Trail. The area came be known as "Mexican Hills." The Mexican farmers who located in there used the presence of the trial for market purposes, selling fresh vegetables to travelers on the trail.

I wish I could relate more of this aspect of the story, but unfortunately, I cannot.  The area remains farm ground today, but as far as I know none of the original Mexican presence remains.  When it ceased, I cannot say either, but my suspicion is that it did during the mid 19th Century.  With the fort becoming an increasingly important regional center it may also have become an increasingly difficult place to live.  The farmers did not live on the post grounds, but some distance from it, and therefore would have been at the mercy of Ft. Laramie bands of Indians, who were generally peaceful while in the region, but which would have been somewhat concerning nonetheless. At any rate, I"m not aware of the farms surviving into the 20th Century, and have no idea how long they actually lasted.  Therefore, I can only sadly report the New Mexican immigrants as the first appearance of Hispanic culture in the state, but whether it had any long lasting cultural impact, I cannot.  It certainly had a long-lasting material impact, however, as the concrete structures built at the fort all still remain, albeit as ruins. That's a lot more than a person can say about the stick frame buildings that the Army generally constructed at its more permanent facilities in the same era.

The next significant presence of Hispanics in the state came about due to the explosion of the cattle industry following the Civil War.  In terms of time, that's not really that long after the establishment of the Mexican Hills farms mentioned above, and a person has to wonder if any still remained.  Be that as it may, it's commonly noted that 1/3d of all 19th Century cowboys were "black or Mexican."  I've always found that description rather odd, as African Americans and Hispanics of the same era had distinctly different cultural histories.  Additionally, as they are lumped together by this description, there's no easy way to know what percentage of that "1/3d" were Hispanic.  But what is certain is that Texas ranching came about due to ranching in Mexican Texas and dated back to Spanish Texas, so the Mexican influence on the industry was enormous.  It's no wonder that Hispanic Texans and New Mexicans remained employed in it up into the 1860s and 1870s, and beyond.  Indeed, to this very day.

The state therefore saw new Hispanic men who came up with the herds from Texas.  Undoubtedly some stayed when the long trail drives gave way to regional ranching.  Oddly, however, its hard to find examples of individual Hispanic ranchers.  There probably are some, but I'm unaware of them.  In terms of ranching methods and technology, of course, their impact was huge, and has been enduring throughout the West.  Indeed, Wyoming's cowboys were the direct descendants in terms of methods of the Vacquero who had employed the same skill set in Texas, as opposed to the Caballero who employes a somewhat different skill set in California.  This remains true today.

Mexican ranching influence extended not only to cattle ranching, but sheep ranching as well. The Spanish had introduce sheep to Mexico and they were a presence in the Southwest before the Mexican War.  Sheep started arriving on the Wyoming ranges in the 1890s, accompanied by a great deal of controversy and violence.  They were also accompanied by "Mexican herders."

Not all sheepherders were of Mexican ancestry by any means.  Still, in the  very early sheep industry on the Northern Plains Mexican influence was strong.  Mexican herders were accustomed to highly nomadic herdsmanship which in part leaned on skills acquired from Indians.  While, today, we are used to the sheepwagen, the "Home On The Range," Mexican herders used teepees made of canvas.  This practice is not well known to those outside of the sheep industry, but it was common enough with Mexican herders that the practice lived on well into the 20th Century.

 

 Painted brick sign on the old Kistler Tent & Awning building, in Casper Wyoming.  Kistler Tent & Awning is an ongoing business in Casper, and no doubt can, and still does, make any of the times advertised here.  Note the "Herders Teepees" item, just below "Sheepwagon Covers."

At about the same time that he first herds of cattle began to head north, the Union Pacific came into the state.  Hispanic laborers were not part of that rail expansion, but by the early 20th Century they were very much  a major segment of the Union Pacific workforce, and they remain so to this day.  All of the towns on the Union Pacific came to have significant Hispanic populations.

This saw the creation of distinctly Hispanic neighborhoods in all of those towns, which reflects on the human nature in good and bad ways.  That Hispanic communities would spring up was probably natural enough.  But, by the same token, that an element of prejudice was present in that would be probable. At any rate, all of the towns on the Union Pacific had Hispanic neighborhoods, and many still do. Cheyenne, for example, has South Cheyenne, a neighborhood that lies to the south of the Union Pacific, and which features a very Spanish influenced church, architecturally, as well as a Mexican Restaurant reputed to be one of the town's best.

St. Joseph's Catholic Church in south Cheyenne.

