From Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the American West by Michael Rutter
This was a lynching through and through. The cattlemen accused Watson and Averell of cattle rustling. She vehemently denied it. No evidence was presented either way. It's hard to tell if her rivals even believed their own accusations or if this was a thinly veiled power play on their part. If the latter, it was even more morally bankrupt than it sounds.
To make things worse, they got away with it. Thanks to witnesses being intimidated, none in the group were ever convicted. If this incident proved anything, it wasn't anything good.
Sheriff Watson interviewed the vigilantes, all six of whom admitted to the lynching. Perhaps they thought it wouldn't be a problem; hanging a male rustler, after all, was something the law often forgave. The six cattlemen were, moreover, respected ranchers and businessmen, members of the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA). What they didn't realize, though, was that hanging a woman - no matter what her crime - was almost unthinkable to most in the West. Each of the vigilantes was required to post a $5,000 bond, a hefty sum in that day.For context, the woman hanged was small but successful rancher Ellen Watson, posthumously known as "Cattle Katie." Her husband Jim Averell was killed as well.
This was a lynching through and through. The cattlemen accused Watson and Averell of cattle rustling. She vehemently denied it. No evidence was presented either way. It's hard to tell if her rivals even believed their own accusations or if this was a thinly veiled power play on their part. If the latter, it was even more morally bankrupt than it sounds.
To make things worse, they got away with it. Thanks to witnesses being intimidated, none in the group were ever convicted. If this incident proved anything, it wasn't anything good.
2 comments:
Intimidation and outright murder are abhorrent. Although lynching is no longer tolerated injustices are still common - too many examples to list, but this recent one seemed pretty outrageous to me. Ranchers never did like having their 'rights' questioned, did they?
There's always an assumption, when looking at the atrocities of the past, that "we've come so far since then." Well, no, we have the potential to do better, but that doesn't necessarily mean we do. "Stand Your Ground" laws, for instance, seem to bear a horrific racial bias in practice. And the case you linked to is pretty egregious.
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