Old Missoula

BUFFALO, BUTCH CASSIDY, VIGILANTES

[Interview by Maurice Howe – WPA director – Utah]

 

George C. Streeter of Ogden, Utah, related:

“I was born somewhere in Illinois, in 1867, town or county unknown, and from there my folks went to Missouri and then out to Nebraska. My father, who was an itinerant Methodist preacher, took up a home stead about 12 miles from Seward City, Nebraska. I went to school several years at Indianola, Nebraska, and there, as a small boy, witnessed one of the last fights with the Sioux Indians in that region.

“My father worked with Buffalo Bill Cody hunting buffalo to supply meat for the rail road then being built down to Denver in the early ‘70’s. They took me along to drive an ox cart that carried meat back to the camp. They usually shot 16 or 18 bison a day and cut off the hind quarters and the hump, the tongue and took off the hide. The hump is the choicest meat of the buffalo.

“I was told never to get out of the cart for fear of being killed by stampeding buffalo, but one time a big bull bison came over and fought our oxen and I was so frightened I jumped out of the cart and ran as fast as I could for several hours and then laid down and fell asleep. My father finally found me, way out on the prairie seven miles from the cart, by the use of his telescopic sights on his big muzzle loading rifle.

“Father lost his large pocketbook or bill fold that trip, while we were hunting on the Frenchman river, a tributary to the Republican river. The leather case was a gift from General U. S. Grant, whom he had served as a dispatch carrier during the Civil war. The next year we were hunting in the same territory and I found the pocketbook with papers intact and still have it to this day.

“We used to get from 75 cents to one dollar for buffalo hides, depending on where the bullet holes were. We used lots of salt on the meat and hauled it 15 or 20 miles to the nearest railroad camp.

“Then the hide hunters began to slaughter the bison for their hides alone and the big herds soon vanished. I recall seeing carcasses of dead buffalo for 50 miles along the Republican river so thick you could step from one to the other.

“The last wild buffalo I saw on the plains was around 1885 or 1886. There used to be an old bull buffalo on the South Platte that got in the cattle roundup and every outfit for a hundred miles around had put Its brand on him.

“I was educated for the ministry at the Methodist university at York, Nebraska, but I preferred life on the open range so I took to cow punching, broncho busting, stage driving and carpentry.

“I drove stage for the Niobrara Transportation company from Sidney, Nebraska, to Deadwood, South Dakota, at the time of the Black Hills rush. I was only 14 or 15 years old but I was never late or wrecked the stage so badly the horses could not pull it.

“Then I went out to Wyoming to work for the 2-Bar cattle company. At that time they claimed the whole state of Wyoming as their range and had 160,000 head of stock. I was counted one of the best riders in the state as items in the old Cheyenne Sun will testify. Colonel Swan, manager of the company offered $500 for any horse that I couldn’t ride. I got a fourth of all the bet money he used to win.

“Those were pretty wild days in Wyoming in the late ‘80’s. There were still a few buffalo left on the Red Desert.

“Cattle rustlers were plentiful and when a cow puncher went to work for a company it was specified that he had to have a six shooter. The company furnished free ammunition and if a rider was found with less than half a belt of cartridges without a good excuse he was fined part of his pay. Constant practice made the cowboys good shots.

“Although I was young I was nicknamed “Dad” because I had such light colored hair. One day I was trying to throw my roll of bedding up into the four-horse wagon that accompanied the round-up. A short thick-set stranger came up and said, ‘Buddy, let me throw that in for you.’ He hoisted the heavy roll into the wagon with one hand and then turned to me and said, ‘Let’s bunk together from now on. I am going to work for this outfit.’ I replied, ‘All right, where is your bedding?’

“‘I haven’t any. We will have to use yours,’ said the stranger. So we bunked together for two years and that man was Butch Cassidy, who later became the famous outlaw.

“Butch was the best natured man I ever saw and he would never stand for anyone molesting me. He was a crack shot and the best there was with a rope. He was top cow hand and it wasn’t until some years later that he started his bandit career. He could ride around a tree at full speed and empty a six gun into the tree, every bullet within a three inch circle.

“The last time I saw him was over thirty years ago here In Ogden. At that time there was a price of $50,000 reward on his head. I spoke to him on the street but he did not turn around. He said quietly to meet him in the Broom hotel and I went to his room and had a long talk with him. He never was much of a hand to drink and used less liquor than the average.

“The last year I was in Wyoming there were fourteen men and one woman hanged and one boy poisoned within 60 miles of where I was working on the Sweetwater. The woman was ‘Cattle Kate.’ She and her husband, Jim Averill, were killed because the big cattle companies resented their settling on certain springs for their homestead. The boy who witnessed their killing was poisoned a little later. Angered men on several ranches formed a vigilante committee and shook dice to see who would kill the perpetrator. The man who won the toss had to bring back both ears of the accused murderer. Later on he did and they were the correct ears because they could be identified by a horsebite on one and a knife slit in the other.

“While I was on the range with Butch we used to winter at Horse Creek or up in Bates Hole, near Casper.

“I have crossed the plains 13 times on horseback and six of those times were the long way from Montana down to New Mexico. I have slept out on the prairie night after night and lived on what I could catch or shoot. I always ate my meat raw. Once I was so hungry I ate the better portion of seven raw jackrabbits. To this day I enjoy raw meat and am fond of raw calf liver.

“I have driven cows from Oklahoma to Montana and several times took a hundred horses alone from Umatilla, Oregon to Omaha.

“I have used chewing tobacco since I was four years old and I think it is a panacea for all ills, besides soothing the nerves, disinfecting the mouth, calming the temper, and purifying the blood. I have never had an ache or pain in my life, and recently my wife and I climbed Mount Ogden, 9,950 feet altitude, to celebrate climbing it 40 years ago.

“In 1894 I married Jane A. Wilson, a daughter of C. C. Wilson, pioneer who crossed the plains with the first settlers of Utah.

“I spent about a year travelling over the country with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. In 1889 I came to Ogden to ride in a big carnival but they refused to let me compete so I turned to carpentry.”

From “Frontier and Midland” – Autumn 1936