Laramie Wyoming, generally thought of as the home of the University of Wyoming, likewise has a Hispanic influenced neighborhood, reflecting the large Hispanic community that worked and worked in the very large railyard in Laramie.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, Laramie has an excellent Mexican restaurant in West Laramie, the Hispanic part of town, and another just off of the Union Pacific rail line.  Hispanics are a significant portion of the Catholic community in the town as well.

Like Laramie and Cheyenne, Rawlins Wyoming has a Hispanic neighborhood associated with the Union Pacific.  And as with Laramie and Cheyenne, Carbon County has seen the culture reflected in culinary offerings.  Su Casa, in Sinclair Wyoming, and Rose's Lariat, In Rawlins Wyoming, are contenders for the best Mexican restaurants in the state, and even though they are only seven miles apart, each has fiercely loyal clienteles.  All the way across the state, however, the farming and railroad town of Lingle has Lira's, which others argue in the best.  Guernsey Wyoming, on the Burlington Northern line, had Otero's Kitchen, which others maintained was the best.  I've eaten at everyone mentioned here, and they're all great.

To mention all of these restaurants in this context may seem shallow, but it's a reflection of a long lasting and vibrant culture.  Mexican restaurants owned by Hispanic families only preserve for years and years, rather than becoming something like Taco Bell, if there's a vibrant Hispanic community which has become part of the local community.  So the culinary reflection indicates something deeper than just a regional taste for Mexican food.  Rather, it is indicative of the fact that all of these railroad towns had, and still have, vibrant Hispanic communities.

This has reflected itself over the years, additionally, through the Catholic churches in these towns.  In no area of Wyoming is any one parish made up of a majority Hispanic population, but in those towns where there is a significant Hispanic population, it has reflected itself in some way.  Those towns with significant Hispanic populations have seen it reflected, for example, in the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe events.  When I lived in Laramie in the 1980s, for example, St. Lawrence O'Toole's parish crowned a young couple as king and queen of the event, and had a major celebration in church which was complete with a brass and guitar band.  St. Anthony's church in Casper has sometimes seen similar, if less extensive, events.

Of course, with a long presence in the state, it's not surprising that the Hispanic community has members in every walk of life and profession.  Prominent educators, lawyers and physicians have come from within the community and contributed to the state.

Unlike the story of the Irish in Wyoming, this story really cannot be completely written at this time, as Wyoming's towns have  and industries have seen new Hispanic immigrants in recent years.  Receiving an influx of workers during boom times, to see an outward migration thereafter, is part of Wyoming's economic history, so how the current new residents will impact the state is really not known.  However, heavy industry, including the oil and gas industry, has employed a lot of migrant workers in recent years.  As has been the case for generations, service industries have as well, so that towns like Jackson, which at one time had fairly small Hispanic communities, now have very prominent ones.  So this story is incomplete.  But like the story of the Irish, it is one that goes back to the State's very beginnings.

Sidebar: The Johnson County War

Over the past week, I've been running the events of the Johnson County War on a day by day basis.  This event may be the single most significant event in Wyoming's history, if measured in terms of popularity.  It's been the subject of several books, most recently Davis' "Wyoming Range War", and it's formed the basic plot outline, in a highly developed and adulterated way, for endless novels and movies, including such famous ones as The Virginian (the only one to really take the large stockman's side) and Shane.

The popular concept of the war is that it represented an armed expression of unadulterated greed.  While greed cannot be dismissed as an element, the larger question remains.  What was it all about?

The cattle industry, as we know it, didn't really come about until the conclusion of the Civil War.  Prior to that, the most significant meat livestock in the US was pork.  Swine production produced the basic farm meat for most Americans, which is not to say that they didn't eat cattle, they did, but cattle production was fairly small scale in the East, and much of it was focused on dairy and mixed production.  Meat cattle were more common in the South, and while it's popular to note that American ranching was a development of Mexican ranching, it was also very much a development of Southern ranching practices.  This, in fact, partially gave rise to the Johnson County War, as will be seen.

At any rate, the American Beef Cattle industry was born when the railroads penetrated into Kansas after the Civil War, and returning Texas cattlemen found that the herds in their state had gone wild, and greatly increased.  Cattle in Texas, up until that time, had followed the Mexican practice of being raised principally for their hides, not for meat, but the introduction of rail into Kansas meant that cattle could now be driven, albeit a long ways, to a railhead and then shipped to market.  An explosion in urban centers in the East provided a natural market, and soon the cattle industry in Texas had switched over to being focused on shipping cattle for beef.

