Post contributed by AHC Audiovisual Archivist Jessica LaBozetta. In Jessica’s free time, she enjoys playing traditional folk music and bluegrass in her community.

The author would like to extend a special thanks to the wonderful librarians at the Johnson County Public Library and the Wyoming State Archive for their assistance in locating and stewarding Lonnie’s audiotapes.

Folk music has a strong tradition of oral storytelling, allowing communities to preserve and pass on stories through song. Folk songs can be educational, humorous, or entertaining, but they can also pass on darker aspects of a community’s history. The Johnson County War of 1892 is one of these tragedies, in which powerful elite cattle barons killed homesteaders in a bitter dispute. This event left its mark on the history of the American West for generations and inspired a number of folk songs under the coined term “murder ballads.”

The Johnson County War

The Johnson County War is one of the most significant range wars in the history of the American West. Following years of conflict between homesteaders and wealthy cattle barons in the Powder River Basin over land use, water rights, and livestock, the violence steadily escalated over years. On April 5, 1892, a group of 52 men rode an unmarked train to pursue, shoot, and hang settlers who were deemed to be “rustlers.” Among the men, who are often referred to as the “invaders” of the conflict, were affluent members of the exceptionally powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Contracted by the cattlemen, hired arms from Texas also joined the force.

One of the leaders of the invasion, former Johnson County sheriff Frank Canton, named 70 alleged rustlers for the invaders to eliminate. Among the men named by Frank Canton and the invaders was rancher Nathan D. Champion, who was falsely accused by the members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association of being a rustler. Having gained a reputation for advocating for the grazing rights of homesteaders, Champion was the first settler targeted by the invaders. In fact, in November of 1891, there was a failed attempt to assassinate Champion, leading to additional tension and bloodshed between the wealthy cattlemen and small-time ranchers.

The pursuit of Champion led to a bloody showdown at the KC Ranch in 1892, where Champion was hiding alongside three other cowboys, including Nick Ray. During the siege, Champion kept a journal, in which he detailed the ensuing shootout. By 9:00 a.m., Ray had been killed by the invaders. Champion successfully held off the invasion for several hours, but was gunned down by the invaders before nightfall.

In Champion’s final journal entries, he says, “Well, they have just gotten through shelling the house like hail. I heard them splitting wood. I guess they are going to fire the house to-night. I think I will make a break when Night comes, if alive. Shooting again. I think they will fire the house this time. It’s not night yet. The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.” After fleeing the house, which had been set aflame by the invaders, Champion was shot. Some accounts say he fled the burning house barefoot, attempting to defend himself from the gunfire.

Following Champion’s death, the invaders moved northward to the town of Buffalo, and the invaders reconvened at the TA Ranch to hide from authorities. Meanwhile, Sheriff William “Red” Angus assembled a posse of over 200 men to apprehend the invaders at the TA Ranch, resulting in another standoff. This standoff lasted for days, leading Governor Amos W. Barber to send a telegraph to President Benjamin Harrison, reading “An insurrection exists in Johnson County, in the state of Wyoming… I apply to you on behalf of the state of Wyoming to direct the United States troops at Fort McKinney to assist in suppressing the insurrection.” It was not until the president called the U.S. Cavalry to the TA Ranch that the standoff ended.

Ultimately, the members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association were never convicted for the murder of Nate Champion, but the event left Champion immortalized as a hero who represented the rights of the working class against adversity.

Folk Music as Storytelling

Definitions for folk music in the traditional sense of the term vary widely, but generally, folk music is music that is passed down through generations through oral storytelling tradition. In traditional folk music, a song is a structured piece of music with lyrics that are set to a melody, whereas a tune is the melody around which a song is structured. 

It is commonplace in folk music that new words be set to a traditional tune that would be familiar to many audiences, which is a longstanding, global tradition not isolated to American folk music. Many traditional tunes found in American folk music are borrowed from Irish and Scottish folk music. Employing familiar tunes for new songs facilitated the oral history tradition of folk music, as setting lyrics to a melody recognized by one’s audience allowed songs to spread throughout communities with greater ease for their performers. An excellent example of this is the tune of the traditional Irish ballad titled “The Bard of Armagh,” which was later adapted with new lyrics to the cowboy ballad “The Streets of Laredo.”

