Not too long after the lynching of the pair, the newspaper in
Cheyenne, The Cheyenne Daily Leader, started writing false
stories about the pair. Especially about Ellen Watson. They
nicknamed her Cattle Kate. Got her mixed up with a woman in
Bossomer, a few miles toward the northeast by the name of Kate
Maxwell. She was a prostitute and did favors for the Army
stationed there. She did kill someone and rustled cattle in the
area. They mixed these two stories up so the public would not
know who was who. A telegram was sent from the cattlemen to Ed
Towse, to make up a story about the pairs lynching. This was to
cover the hideous deeds of the six lynchers, especially the ones
that belonged to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. You ask
any of the descendents of these people, like the ones on the Sun
Ranch, they will still believe what their granddads told them.
Tom Sun admitted to lynching her, but he did not know much about
her, and to save face, he had to go along with the story that
A.J. Bothwell made up. It has been told over and over again in
newspaper articles and magazine stories, until no one knows the
whole truth. You have read the real story of what had happened on
that day in 1889, make up your own mind whom to believe. The
stockman’s story or the one I just wrote. The area ranchers
today believe Bothwell’s story. She was a whore and a cattle
rustler. To me she was just a homesteader that wanted to have
her own place, and raise cattle. Unusual for a lone woman in the
middle of cattle country to do this, especially when you
homestead in the middle of a cattle barons best pasture land and
then secure water rights. He looks out his window and sees her
little cabin everyday in the middle of his best grazing pasture.
It was told later on, after the lynching, that one of the lynchers stated that they met that morning, on July 20, 1889 at A.J. Bothwell's ranch house to decide on the fate of Jim Averell and Ellen Watson. To accuse them of wrong doings, and justify what they were about to do with them. Bothwell wanted to get rid of the homesteaders and get the land back from them for raising cattle.
Toward noon that day, they rode over to Ellen Watson's place to check her cattle out. She had just branded them the day or two before.
Even the media in the days of the lynching, were in with the
Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. They held a big interest in the
newspapers of that day. Especially the newspapers from Cheyenne,
Wyoming. This is the lie that came out in the newspapers about
the lynching only a few days after the pair were lynched. Ed Towse and
Henderson needed to fabricate an unbelievably believable story
recounting how two vicious homesteaders victimized the cattlemen.
A man and a woman were lynched near historic Independence Rock on the Sweetwater River in Carbon County Sunday night. They were Postmaster James Averill and a virago who had been living with him as his wife for some months. Their offense was cattle stealing, and they operated on a large scale, recruiting quite a bunch of young steers from the range of that section.
News of the double hanging was brought to Rawlins by a special courier and telegraphed to foreman Geo. B. Henderson of the 76 out fit (actually the Quarter Circle 71 outfit), who happened to be in the capital. Mr. Henderson’s firm hast its home ranch in that country and has been systematically robbed by rustlers for years. Averill and the woman were fearless maverickers. The female was the equal of any man on the range. Of robust physique, she was a daredevil in the saddle, handy with a six-shooter and adept with the lariat and branding iron. Where she came from no one seems to know, but that she was a holy terror all agreed. She rode straddle, always had a vicious bronco for a mount and seemed never to tire of dashing across the range.
The thieving pair were ordered to leave the country several times, but paid no attention to the warnings, sending the message that they could take care of themselves, that mavericks were common property and that they would continue to appropriate unmarked cattle.
Lately it has been rumored that the woman and Averill were engaged in a regular round up of mavericks and would gather several hundred for shipment this fall. The ugly story was partially verified by the stealthy visit of a cowboy to their place Saturday. He reported that their corral held no less than fifty head of newly branded steers, mostly yearlings, with a few nearly grown.
The statement of the spy circulated rapidly, and thoroughly incensed the ranchmen, who resolved to abate the menace to the herds. Word was passed long the river and early in the night from ten to twenty men, made desperate by steady loss, gathered at a designated rendezvous and quietly galloped to the Averill ranch. A few hundred yards from the cabin they dismounted and approached cautiously. This moment was well advised for Averill had murdered two men and would not hesitate to shoot, while the woman was always full of fight.
