Lords and cow servants

by Doug Crowe
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:27 PM MDT

If you have not read Helena Huntington Smith's book, “The War on Powder River,” you might want to consider doing so.

She writes of the 1892 Johnson County War ("The Cattleman's Invasion") and the events leading up to it. It is almost impossible, even today, to understand this state and the folks who populate it without knowing that part of our history.

To illustrate, I offer for your consideration an anecdote based loosely (I never met a story I couldn't improve) upon Ms. Smith's observations.

The late 1870s saw the beginning of what was to become a flood of British and Scottish cattle corporations into Wyoming. This influx of speculators can be attributed, at least in part, to Robert E. Strahorn, a local publicity man who, in 1877, published "The Handbook of Wyoming and Guide to the Black Hills and Big Horn Regions."

He wrote of steady profits on investments in cattle of 25 percent per annum and mentioned "one gentleman ... who for five years has made forty percent per annum."

This and other glowing reports of the ease and profitability of running cattle on the public domain attracted a deluge of rich foreigners with strange accents and haughty mannerisms.

These newcomers were a source of amusement to most locals who, having no knowledge or interest in the various ranks of European nobility, gleefully referred to them all as "lords."

The "lords" reciprocated by referring to the hired help as "cow servants."

Amongst the influx of Europeans was a young Englishman named Moreton Frewen. He settled on a ranch site a few miles below the confluence of the three forks of the Powder River and ultimately built a two-story log house that came to be known as "Frewen's Castle."

It is reputed to have had a great hall running up to the roof, with a fireplace at each end and a solid walnut staircase extending to the second floor where the sleeping quarters were. Midway there was a sort of mezzanine.

Downstairs was a dining room, a library and office, and the central hall-living room, 40 by 40 feet, besides the kitchen and pantry.

"Twenty of us," Frewen once wrote, "could dine in the hall comfortably, and then move out to the piazza and watch the sunset."

In addition to all this, Frewen maintained horses at relay points between his ranch and Rock Creek Station on the Union Pacific (more than 200 miles away) so that his visitors "from the continent" might have fresh mounts along the way.

One titled Englishman, having ridden the 200 miles from Rock Creek Station, arrived to find Frewen's foreman shoeing a horse in the yard. At his approach, the foreman straightened up to greet him and the rider asked, in all innocence, "Is your mahster at home?"

The foreman straightened up a bit more, looked him square in the eye and replied, "The son-of-a-bitch ain't been born yet!"

That story is probably apocryphal. I hope not. In any case, it says a lot about Wyomingites and may provide some insight as to why many of the recently arrived, fair weather, nouveau riche land barons find us a bit obstreperous and unmanageable at times.

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