Main Street, Wyoming; 415; George Hufsmith

Mainstream Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities. Then suddenly it happened again Elon's green and McLean leapt heavily forward and shoved her to off the boulder on which both Ellen and Jim had been standing. The tree trembled and then both Helen and Jim were suspended writhing and kicking Ellen like Jim hadn't dropped very far at all nor had the men tied her hands or feet. They were amateur executioners. She could probably nearly touch the ground from time to time with the toes of her moccasins. The dust flew. Frank saw that Jim and Alan were tied to the same limb. It bent down under their combined weight

but the limb didn't break. The two homesteaders were banging up against one another and were hitting and gouging and kicking unmercifully and spinning one another around. It must have been the most horrible and gruesome sight Frank had Buchanan had ever seen. The two homesteaders were gurgling and grabbing one another while they tried again and again to pull themselves up on those thin lariats. But it was no use. Neither Ellen nor Jim had fallen far enough to break their necks. They were strangling slowly suffocating in Ellen's struggles. She must have kicked off her pretty beaded moccasins on. One.

It happened in 1889 Ellen Watson known to some as cattle Kate was strung up near centinel rocks and the Sweetwater River in south central Wyoming along with her cohort Jim. Avril. That much is undisputed. But a hundred years later you can still start an argument if you call a cavalcade a rustler or a whore. And here's the man who will argue with you. George Huff's Smith. I don't like you Jeff. Thank you. This is a real pleasure to be here and talk about history the way it really was. Well George is a Jackson resident. He's got roots in Wyoming going back to the days of Custer's last stand. He's written a book. The Wyoming lynching of cattle cavalcade which was published in 1993 by high plains press. I'm going to leave out some key aspects of George's background and talents but we will get back to that later. So welcome George. Thank you Jeff. I think we need to start by getting from you and an outline of what actually happened involving

cavalcade on that day July 21st 1889. On that warm summer day it was a beautiful summer day. Ellen Watson they called her cavalcade after her death. She never heard it during her lifetime but she was down below in the in an Indian encampment by a pair of moccasins. Beautiful moccasins which you know in the museum and in Cheyenne and several ranches got together. And Al Bothwell who is the black hat in this story. He was really a dreadful man very bad man but terribly rich filthy rich and he and he got everybody together because Ellen had just branded her calves which she had bought legitimately the winter before and she had just she had just branded these calves and Bothwell came up with a plot that was to implicate her as though she were a rustler. Now Bothwell knows

she bought those cattle and he knew she bought them from and he knew there were witnesses but there were no witnesses there. So he called in five of his ranching friends they met in the. They met in his favorite pasture very close to Ellen Watson's homestead. And Jim Avril's homestead and took them over there while she was gone. When they arrived there they saw yes the calves were freshly branded. And he told them that they had been rustled which they had not. So the rest of the Russels rustlers I mean the rest of the ranchers I think really thought that she had been rustling cattle. He conned them into believing that. And as a result they've started tearing her fence down and letting the calves out. What about this time Eleanor arrived back in her new moccasins happy as a clam and all of a sudden she discovered what they were doing and she ran up and she was in terrible anguish she said. What in the world are you doing. What's going on here. Tears burst out from

her face she couldn't believe what was happening. And Bothwell again the black hat the leader of the lynchers it said for her to get up in the back of the wagon and she said why should I get up in the back of the wagon. Is it worth taking you out of this country won't leave voluntarily. We're going to take you out of this country you don't belong here. This is our country. You see. And so as a result of that she said Well my goodness if we're going to take me someplace at least live let me change my clothes if we're going to Rolands or somewhere. Yes. You know put you on the train and get you out of here. They wouldn't let her change her clothes. Bothwell said if she didn't get up in the back of the wagon he dragged her to death. He'd tire on behind and drag her to death. They then went over to Jim Avril's general store and caught him coming at a second gate in a in a freight wagon. He was going to Casper to get some more supplies and they pulled some