Within the little habitation sat the thieving pair before a rude fireplace. The room was clouded with cigarette smoke. A whiskey bottle with two glasses was on the deal table, and firearms were scattered around the interior so as to be within easy reach.
The leader of the regulators stationed a man with a Winchester at each window and led a rush into the door. The sounds of ‘Hands up!’ sounded above the crash of glass as the rifles were leveled at the strangely assorted pair of thieves. There was a struggle, but the lawless partners were quickly overpowered and their hands bound.
Averill, always feared because he was a murderous coward, showed himself a cur. He begged and whined, and protested innocence, even saying the woman did all the stealing. The female was made of sterner stuff. She exhausted a blasphemous vocabulary upon the visitors, who essayed to stop the vile flow by gagging her, but found the task too great. After applying every imaginable opprobrious epithet to the lynchers, she cursed everything and everybody, challenging the Deity to cheat her enemies by striking her dead if he dared. When preparations for the short trip to the scaffold were made she called for her own horse and vaulted to its back from the ground.
Ropes were hung from the limb of a big cottonwood tree on the south bank of the Sweetwater. Nooses were adjusted to the necks of Averill and his wife and their horses led from under them. The woman died with curses on her foul lips.
A point overlooked by the amateur executioners was tying the limbs of the victims, and the kicking and writhing of these members was something awful.
Yesterday morning the bodies were swayed to and fro by a gentle breeze, which wafted the sweet odor of modest prairie flowers across the plain. The faces were discolored and shrunken tongues hung from between the swollen lips, while a film had gathered over the bulging eyes and unnatural position of the limbs completed the frightful picture.
An inquest may be held over the remains of the thieves, but it is doubtful if any attempt will be made to punish the lynchers. They acted in self protection, feeling that the time to resort to violent measures had arrived.
This is the first hanging of a woman in Wyoming.
The readers of the newspaper believed this made up story. They couldn’t believe that any man in his right mind would hang a woman. It simply had to be true that Ellen Watson was beneath contempt, a prostitute, and her partner, Jim Averell, must have been a murdering, drunken pimp. This is what the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association wanted the people of Wyoming and the world to believe. Many other newspapers took up the story and reprinted it.
The following is a newspaper article from the competing newspaper in Cheyenne at that time, The Cheyenne Daily Sun, edited by Edward A Slack. The article was written the same day as Towse’s article, July 23, 1889.
Special to the Sun. Douglas, Wyo. July 22nd.
Ella Watson was a prostitute who lived with him and is the person who recently figured in dispatches as Cattle Kate, who held up a Faro dealer at Bessemer and robbed him of the bankroll. Both, it is claimed, have borne the reputation of being cattle rustlers and are believed to have been in league with Jack Cooper, a notorious cattle thief who died with his boots on in that vicinity a few months ago.
Buchanan said Averell started for Casper Saturday, accompanied by the woman and that they were taken from the wagon by a party armed at gun point on the Sweetwater, not far from the town of Bothwell and hanged from the summit of a cliff fronting the river. Buchanan, who was a friend of Averell, came upon the lynchers just after the woman had been swung up and as they were in the act of hanging Averell. He fired at the lynchers, who returned fire with interest and pursued him, but he had a good horse and managed to escape.
He claims to have identified several men, among them four of the most prominent stockmen in Sweetwater valley. Healy reached Casper last night and swore out warrants for the arrest of these men, and Deputy Sheriff Watson and a posse left at once for the scene of the tragedy.
The lynching is the outgrowth of a bitter feeling between big stockmen and those charged with cattle rustling. Every attempt on the part of the stockmen to convict thieves in the courts of that county for years has failed no matter how strong the evidence might be against them(this allegation is patently false), and stockmen have long threatened to take the law into their own hands. This fact, together with the further one that Averell had had more or less trouble with every stockman in the section, probably accounts for the violent death of himself and the woman Watson.