Most folk music was not recorded in fixed formats like sheet music until the advent of audio recordings. Instead, folk music was often shared in communal gathering spaces, and musicians often learned this music entirely by ear. Common ways that folk music was shared across communities were through labor, celebrations, and community forums. Because of the nature of folk music being largely passed through oral storytelling, regional variants of folk music were commonplace in the lyrics and in some cases, aspects of the tune. In fact, it is not uncommon for traditional folk music to have multiple entirely differing sets of lyrics depending on the regional variant most dominant within a community. It was not until audio recordings and personal radios became more accessible to the average consumer that lyrics to traditional folk music became more fixed.

Murder Ballads

Murder ballads comprise an important but oft-underrepresented subgenre of traditional folk music for modern folkway recordings and picking circles. Murder ballads are characterized by their narrative structure that details the events of a murder and its immediate aftermath. Murder ballads originated in in traditional folk music in Europe, with notable examples being the Irish ballad titled “The Wexford Girl” and the Scottish children’s ballad “Edward.”

With vivid, sometime gruesome, descriptions, murder ballads are occasionally written from the perspective of the murderer, as is the case with the Appalachian ballad “Down in the Willow Garden.” However, far more commonplace is the murder ballad written from the third-person perspective of an unnamed narrator. This perspective allowed working class communities with strong folk music traditions to utilize the device of the murder ballad not only as a storytelling tool, but also as a way to provide a voice for marginalized communities, allowing them to critique corruption and injustice.

While murder ballads were popular storytelling devices of Appalachian folk music, folk traditions in the American West frequently adapted the murder ballad as an opportunity to spread news of current events in the region. As folk music was typically passed to listeners amongst poor and working-class communities, the mythologization of folk heroes is commonplace, seen in ballads like those written to commemorate outlaw Jesse James. Because of this, American murder ballads have not only become ubiquitous with the American West, but have served as a constantly evolving primary source that preserves the memory of those revered by the working class.

“The Blood-Stained Book”

While the U.S. Army was able to end the standoff at the TA Ranch, the conflict in Johnson County between the cattlemen and the homesteaders was far from over. Homesteaders were outraged by the killing of Nate Champion, Nick Ray, and other small ranchers by the invaders and called for justice. One newspaper clipping in the scrapbooks of Joseph M. Carey reports that “The feeling stirred up by the killing of Champion and Ray is exceedingly bitter, and as soon as the soldiers are taken away hostilities will likely be resumed.”

Prior to the conflict, public sentiment tended to favor the cattlemen over the so-called rustlers, but following the murder of Champion, sympathy shifted to the settlers instead. A letter to the editor of the Christian Union reads “The Wyoming Affair is no longer an affair of simply local importance. It is only another form of the great question now asked by all thinking people in Europe and America: ‘Is money the greatest power in the world?’’ Another letter to the editor of a Wyoming newspaper begs the question about the treatment of the working class, arguing that the wealthy cattle barons had “exhausted all legal measures to crush poor farmers and small stock men of Johnson County, and having done them all the injury that unlimited money could procure, have now added assassinations to their previous crimes.”

What may have assisted in turning the tide of public opinion was the widespread publication of Champion’s journal in newspapers across the country, sensationalizing the event further. One article reads that on Champion’s person “was a diary soaked with his heart’s blood, through the center of which a bullet had torn its resistless way.”

Several murder ballads originated in Wyoming regarding the Johnson County War. In line with the tradition of other murder ballads, the words of “The Blood-Stained Book,” which also goes by the titles “The Ballad of Nate Champion” and “The Blood-Stained Diary,” are sympathetic to the plight of members of the working class perceived as being mistreated by those in positions of power. What sets “The Blood-Stained Book” apart from its contemporaries in the sub-genre of murder ballads, however, is that it is written from the perspective of Nate Champion himself. While murder ballads are at times written from a first-person perspective, this perspective is typically either from that of the murderer or an unnamed, first-person narrator who serves as a witness to the events. Borrowing quotes from his journal of the events in its narrative structure, the ballad recounts a vivid description of the conflict through the eyes of the victim, which is an uncommon practice in traditional murder ballads.

It’s just a little blood-stained book, which a bullet had torn in two;
It tells the fate of Nick and Nate, which is known to all of you;
He had the nerve to write it down, while the bullets fell like rain,
At your request, I’ll do my best to repeat those lines again.

“Two men stayed with us here last night, Bill Jones and another man,
They went to the river and took a pail, and will come back if they can;
I told old Nick not to look out, there may be someone near,
He opened the door, was shot to the floor, he’ll never live, I fear.

Two hours since the shots began, the bullets fly thick as hail,
Must wait on Nick, he’s awful sick, he’s still alive, but pale;
At stable, river, and back of me, the men are sending lead,
I cannot get a shot to hit, it’s nine and Nick is dead.