guns on him and told him to get out of the wagon and he said What's the trouble and they said you've got a warrant for you. We have a warrant for your arrest. And he said Oh you do. Well let me see it. And they backed up and pulled up their rifles in his face and said we think this is warrant enough. Get up in the back of the wagon and they did and they took them down toward independence rock and back up into what is now today called the The Sentinel rocks and they took them back up into a place called Spring Creek Gulch sprinkler gulches a small goals very rocky full of nothing but pine trees and other small trees. And they took them back up in there and I think what was going on I can't be sure of course because nobody can document this particular part of it but I think what happened is they

were intimidated and it was the last straw. Albert Bothwell had introduced John Barleycorn into this thing and I think they were all feeling their oats about this time and they weren't used to getting. No said two because they were so enormously wealthy and politically powerful that they were offended by these two homesteaders the first two homesteaders in this whole area and they took him up there. And one after another lynched them but just before the lynching Frank Buchanan a close friend of theirs and then another cowboy had followed the whole thing on horseback and came up the other side of the rocks came over the top saw what was going on he couldn't believe they were actually going to lynch a woman. I mean they hadn't happened in those days. That was unheard of. So it doesn't that in these days either. No it doesn't. You don't take a woman out adventure. And besides she was innocent of anything she was enormously gentle.

Now we're right to the lynching. I'm going to stop you there and I'm going to read you another account. Good of this event and this gets you to respond to it. Is a description of if I can. April was obviously a rotter an outcast in Wyoming respectability was convinced that he was also a murderer and a fugitive from justice. Her name was Ella Watson. And although her reputation was such that no ordinary crooked promoter would have cared to use her in any enterprise whatsoever. Mr. ever looked on that reputation as offering certain advantages. Ella Watson was notorious loose woman of the countdown's and for his peculiar purposes this was precisely what he needed. Gets worse. Oh my. He sheltered behind the class war of the planes that they had raised. Protected by crooks and gunmen sympathized with by many of their honest neighbors and equipped with a system admirably devised to baffle evidence getters the pair of the post office and the hog ranch felt that they could get away with murder. And that's a 1927 account of the

cavalcade as they called her and Jim Avril. Are those the same people that you're writing about. Oh yes oh sure. Except that the story was fabricated in a shy and newspaper room to justify what the ranchers had done. You see the ranchers control all the newspapers and Cheyanne all the rest of the newspapers in Wyoming were on the side of Ellen Watson and Jim Avril because they knew what had happened. But but what happened is that the newspaper after it wrote the article and published it first. They were out first with it. They sprayed the world with it. They spray every important newspaper in the world was sent a copy of the story and it was so bizarre that everybody over their morning coffee was just delighted to read such a bizarre story. NASA for cab's a national The National Enquirer loved it. Oh I'm sure that's it is isn't it. It did come out in the police Gazette. Some people may remember that but the old police Gazette on pink

paper it was wonderful but at any rate the story is entirely fictitious. I have about one third of my book documents the actual actions and what happened during the story. She was never a prostitute. She was never even thought of as a prostitute. The women in the Sweetwater country loved her if they got sick. She always came over him and did their chores for her and did the cooking and the laundry and so on until she was well and then she would go back and they loved her for everybody except the big cattle barons who saw the end of the free open range if they let homesteaders in. And that's what happened. OK. And we're the real fear then was not prostitution or rustling in those homesteading. It was homestead. And both of these two were homes. Yes. And they had been asked to leave. They had as a matter of fact Albert Bothwell who again who was the black hat here Albert Bothwell had offered to buy it from her and she said she didn't need the money. What she needed was the land she wanted to be a landowner and the April the same way and they

would both been asked in a matter of fact afterwards. Bothwell had some of his cowboys go over and pin a skull and crossbones on their doors and that sort of thing. Now why did Bothwell want their lands in particular what was the value here. One of the probably Bothwell favorite pasture was where the two homesteaders filed. Now the land he had been using and I'm sure he had been using it for maybe three or four years before he arrived there. They were very early. They were the earliest homesteaders one of the earliest homesteaders in the valley. And and they also filed legally filed over the top of what was called Horse Creek and Horse Creek was just a year round running stream. Well now if you were homesteader you wouldn't fall on dry land would you. No of course not you'd file. And they all did all homesteaders did but since they were the first in this area they were intimidated to try and get out. And they simply wouldn't leave. She was a woman ahead of her time.