Jim Averell has been keeping a low dive for several years and between the receipts of his bar and his women, and stealing stock he has accumulated some property. While on one of his drunks not long ago, he so abused one of the women that she tried to escape. Averell caught her and tore her clothes from her body, but she got away and ran from the place. Unable to catch her otherwise, he got in a wagon and drove in pursuit. (The idea of a man in a horse drawn wagon chasing a nude woman across the sagebrush because he couldn’t otherwise catch her creates an interesting visual image, but it is preposterous.) Upon capturing the woman he tied her to the wagon and left her outside during the whole night. Averell evinced his right and title to be called dangerous citizen by using his gun on several occasions and in one instance killed his man.
Jim Averell was not always thus. Few men in the west had better opportunities. He comes from an excellent family and received instructions in one of the best educational institutions of the east. A minister who recently delivered a course of lectures in the Episcopal church in Cheyenne that electrified his hearers, referred to the fact, while here, that the had an old classmate in Wyoming, one James Averell.
The story of the man’s decent into the vile avocation which he pursued when justice overtook him is not a marvelous one. It is the old tale. A few words will suffice, a passion for gambling, for liquors and for lewd women carried him on to destruction.
On the next day, Ed Towse wrote in his newspapers about the pair, on July 24, 1889.
Cattle Kate Maxwell, the woman lynched with Postmaster Averell, has been a prominent figure since her advent in the Sweetwater country three years ago. She had been a Chicago variety actress and was brought from that place by Maxwell upon the occasion of one of his trips to the market with cattle. She simply revolutionized ranch life. Fond of horses, she imported a number of racers. With the attendants came bulldogs, which were pitted against coyotes and prairie wolves. A couple of her jockeys were fleet of foot and they were matched against Indian sprinters, defeating the red man with ease.
Sharp Nose, a rapacious Arapahoe chief, cudgeled his brain to devise ways for winning the white squaw’s money, but was unsuccessful. Her thoroughbreds ran away from his best ponies. At one meeting, which lasted several days, the wily chief and his warriors were fleeced of every thing except their mounts and guns. They showed fight, but were driven from the place with the loss of several braves.
About this time Maxwell’s place was taken over by his foreman. It is said that Kate poisoned her husband. The ranch now became a thieves’ resort, and all the neighbors were sufferers. A big spree followed the recovery of the money from the skin gamblers at Bessemer. Things went from bad to worse; the foreman came to his senses and left; the retainers deserted, stealing her horses; the cattle were scattered; a colored boy made away with Kate’s diamonds. She shot him and recovered the jewels, but they soon followed her other property. When the queen and Averell joined issues, Kate was but a poor tramp of the worst type.
Towse deliberately has continued to confuse Ellen Watson with a Kate Maxwell, a saloon woman in another part of Wyoming. He continues to lie about Ellen Watson. He himself didn't know much about her. I do not think he ever met her in person. Writers and historians from then on didn’t know whether to call her Kate Maxwell, Ella Maxwell, Ella Watson or Kate Watson. Some even got her mixed up a Ella Wilson from Ft Fetterman. One of the more charges was made by Harry Henderson, originally from Rawlins and later from Cheyenne, who was quoted by a Cheyenne paper as having said in a recent luncheon speech that Cattle Kate passed out green stamps.
After the coroner’s inquest at the Sweetwater post office, one of the men from Deputy Watson’s posse, Arthur Post, returned to Casper and as soon as possible rode to Douglas, the nearest telegraph office, where he immediately disclosed what had happened in the Sweetwater to Merris Barrow, editor of Bill Barlow’s Budget in Douglas. Barrow relayed the facts to Edward Slack, editor of the Cheyenne Daily Sun, and Editor Slack, realizing how terribly wrong his first article was and how duped he had been by Ed Towse, immediately apologetically corrected his first article, the next day.