Down at the stable, I see a smoke, I guess they’ll burn the hay,
From what I’ve seen they do not mean for me to get away;
It’s nearly noon, I see a rope thrown in and out the door,
I wish that duck would show his pluck, he’d use his gun no more.

I don’t know what has become of the boys that stayed with us last night,
If I had just two boys with me, we’d guard the cabin right;
I’m lonesome, boys, it’s two o’clock, two men just came in view,
And riding fast as they went past were shot at by the crew.

I shot a man down in the barn, don’t know if I hit him or not,
Must look again, I see someone, it looks like there’s a blot;
I hope they did not get those men that across the bridge did run,
If I had a pair of glasses here, I think I’d know someone.

They’re just through shelling the house, I hear the splintering wood,
I guess they’ll light the house tonight, and burn me up for good;
I’ll have to leave when night comes on, they’ll burn me if I stay,
I guess I’ll make a running break and try to get away.

They shot another volley in, to burn me is their game,
And as I write, it’s not yet night, and the house is all aflame;
So goodbye boys, if I get shot, I’ve got to make a run,
So on this leaf, I’ll sign my name: Nathan D. Champion.”

The light is out, the curtain drawn, the last sad act is played,
You know the fate that met poor Nate, and of the run he made;
And now across the big divide, and at the home ranch door,
I know he’ll meet and warmly greet the boys who went before.

Transcribed from the audiotapes of Daniel L. “Lonnie” Devoe, 1985. Courtesy of the Wyoming State Archives, Wyoming Oral History collection, oral history 1164.

In Olive Woolley Burt’s 1965 book, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories, Burt recounts that during her years teaching high school in Star Valley, Wyoming, “The Blood-Stained Book” was a song relayed to her by a student named Leland White. “The Blood-Stained Book” is also analyzed in the Maragaret S. Plumb papers as part of her 1968 dissertation, Folksongs of Wyoming. In her dissertation, Plumb credits her source of the lyrics for “The Blood-Stained Book” to Buffalo, Wyoming resident Burton S. Hill. In a letter dated January 26, 1965, Burton S. Hill states that “The Blood-Stained Book” was popular folk song throughout Johnson County, but only for those “who considered themselves far removed from anything which pertained to the Cattle Baron.” Interestingly, Plumb notes that the lyrics were submitted by other contributors in Goshen County, Platte County, Laramie County, and Uinta County with “practically no variation in words.”

At the time that Plumb’s dissertation was published, the original tune that the “The Blood-Stained Book” was sung to was largely considered to be lost to time. In the same letter referenced above, Hill remarked to Margaret Plumb that he believed that the song “has no particular music, but any tune that fits the words.” The same musical annotation for the tune used in Plumb’s thesis was reproduced for the first time in print in Burt’s volume, but it was noted that the tune was unlikely to be the original sung by settlers in the 1890’s. However, in Ariel Downing’s 1997 dissertation Let ‘Er Buck: Music in Cowboy Culture of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming, Downing credits a folkway recording by Daniel L. “Lonnie” Devoe of Johnson County, Wyoming for her research.

The recording, now present in the Wyoming State Archive’s Oral History Collection, is a mournful ballad with a remarkably different melody than that sung to Burt during her days as a schoolteacher and later reproduced by Plumb. This demonstrates the ever-changing quality and exceptional adaptability of folk music as a historical record.  

Conclusion

The funeral of Nicholas Ray and Nathan Champion was so filled with mourners that men stood in the streets as ladies in mourning garb gathered inside. The reverend presiding the funeral delivered in his address, “These men have been sent to eternity. We know not why. They were not criminals.” Because the telegraph lines were cut by the cattlemen in preparation for the invasion, Ray’s family was unable to be informed of his death in time to attend his service. Undoubtedly a tragedy that deeply affected the community of Johnson County for generations, the death of Nick and Nate is immortalized in ballad through “The Blood-Stained Book.”

Sources:

Burt, O. W. (1958). American murder ballads and their stories. Oxford University Press.

Downing, A. A. (1997). Let ’er buck!: Music in cowboy culture of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming. Dissertation (Ph.D.) –University of Colorado, 1997.

Downing, A. A. (1998). Music as Artifact: The Johnson County War Ballads. The American Music Research Center Journal, 8, 35.

Plumb, M. L. (1965). Folksongs in Wyoming. Dissertation (Ph.D)–University of Wyoming, 1965.