Now these are events that really took place over a century ago. And I'm curious as to not just what motivated you to look into them but what would the relevance be to us today to look back at an event like this. Well it's that sort of thing is still going on today. Big money powerful politically powerful men run over others and that's going on even today. And so the world hasn't changed very much except that in this particular case Bothwell and his cohorts made the terrible mistake of lynching a woman and that they said matter of fact Bothwell said in a statement that he made to a minister. He said if it hadn't been a woman everybody would have forgotten about it. Quite effective. Larson in his history of Wyoming mentions this event and says exactly the same thing he doesn't. It had just been several years but it wasn't just April. There was a woman that nobody has forgotten. Right. In addition some of the people featured in the book and in these events are their successors or their descendants are still here today because Wyoming's history is

not far behind oh no way we can reach out and touch it. I interviewed the grandson of and he's a very fine gentleman. I wouldn't want to implicate him in any way. This whole thing. But his father was one of the lynchers I think begrudgingly in this particular case and I don't mean that to be condescending. I think he really was kind of a foot dragging participant in it. But but nevertheless in chatting with him I got firsthand information that I couldn't have gotten any other way. Right. And this group includes I think you're referring to the people who founded the Sundance rather famous Fuji's here in Wyoming and he was a great pioneer nothing wrong but I think he was duped into this whole thing. See thinking that he really was that bad. And if she was that bad she deserved to die. They thought there was but I wouldn't tell them was that neither rustling nor prostitution was a capital crime but lynching was.

If any of these people complained to you or talked to you about it at all. When I chatted with Bernard son he was one of the loveliest gentlemen I've known him for years. We've known each other before I began to write the book and he's a charmer and so is his wife and they're delightful additions to the state of Wyoming. They're marvelous people. Well now I'm going to bring up a whole other aspect of George Hudson's life one which I discreetly didn't mention earlier. This man is a composer. He's a Yale graduate who studied with Paul Hindemith and I'm going to say it wrong. Ektar Villalobos that's a very good close in a few years back before he wrote this book. He took the cavalcade story and wrote an opera. I think this may be and I think it must be the only opera ever written by a Wyoming resident. Well there have been a little operettas written before but no grand opera grand opera meaning nothing is ever spoken in the opera it's all song. And usually a tragedy and this is certainly a tragedy. Tell me how you came to write it. What brought about the opera. I was in

the insurance business. I started out in the cattle business in Wyoming way back. I would hesitate to tell you how far back but at one point the cattle market went into terrible depression. The price of cattle went from $45 a hundred weight to $15 on weight overnight and I had to find another job that just wasn't producing enough income we were going to lose the ranch unless I found something else. So I went to the insurance business. Well of course for those of people that know about music they know that Charles Ives was also in the insurance business. Not to compare myself with Charles lodge but it's an irony that I thought was interesting. Well maybe it helps to have a little training here. Right. But. And finally I when I remarried my second wife told me would you like to. But what would you like to do. And I said Well I

would much rather be what I'm trained to do which is composition and musical composition. I studied at Yale. I studied with some of the biggest names in America and abroad. And my credentials were who were really wonderful. I'm very proud of those. And I decided that I wanted to write music and she said do it. And I sold my agency. It was in a very bad time because it was just before inflation hit where the dollar went from a dollar to 30 cents in one year. And so I decided to go into the composition again. And she said what would you like to do and I said well I haven't written an opera I've written almost everything else I've written symphonies and everything else. But I've never written an opera which is. Why don't you what would you like to write about. And I told her I have always been intrigued by the story of Kate. OK now we've got some tape of the opera as it was performed I

believe in Laramie has performed all around the state and we'll talk about that in a minute. Let's listen to an aria from the opera. And if you could introduce it this is the Al Bothwell I believe this is the bad bad guy and he was very bad. Yes he was the black work although I see a lot of black cats on the street today. I don't think they understand the meaning of black. Perhaps it was meant to be were a bad person if you were a white hat you were a good person because that's changed. But as for the this particular areas I'll Bothwell who is speaking to both Alan Watson and Jim Avril's who were lynched. They the two principles that were lynched and he screams at them that he was here first. He says I was here first or we was here first he says talking about the cattle ranch and the right. They were there for us. And all of a sudden Congress passes a a homestead law which allows people who don't know anything about anything to come into the valley and settle up. So I

wrote this area in favor of Al Bothwell to show what his problems were at the same time because he had problems too and it was called we was here first. We made this country what it is. Let's have a listen. He seemed to me to be the first

thing we will the maybe.