There were newspapers in the area that did tell the truth about the lynching and stated that Ellen didn't steal cattle, like Ed Towse accused her of doing in his Cheyenne, Wyoming newspaper. One the newspapers was the Bessemer Journal from Bessemer Bend, Wyoming. The account is as follows:
Last week the Journal made a hasty announcement of the Sweetwater hanging based upon a report which reached us on Monday following the lynchings. Various rumors were afloat, and it was a hard matter to get the facts. It seems that the trouble, which led to the crime, was not cattle stealing, but grew out of land difficulties. We have heard parties say they would wager their fast dollar that Jim Avril did not own a hoof and never put the branding iron on a calif in his life, as for Watson, it is said that she told the mob that if they would take her to Rawlins she would prove to them that she came by every head honestly and could show a bill of sale for each "critter" she owned or branded. Jim Avril had lived in the Sweetwater country for years, and is said by those who know him, to have been a "big hearted fellow" always willing to help the poor and unfortunate. As for Ella Watson, her career was not that of a cattle thief. The article was taken from the August 1, 1889 Bessemer Journal.
There are other newspaper articles written after the lynching that also claimed that the two were innocent of their crime. Casper Wyoming newspaper claimed their innocence. For the last hundred years or so since their untimely death, there have been many stories written about the incident, using Ed Towse's first story written about the incident. The one he made up. The State of Wyoming has never taken the time to investigate the crime of what really happened. To clear Jim and Ellen's name and to correct the History Books about them. I guess it would take a lawsuit to do that. It is easier to make money from the dime store novel story that was told by the editor of the Cheyenne newspapers after the lynching, then spend the money to clear their names. There is evidence in the courthouses that would clear both of their names and show the real reason they were lynched. For their land and water rights by their neighbor, A. J. Bothwell. The Cheyenne newspapers at that time were owned and operated by the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association, they told you what to print. Especially when two of the lynchers belonged to it as high officials before the lynching.
There is another interesting lie that was conceived later on. There was one person by the name of Vernon Averell, who called himself Buffalo Vernon, that in the 1920’s he tried to claim to be Jim Averell and Ellen Watson’s son. He said that he was ten years old when they came and got his parents, and that one of the lynchers took him several miles from there and shot him in the neck and left him for dead. Some Indians found him and nursed him back to health. He traveled with the Buffalo Bill shows later on. Annie Oakley was his guardian. Remember, Jim Averell only knew Ellen for three years, since early 1886. Just his age would tell everyone he was lying. One thing about his lie, Ellen never had any children by either marriage. She was only in Wyoming about three years. I wrote to the Buffalo Bill’s Museum in Cody, Wyoming, and they wrote back and stated that he liked to fabricate stories. He only rode with Buffalo Bill only a short period of time. So the ones in Wyoming that still thinks that Ellen had children, she didn’t.
Another lie, that I have letters to prove. There were some men that lived in Deadwood, South Dakota that stated that they knew Ellen quiet well. She never was near the town of Deadwood in her entire life.
Another lie was printed in some magazines in the past several years stating her name was Ellen Wilson. There was a Ellen Wilson that was shot in the neck in a saloon near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. She was a witness at a trial there against the accused gunman. They accidentally in the testimony put down her name as Ellen Watson. Which was a typo on their part.
I have seen on some internet sites today that have taken the wedding picture of W A. Pickell and Ellen Watson and used it without the Watson family permission. They state that this must be the Maxwell she was running around with. In fact this was the picture of Ellen's first husband. This picture was in George Hufsmith's book, The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate, 1889. This picture was only given to Mr. Hufsmith for a one time printing rights to print it in his book from the Watson family. I have this picture on my site, because it does belong to the Watson family. The original one is a picture on tin. It is owned by one of the nieces of Ellen Watson today. Her father was Ellen's youngest brother. Ellen Watson has five nieces and one nephew left living today. She does have several grand nephews and grand nieces living today.