The Texas industry spread north as well and by the 1870s it was making inroads into Wyoming, although really only southern Wyoming for the most part.  At the same time, and often forgotten, a dramatic increase in herds in Oregon, the byproduct of early farm herds and pioneer oxen herds, produced a surplus there that caused herds to be driven back east into Wyoming at the very moment that northern Wyoming opened up for ranching.

But what was ranching like here, at the time?

It was dominated by the fact of the Homestead Act, a bill passed during the Civil War in order to encourage western emigration into the vast public domain. But the bill had been written by men familiar only with Eastern farming, and it used the Eastern agricultural unit, 40 acres, as a model. That amount of acreage was perfectly adequate for a yeoman farmer, and indeed after the Civil War "40 acres and a mule" was the dream of the liberated slave, which they hoped to obtain from the Federal government.  But 40 acres wasn't anywhere near adequate for any sort of livestock unit in the West, and most of the West wasn't suitable for farming.  In the West, additionally, the Federal homesteading provisions oddly dovetailed with State and Territorial water law.

Water law was the domain of states or territories exclusively, and evolved in the mining districts of California, which accepted that claiming water in one place and moving it to another was a necessary right.  This type of water law, much different from that existing in the well watered East, spread to the West, and a "first in time, first in right" concept of water law evolved.  This was to be a significant factor in Western homesteading. Additionally, the Federal government allowed open use of unappropriated public lands for grazing.  States and Territories, accepting this system, sought to organize the public grazing by district, and soon an entire legal system evolved which accepted the homesteading of a small acreage, usually for the control of water, and the use of vast surrounding public areas, perhaps collectively, but under the administration of some grazing body, some of which, particularly in Wyoming, were legally recognized.  In the case of Wyoming, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association controlled the public grazing, and had quasi legal status in that livestock detectives, who policed the system, were recognized at law as stock detectives.

This was the system that the large ranching interests accepted, developed and became use to in the 1870s and 1880s.  Large foreign corporations bought into Western ranching accepting that this was, in fact the system.  It had apparent legal status.

But nothing made additional small homesteading illegal.  And the penalty for failing to cooperate in the grazing districts mostly amounted to being shunned, or having no entry into annual roundups.  This continued to encourage some to file small homesteads.  Homesteading was actually extremely expensive, and it was difficult for many to do much more than that.  Ironically, small homesteading was aided by the large ranchers practice of paying good hands partially in livestock, giving them the ability to start up where they otherwise would not have been.  It was the dream of many a top hand, even if it had not been when they first took up employment as a cowboy, to get a large enough, albeit small, herd together and start out on their own.  Indeed, if they hoped to marry, and most men did, they had little other choice, the only other option being to get out of ranch work entirely, as the pay for a cowhand was simply not great enough to allow for very many married men to engage in it.

By the 1880s this was beginning to cause a conflict between the well established ranchers, who tended to be large, and the newer ones, who tended to be small.  The large stockmen were distressed by the carving up of what they regarded as their range, with some justification, and sought to combat it by legal means.  One such method was the exclusion of smaller stockmen from the large regional roundups, which were done collectively at that time, and which were fairly controlled events.  Exclusion for a roundup could be very problematic for a small stockman grazing on the public domain, as they all were, and this forced them into smaller unofficial roundups. Soon this created the idea that they were engaging in theft.  To make matters even more problematic, Wyoming and other areas attempted to combat this through "Maverick" laws, which allowed any unbranded, un-cow attended, calf to be branded with the brand of its discoverer.  This law, it was thought, would allow large stockmen to claim the strays found on their ranges, which they assumed, because of their larger herds, to be most likely to be theirs (a not unreasonable assumption), but in fact the law actually encouraged theft, as it allowed anybody with a brand to brand a calf, unattended or not, as long as nobody was watching.  Soon a situation developed in which large stockmen were convinced that smaller stockmen were acting illegally or semi illegally, and that certain areas of the state were controlled by thieves or near thieves, while the small stockmen rightly regarded their livelihoods as being under siege. Soon, they'd be under defacto  siege.

This forms the backdrop of the Johnson County War.  Yes, it represent ed an effort by the landed and large to preserve what they had against the small entrant.   But their belief that they were acting within the near confines of the law, if not solidly within it, was not wholly irrational.  They convinced themselves that their opponents were all thieves, but their belief that they were protecting a recognized legal system, or nearly protecting it, had some basis in fact.  This is not to excuse their efforts, but from their prospective, the break up by recognized grazing districts by small entrants was not only an obvious threat to its existence (and indeed it would come to and end), but an act protecting what they had conceived of as a legal right.  Their opponents, for that matter, were largely acting within the confines of the law as well, and naturally saw the attack as motivated by greed.