It's a little hard sometimes to think of an Ellen Watson as a Madame Butterfly. But here you've got these Western characters performing in an opera. Was that a easy thing for you to conceive of that was that was an easy thing for me to conceive of because my roots go so far back in Wyoming that I thought if I'm going to write about something I want to write about something I know about and I know about Wyoming and I love its history and its background. If you look at the process of producing an opera in the process of producing a book I think of them as being terribly different than I would imagine in an opera. The urge to dramatize is a little greater that you have to change the facts around a little bit. Yes I did. I took what they called artistic liberty. And I had them unmarried and falling in love and then ready to get

married when they were lynched which is not the real story the real story was of course they were married at that time. Right. But it's much more romantic the other way. She sings a very lovely Arias about her love for him and his love for her without realizing that one another our love that is each one is in love with the other. And then there's this interesting sequence where you went from writing an opera which is the last thing anybody in Wyoming is writing a book. And again I think the aims are quite different did you. Was there some other unfinished business that you had that caused you to write a book after writing the opera. Yes. In writing the opera I researched about four years before I actually wrote the opera or I should say during that process of the time that I was writing the opera I kept researching and I kept finding out new facts that weren't anything like the old story. And so I realized during this research period that there was an enormous discrepancy between the old story the terrible story ridiculous sexpert as again back to that is so ridiculous and bizarre. I mean there was nobody to

buy that accommodation in the Sweet Water country. At any rate I began to realize that there was more to the story as I wrote the opera and as I finished the opera I realized that was a great deal I didn't know but I had gotten to know both of them. All of them. Albert BAAF Well I've gotten to know Alan Watts and I've gotten to know Jim veral her husband intimately during the opera and I got into it. As they say to date by the way was the opera performed around the state or elsewhere. Well yes it was performed four times to standing room only audiences in Laramie at the university and then toured the state to Rawlins to Landor to Casper Powell. And then of all places to Lusk Wyoming. And I suppose that's the first to last grand opera they will ever see. Perhaps so go on about white course in the old days the Italians used to have opera here. The miners used to bring opera into Wyoming so it's not unheard of. Well no they didn't bring

grand opera. They brought the musical comedies which they called Opera and that's where we get our name opera houses in the wild. There's one even in Sundance. Let's go on then and talk a little more about your motivation for going on to the book from the opera. Well I found out just enough to intrigue me and the more I learn the more consumed I became and I really got so that I I knew these people. I was always talking to them. I ran into a woman doing the research for the book whose name is Baby Ruth baby and she lives in Mudie gap where she lived then and money gap and she was a nonagenarian and I'd been looking for for years knew where she lived and all of a sudden I found out I went to interview her and she was perfectly wonderful. Her father watched the abduction. She was nonagenarian in her 90s and a perfectly delightful charming sweet lady. I loved her you know knowing her intimately knowing Ellen Watson

intimately as you do now in a sense you seem to have stood up as her gallant defender you haven't written this in the normal style of the history. No I tried to make it an entertaining historical book. Now that doesn't mean it's not historical. It's very historical and follows exactly the sequence of events during her lifetime and Jim Avril's lifetime but. But I get awfully tired of stuffy academic history books and I didn't want to write one of those. So I tried to turn it into a real life situation that people would understand. And they've told me that I succeeded. I hope that's true at this point. We're going to give cavalcade or I guess we should call her Ellen Watson appropriately. Well yes people newer is cavalcade afterwards because of the terrible way they made her out so bad you know that she deserved to die but. But her name really was Ellen Watson she what they called her Ellie as a child Ella as a grown woman among her friends and Ellen was her real name.

Well we're going we're going to give Ellen Watson now a chance to speak for herself with another aria from your opera. Oh great. Let's listen. I hope they like it. So a B. B B B B. B. B B C.

For the. Mainstreet Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas