The Early Cowboys
Bilious McDaniel and Johnny Hutchinson, early cowboys
10/14/20265 min read
Bilious McDaniel
Southeast Idaho's Cattle Era didn't last long, its heyday from the mid 1870s starting to shrink steadily just a decade later when irrigation projects started to bite away at free public grazing. The cattlemen still held state power in 1880 when the settlers' first barbed wire fences faced regulation on behalf of their interests, a bill to protect cattle from the unfamiliar wire being introduced in the Idaho legislature. Utah already forced fencers to use a board in their fence, raised three to four feet off the ground, or a top wire with visible chunks of steel or wood so cattle, unfamiliar with the technology, could recognize the barrier. But by 1910, political and economic power had shifted, fences winning when open range laws were placed in the books to protected farmers from free-ranging cows, not cows from farms and fences. Most of the best range near the Snake River's waters was out of the cattlemen's reach and they moved their bases to the desert or mountains.
The cattle industry required a great many hands to move the herds and watch for predators—both animal and man. That job being filled with slack periods of time and the laborers being mostly single men combined to make a rich night life in local towns. A host of cowboys haunted the Blackfoot saloons, including Pete Hunt, Roughie Howell, Bilious McDaniel, High Cherry, Johnny Reed and Johnny Hutchison, among others.
These cowboys made the rounds between different cattle outfits, working variously for the Keough Brothers, the Warbonnet, William Burke, and other big companies. Of those named, it's hard to say who had the most illustrious appearances in Blackfoot, but Johnny Reed's horse race with his boss William Burke's son Frank may qualify as one of the most dramatic. In August of 1907, they were in Blackfoot proper getting ready to round up a herd when Reed spontaneously challenged Burke to a race to the stockyards north of town. According to the newspaper report Reed held his hat "over the eyes of Frank's horse for a few rods," causing Reed to lose his balance and grasp for support that wasn't there. He "fell between the horses, lighting on his head and shoulders, fracturing his skull and expiring immediately." Reed was fifty-two years old and had two daughters living in American Falls.
Bilious McDaniel epic escapades, at least as related by others, are too numerous to detail so his fame extended further—is somewhat immortalized, in fact, a Reservation Creek named after him on the map. It's hard to say which Bilious stories are true and which are embellished, but he did shoot out the headlight of one of the earliest locomotives arriving in Blackfoot, the act earning him a fine equivalent to a thousand dollars today. Like most hellions, he settled down in later life, staking a land claim on the Tilden flats near Sterling.
Roughy Howell, like McDaniel, later mellowed his ways from the early Blackfoot gatherings, spending winters in California in the 1920s to avoid the harsh Idaho winters."The Rock Saloon was their favorite place of holding out, and they used to tie to the racks across the street by the Montgomery building," according to a 1922 Idaho Republican story on Roughy, who had stopped in Blackfoot and was hoping for a reunion of sorts. "Roughie used to sleep there among the saddle horses while the boys gave the town a once over." Roughy was but a boy in the 1880s, running with the pack of older men. When they were coming into Blackfoot from the west to go "on a tear" they ran their horses across the toll bridge just to see what the keeper would do. The last one to reach town proper had to stay with the horses. It was a long time before Roughy rode fast enough to not suffer that ignominious fate. He worked eighteen years for Henry Dunn, a "good many years" with the Keoughs, the War Bonnet, and the High and Stout, and had been with the Chesterfield Cattle Company since 1915 when the newspaper story appeared.
Johnny Hutchison's exploits, though, outdid those of his companions. In 1888 at Blackfoot's Mester and McCracken Saloon, he ran into his brother James, who he had been avoiding for a year due to some lingering financial disagreements—the dispersal of loot from one of their robberies. James had told John he would kill him the next time he saw him, which turned out to be at Mester and McCracken's. "Jim shot at John, John jumped behind a table, and Jim missed him," according to Robert Graham. John didn't miss. He shot and killed his brother in self-defense, then surrendered immediately to the police. Witnesses would testify that just moments before, on that Saturday afternoon in November, he had spoken of the fraternal troubles on the street to a mutual friend. John was shot through the ear and James in the forehead over his left eye, the bullet lodging at the base of his skull. John had a two month old child at home at the time of the shooting, James' wife would give birth just a month after his death.
The brothers weren't strangers to violence. Their father William was shot and killed by a Coalville neighbor in August 1871 when John was nine and James eleven. William's second wife and he had been suffering difficulties for some time, resulting in him beating her numerous times. After one violent bout she took refuge with their infant child at John Allan's. Several days later Hutchison came and ordered him to hand her over but Allan refused. Hutchison attacked him, Allan grabbed his pistol from a window frame and shot at him twice, the second bullet hitting Hutchinson on his left side, passing through his body to his right and killing him. Prior to the shooting, the men had been on good terms, Allan helping Hutchison with work and to buy a farm.
The boys, children of Hutchison's first wife who died in 1864, lived in Park City after their father's death, according to Robert Graham, a son-in-law of Hutchison. They boarded with several different families, one of them having a cruel patriarch that James vowed to take revenge upon—he did, attacking him while he was mowing hay and nearly beating him to death. The brothers, according to Graham, found further trouble by participating in several robberies and even robbing a train.
Hutchison, like his cohorts, settled down somewhat, and by 1906 he was foreman for the Burke Cattle Company. He had already worked for Taylor and Tinton in Cassia County, starting at age seventeen in 1879. He then went to work for the High and Stout cattle operation, where he stayed for five years. He had married Kate Dolsen in 1887, a year before shooting his brother, and together they had six children by 1907. Hutchison served briefly as a lawman, too, it not being so uncommon for an 'outlaw' switch sides of the law. In 1891 he was deputy sheriff for Blackfoot's Sheriff Woodin.
Hutchison, in his years on the range, had trailed horses to the eastern markets twice and cattle four times, and later rode the rails eastward with company livestock several times, too. He served as school trustee and as director of the Trego ditch. Reportedly, he spoke Shoshone, so often performed as translator between whites and Natives. Hutchison, like Bilious McDaniel, would file on land on the Tilden bottoms below Sterling, and when the American Falls dam was built, both acreages were inundated by the reservoir—a fiction writer couldn't make a clearer metaphor to illustrate the era of agriculture overtaking the Age of Cattlemen.
Some of this post's information, and both photos, came from family accounts on Ancestry.com.