There have been several books and magazine articles written about Ellen Watson, known by them as Cattle Kate. Several of these Authors never really researched her life. They just took what the Newspapers said about her in the days of her lynching for granted and wrote about her from the articles. Some of them never even knew where Ellen came from. Just surmised with a lot of the story about her. Especially from Cheyenne, Wyoming. The newspaper at that time belonged to the powerful organization known as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. They controlled the newspaper and its printing. They had printed what they wanted the public to hear not the real facts about her life and what really took place at her lynching. They fabricated the lives of three different women into one. The editor of the Cheyenne newspaper wrote the incident like you would a dime store novel.
There is one author that lived in Wyoming who wrote a book, and tried to right the wrong done to Jim Averell and Ellen Watson. His name is the late George Hufsmith. He wrote the book in 1993 called The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate, 1889 There are other author's today that are trying to write about the truth. Some are telling part of the story in magazines like True West and Wild West. Some authors have put chapters in books today like in Wild Women of the Old West @2003 in Cattle Kate, Homesteader or Cattle Thief? by Lori Van Pelt.
I tried to tell the story of what she was really like, who she was, and where she came from. No story has ever been told by any of her family members, her nieces or nephews. Her own father told her siblings never to speak of her name again after he went back to Kansas from her inquest in Wyoming in August 1889. Not one of them ever spoke of her name after that, even to their own children, though some of them tried to get their parents to tell them about their oldest Aunt. He did this to protect his family. Before Thomas left Wyoming, one of the lynchers threatened his life if he told what really happened, they would come an kill his family also.
I have traveled to the place of her birth. Met the relatives in Ontario, Canada. Their still working the same land today Ellen's grandfather homesteaded in 1855. I have traveled to Kansas, where she married her first husband, and then filed for a divorce in Red Cloud, Nebraska. I have been on the homestead site in Smith County, Kansas that her father homesteaded in November 1877 where Ellen lived until she married. I have traveled to Rawlins, Wyoming where she filed for her claim. I have researched in the local courthouse in that city for her records. I have been to her homestead site on the Pathfinder Ranch and the lynching site and seen the tree that the cattlemen lynched her and Jim Averell from. I have sent off to the National Archives for her homestead filings. I do know something about her life, since I am related to her. Her nieces and nephews have told me little about what they could get out of their parents, which wasn't very much.
Some still say today that she was still a criminal and cattle thief and a woman of the night, with no documented proof. Just hearsay evidence from the newspapers back then, or from books that have been written about her, or from the story one of the lynchers made up. (They didn't even know much about her.) Only one of the lynchers knew her well, because he lived within a mile of Ellen's homestead place. He lied and fabricated stories about Jim and Ellen so he could get rid of them and finally get their land and water rights.
If these writers come up with documented proof of her cattle rustling, from arrest warrants in the courthouse, or any type of trial she might have been in, or If they can find proof that she was a prostitute, after having two young boys living with her in the middle of no where land, then I will take their word for it, Not just hearsay, that has been passed down through the years by the big ranchers.
Some writers say that I am bias in my thinking. If I am, then they have not done their research on Ellen Watson's life like I have. Some are putting wrong pictures up on websites, thinking those pictures are of Ellen Watson and Jim Averell. This will confuse the public that does not know much about the story. According to her Estate Administrator, the cattle did belong to her, and he sued the Durbin Cattle Company and A. J Bothwell for compensation for her estate, for the cattle they drove out of her corral and divided between them, and later sold in Cheyenne, Wyoming for one dollar a head. Since he had no receipt where she bought the cattle, they never paid him one cent for them. I believe that all evidence disappeared after the lynching, even Ellen's proof where she bought the cattle, which was in a bank deposit box in Rawlins.
I have tried to help several writers to write what really happened that day in July 1889. I tried to let them understand what Ellen was really like.
me with any comments feel free!!!!
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