As with many things, the conflict in systems of laws gave each side a basis to see their own acts as fully valid. The small stockmen had the high side of the fight, but the fight itself was more ambiguous in motivations, to some degree, than it is typically portrayed as being.

The fight didn't start with the invasion at all, but actually a campaign of assassinations was started by somebody.   It cannot be assumed that the WGSA had ratified this, but certainly whoever commenced it was on that side of the fight.  It proved unsuccessful, and if anything it made Johnson County residents nervous, but all the more opposed to those aligning against them.  Finally, as we have seen, events transpired to the point where the WSGA actually sponsored an invasion, albeit one of the most ineptly planned and executed ones every conducted by anyone.

The invasion, as we've seen, was a total failure in terms of execution.  It succeeded in taking the lives of two men, with some loss of life on its part as well, but it did nothing to address the perceived problem  it was intended to address.  The invaders were much more successful in avoiding the legal implications of their acts, through brilliant legal maneuvering on the part of their lawyers, but the act of attempting the invasion brought so much attention to their actions that they effectively lost the war by loosing the public relations aspect of it.  For the most part, the men involved in it were able to continue on in their occupations without any ill effect on those careers, a fairly amazing fact under the circumstances, and, outside of Gov. Barber, whose political career was destroyed, even the political impacts of the invasion were only temporary.  Willis Vandevanter was even able to go on to serve on the United States Supreme Court, in spite of the unpopularity of this clinets in the defense of the matter.  Violence continued on for some time, however, with some killings, again engaged in with unknown sponsors, occurring. However, not only a change in public opinion occurred, but soon a change in perceived enemies occurred, and a new range war would erupt against a new enemy, that one being sheep.  The range itself would continue to be broken up unabated until the Taylor Grazing Act was passed early in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, which saved the range from further homesteading, and which ultimately lead to a reconsolidation of much of the range land.

Sidebar: The Irish in Wyoming

Just recently we posted our "green" edition of this blog with our St. Patrick's Day entry.  Given that, this is a good time to look at the Irish in Wyoming.

The Irish are a significant demographic, in terms of ancestry, in the United States in general, so a reader might be justifiably forgiven for thinking that the story of the Irish in Wyoming wouldn't be particularly unique, or perhaps even that such an entry must be contrived.  This would be far from the case, however, as the Irish were not only an identifiable element in European American settlement of the state, but a distinct one with a unique history.

 Bantry Bay, Ireland; where many of Wyoming's Irish came from.  This photo was taken between 1890 and 1900.

It may not be definitely possible to tell when the first Irishman or Irish American entered the state, but a pretty good guess would be that the very first son of Erin entered what would become the state in the service of the U.S. Army.  More particularly, it seems like that this would have been with the Corps of Discovery, that body of men commissioned by the Army to cross the continent from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.  Sgt. Patrick Gass was definitely of Irish descent, although he himself came from Pennsylvania.  He's unique as he left the first literary work on the expedition.  George Shannon was of Irish Protestant descent and therefore, perhaps, arguably "Scots Irish," although his name would suggest otherwise.   The Corps, however, crossed the continent prior to the great migration caused by the Famine, and therefore its almost surprising that these men of Irish descent were on the expedition, as the Irish were a small demographic at the time.  Also revealing, at this time many, probably most, whose ancestors had come over from Ireland were of "Scots Irish" descent, those being descendant from the Scots population that the English had settled in Ireland to form a religious and ethnic barrier between themselves and the native inhabitants of the conquered country.

The fact that the first Irish Americans to enter the region, however, came in the form of soldiers was telling, as by the 1840s this was becoming coming common.  Up until that time the U. S. Army had been tiny and had very little presence on the Frontier at all.  The Mexican War, however, changed all of that and, at the same time, brought a flood of Irishmen into the enlisted ranks.  This was caused by the contemporaneous jump in immigration from Ireland at the time, which was coincident with a huge spike in German immigration as well.  There was a political element to both immigration waves, with the Irish being discontent with the United Kingdom, which disadvantaged them at law with statutes aimed against Catholics and with some German immigrants coming during the troubled times on the continent that would lead to European wide revolutions in the 1840s.  The Irish in particular, however, were also driven by extreme poverty and hunger as their disadvantaged state was further compounded by extreme crop failures in this period.  Taking leave to the United States or British Canada, many simply chose to get out of Ireland.  Upon arriving in the United States, still oppressed with poverty, and often just downright oppressed, many took a traditional employment route which was to enlist in military service.  Like their ethnic cousins the Scots, the Irish were not in actuality a particularly martial people, but standing armies provided an economic refuge for them.  In the United Kingdom this resulted in Irish and Scots regiments of the British Army.  In the United States, starting during the Mexican War, it resulted in a huge percentage of the enlisted ranks being made up of Irish volunteers.

