SO-CALLED CATTLE KATE RISES FROM RUBBISH

Evidence points toward Ella Watson's innocence.

- JANA BOMMERSBACH

Cattle Kate was the only woman ever hanged in Wyoming for cattle rustling, and history long portrayed the act as "good riddance to bad rubbish."

Powder River War historian Helen Huntington Smith wrote that Ellen "Ella" Watson's lynching was "the most revolting crime in the entire annals of the West."

Uncovered evidence strongly supports Ella's ownership of the cattle she was accused of stealing, while stories about her being a loose and wild woman we clearly concocted by her killers. On top of that, authorities never brought the accused killers to trial because the witnesses mysteriously died or disappeared before they could tell the court what they'd seen. And on a sunny Saturday in 1889, it's believed that powerful Wyoming ranchers murdered Watson because she had gotten in their way.

 

Ella's dream

Ella was born in Canada on July 2, 1861, the oldest of 10 children. Her family moved to Kansas, where she married at 18 to a man who abused her. After her divorce, she went to Denver, Colorado, then Cheyenne, Wyoming, and finally to Rawlins, where she worked as a cook and domestic for two years at the Rawlins House. Some erroneously thought this was a brothel and labeled her a prostitute, confusing Ella with a known prostitute of the time who had the same name.

It was at Rawlins House in February 1866 that Ella met James Averell, a widower with a homestead claim in the Sweetwater River Valley, where he'd established a road ranch and general store. The couple dreamed of marriage, but Ella also dreamed of owning her own homestead on adjoining land-one precluded the other, since the law only allowed one claim per family.

On May 11, the couple traveled 100 miles to Lander to obtain a marriage license, forever keeping their union secret to protect their plan to become large landowners.