THE COWBOYS CALLED THEM RANGE MAGGOTS
THE LEGENDARY PLEASANT VALLEY WAR T
COMMODORE PERRY OWENS - HE HAD TIES TO GALLUP
he Western Cowboy was invented after the Civil War. Southerners who had fought for the South made up the bulk of them, and they were all hardened fighters, handy with knife and gun. They were also very angry. First, they swarmed Texas, where many of them became wanted criminals, but the range herds being trailed north soon gave them new horizons thanks largely to the new railroads. NOTE: cowhands hated the term “cow punchers” because it referred to the drovers who had to get the beef onto railroad cars using poles to poke them along. As they found new pastures, the cattle companies tended to overrun small ranches occupied for a century or more. The Federal Government had assured these small ranchers they could keep the land they occupied, mostly grants from the Mexican and Spanish regimes. Power and greed steamrolled over them. It has always bothered me that most people in Gallup have never heard of one of the greatest range wars. Dozens of books have been written about this piece of western history. Many novels have used this cattle/ sheep war including Zane Grey, titled “To the Last Man.” Of all range wars in our history, it had the most fatalities. Where did the great animosity against sheep come from? That is not a difficult question. The cattlemen had claimed the public range first, and they believed they had “eminent domain.” The range belonged to them by use. Usually that right is only exercised by the government. As an excuse, the cattlemen claimed that the cattle cropped the grass, just bit it off, but sheep supposedly tore the grass out of the ground, ruining the grazing. In reality, the fight wasn’t sheep vs. cattle, but big over small, weak vs. powerful. One of the most famous range wars in the West happened south of Holbrook, Arizona. The Pleasant Valley War also involved grazing land below the Mogollon Rim. Just to keep it interesting, it is also called the Tonto Range War.