 World War One vintage recruiting poster for "The Fighting 69th", a New York National Guard regiment legendary for being recruited, even as late as World War One, principally from Irish immigrants and and Irish Americans. At least one Canadian unit of the same period, the Irish Canadian Rangers, was specifically aimed at Montreal Irish.

The Irish, and the Germans, were at first resented in the service, even if their enlistments were accepted, and they were very much looked down upon by Southern born officers, who made up a disproportionate percentage of the Army's office class.  This had, in part, sparked a high desertion rate during the Mexican War and had even contributed to the formation of a unit in the Mexican Army made up of Irish and German desertions, the San Patricio's.  The Army, however, in what may be the first instance of a long U. S. Army tradition of adapting to social change ahead of the general population, made peace with the Irish enlisted men by war's end and they soon became an enduring feature of the Army.  By the time of the Civil War things had changed so much that there were now Irish American and Irish born officers in the Regular Army, such as Irish American Philip Sheridan, after whom Sheridan Wyoming and Sheridan County Wyoming are named. 

 "Little Phil" Sheridan, far left.  Sheridan was born to Irish immigrant parents, but his ties with Ireland were so strong that it is sometimes erroneously claimed he was born in Ireland.  The Irish American Cavalryman was honored in Wyoming with a town and county being named after him.  Oddly enough, in later years a 20th Century Catholic priest who was a relative of his would also serve in Wyoming.

This change started to take place almost as soon as the Mexican War was over, and was well established by the time the Civil War broke out.  Already by that time many rank and file members of the Army were Irish born and there were Irish American officers of note.  The controversial Patrick Connor provides one such example, with Connor having a major campaigning role in Wyoming during the Civil War period.  After the war ended, the post Civil War U. S. Army was full of Irish and German volunteers.  The list of the dead, for example, at Little Big Horn reads like an Irish town roster, so heavy was the concentration of the Irish born in its ranks.  Indeed, the Irish in the 7th Cavalry, and other U.S. Army units, had a permanent impact on American military music during the period, contributing such martial tunes as Garryowen and The Girl I Left Behind Me to the American military music book.

The controversial Patrick E. Connor, who campaigned in Wyoming, not always widely, but very aggressively, during the Civil War.

Irish born and raised 7th Cavalry officer, and former Swiss Guard, Myles Keogh.

After Irish soldiers came the Irish railroad workers, who arrived with the construction crews of the Union Pacific.  The role of Irishmen in the construction of the railway is well known. Along with other ethnic minorities, the Irish were strongly represented in the crews that made their way through the state in the late 1860s.  As towns came up along the rail line, some of these men would inevitably leave the employment of the railroad and take up residence in other occupations.  Cheyenne, Laramie, Medicine Bow, Rawlins, Green River, Rock Springs, and Evanston all share this Union Pacific source of origin.

Former railroad station in Medicine Bow, with the Virginian Hotel to the far left.

After the railways started to come in, cattle did as well. Rail lines were, in fact, a critical element of the conversion of the United States from a pork consuming to a beef consuming country, as rail was needed in order to ship cattle to packing houses in the Mid West.  Rail expanded into Wyoming at exactly that point in time at which the greatly expanded herds in Texas started to be driving out of that state.  Prior to that time, while beef was certainly consumed, it tended to be a local product and pig production provided the primary meat source in the United States, along with poultry, foul and wild game.  Texas' cattle had been raised primarily for their hides not their beef.  The Civil War, however, had seen an uncontrolled herd expansion which, with the war's end, became a nearly free resource, if a way of sending the cattle to central markets could be found.  The expansion of the rail lines soon provided that, and the long trail drive era was born..  And with the cattle, came some Irish cowhands, and ultimately Irish ranchers.

Ireland itself was nearly completely dominated by agriculture in the 19th Century, and indeed it was for most of the 20th Century.  Agriculture was the largest sector of the Irish economy as late as the 1990s.  In the 19th Century, as with every century before that, most Irish were rural and agricultural.  Looked at that way, employment in non agricultural activities really meant that most of the Irishmen taking them up were leaving their natural born employments for something else.

