Next Up in Fiber Nation: The Sheep and Cattle Wars

In our minds, the American west is a mythic place: wide-open spaces; Wyatt Earp and Calamity Jane; cattle drives, and cowboys. In reality, the American west was a place of constant violent conflict. One of the most drawn-out of those conflicts was the so-called range wars. Beginning in the 1880s, cattlemen and sheepmen fought over land and water; dozens of sheepherders were murdered, and up to 100,000 sheep were slaughtered, all before a Colorado congressman ended the violence in 1934.

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So what led to this conflict? Sheep and cattle came to the Americas with Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s and immediately made their mark on the landscape. That is, they ate everything in sight. While sheep get all the blame, overgrazing by both sheep AND cattle helped turn the dry west into true desert in places.

A sheep raid as portrayed in *Harper’s Magazine*, 1877. It’s not that far from reality.

Our guest Andrew Gulliford describes how the range wars were more for than a fight for grass.

Guest Andrew Gulliford and his book The Wooly West. Whether you are a fiber geek, Western history buff, or both, you need to pick this up.

Sheep mostly belonged to Hispano ranchers in New Mexico Territory; cattle came from Texas. Despite the awkward matter of secession during the Civil War, Texas cattle were still seen as resolutely “American.” This is part of the reason why cattlemen and cowboys got away with murder, literally. Sheep were slaughtered, and herders were shot at, tortured, and killed.

Juan Montoya was perhaps the only Hispano sheepman to win a court battle.

The courts were no help. Sheriffs were unwilling to prosecute, and juries rarely found cattlemen guilty. This wouldn’t change until the late 1890s, when the violence became so great (including the murder of a 14-year-old boy) that public opinion shifted.

After his father’s adobe house was firebombed, Juan Trujillo built the kind of log cabin a cattleman would own . . . but with an adobe interior.

The Great Depression and the Taylor Grazing Act finally put an end to the Range Wars; few people know they lasted so long. But the 1970s would see a surprise happy ending for many sheep-raising families: tune in to learn why.

Happy listening,
Allison