Moreover, while we today tend to think of Ireland exclusively in terms of potatoes, due to the horror of the famine, in reality the Irish have a very long association with horses and cattle.  In pre Christian Ireland, stealing cattle was virtually a national sport, and the great Irish epic work, the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge)  concerns that activity.  In later years, during English occupation, potatoes became an Irish staple because Irish farmers tended to grow them for themselves, by necessity, while still often working production crops on English owned lands.  Even as late as the famine Ireland exported wheat to the United Kingdom.  Cattle raising never stopped, and indeed by World War One Ireland was a significant beef exporter to the Great Britain.  The same is also true of sheep, which were raised all over Ireland for their wool and meat, and giving rise to the idea that all Irish are clad in tweed at all time, a concept that also applies to the sheep raising Scots.

 The dramatic protagonist of the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

Horses, for their part, were and remain an Irish national obsession.  Unlike the English and Scots, whose routine farmers had little interest in riding stock, the Irish developed an early love of horse riding and everything associated with it. The Steeple Chase was and is an Irish national sport, followed intensively even now, and in earlier eras widely engaged in.  A person has to wonder, therefore, if the heavy Irish representation in cavalry formations in the U.S. Army of the 19th Century reflected that fact.  It certainly did in the English Army, which had at least one Irish cavalry regiment up until Irish independence.

All of this made the Irish a people that was particularly inclined to go into animal husbandry.  Other agricultural Europeans, except perhaps the Scots, had less exposure to this sort of agriculture than the Irish did.  It's no wonder therefore, that the Irish were well represented amongst 19th Century cowboys and, ultimately, amongst small scale 19th Century and 20th Century ranchers.  Indeed, in more than one occasion, Irish immigrant ranchers were able to convert humble beginnings into enormous agricultural enterprises.  One such example was that of Patrick J. Sullivan, an Irish immigrant who started ranching sheep near Rawlins. As his ranch grew, he moved to Casper and became a wealthy man from sheep ranching, which then translated into politics as he became Mayor of Casper, and ultimately a U.S. Senator upon the death of Francis Warren.  Sullivan had come a long way from his humble beginnings in Bantry Bay.  His Irish roots were reflected in the balcony of the large house he built in Casper, which featured a shamrock on the banister of the widow's walk, although that feature is now gone.

No story about the Irish in the United States would be complete without noting the role that Irish born clerics played, as the Irish were always closely identified with the Catholic Church, a fact which ultimately was pivitol in Ireland's independence following World War One.  In Wyoming, the presence of the Irish guaranteed the presence of the Catholic Church, and in many areas, but not all, Irish born parishioners and Irish American parishioners were the largest segment of any one congregation (although, again, this is not true everywhere in Wyoming).  Because the church was essentially a missionary church in Wyoming, the Church relied for decades on Irish priests.  The first Bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne was the Irish born Maurice Burke, who served from 1887 until 1893, and who had to defend his Diocese from hostility from nativist elements, which were strong at the time.  He was succeeded by Thomas Lenihan, who was also Irish born.  Irish born priests continued to be very common well into the 20th Century and it only came to a slow close after World War Two, although at least one Irish born retired priest in residence remains at St. Patrick's in Casper.

In a state where they were fairly strongly represented, it's perhaps not surprising that the Irish were able to have some success in politics in the state even though there remained a strong anti Catholic prejudice in much of the United States prior to World War One.  Indeed, at least according to one source, some early Irish businessmen and politicians in the State made efforts not to make their Catholicism generally well known and were muted about their faith, being aware of the prejudice that existed against ti.  None the less, as the example of Patrick Sullivan provides, there were successful Irish born and Irish American politicians in the state fairly early.  Sullivan may provide the best early example, but others are provided by mid 20th Century politicians Joseph O'Mahoney and Frank Barrett.

An identifiable Irish presence in the state remained through most of the 20th Century, but by the last decade of the 20th Century it began to fade, as Irish immigrants aged and began to pass on.  Some still remain, but the era of Irish immigration to Wyoming is over.  Like most of the United States, a residual Irish influence lingers on in subtle ways, and in the memories of Irish descendants, many of whom, perhaps most of whom, can also claim ancestry from other lands by now.  But the impact of the Irish on the state, while not as open and apparent as it once was, continues on, and always will, given their significant role in the the 19th and 20th Century history of the state.