To each and every person comes wishes that you have enjoyed your holiday celebrations and are looking forward for the best of New Years to come.
As those who have read what I write or as MAP artists discover, I believe trails from the past surround us, waiting quietly for the connections we may make. In this case, neither CM Russell nor his watercolor, “Waiting for a Chinook: The Last of 5,000” guided my photography. But the photo did remind me of a story from an earlier time.
About 135 years ago, a storm, similar to the one that just swept the country, but more severe, hit Montana, changing the state and the Northern Great Plains. In both storms, Montanans experienced snow and temperatures with daytime highs around -25 (below zero, not wind chill), and lows down to -40 degrees. However, two cows, that storms really are the connector.
That 1886-1887 storm blew into Montana during November and lasted through February. Besides the on-going deepfreeze, the storm dumped snow, in one wave alone sixteen inches of snow in as many hours. New snow fell and drifted over the old snow drifts that had melted just enough to refreeze into a hard, impenetrable crusts that cattle couldn’t break through.
“The Golden Age of the Open Range” ruled from 1865 – 1890. Those fussy about dates may argue when the timeframe began, but usually the Civil War’s end in 1865 with the opening of the Chisholm Trail have become markers for its beginning. The storm of 1886-1887 serves as a marker of the period’s end, but use 1890 with the country’s railroading boom, the displacement of tribal peoples, and the fact that drastic changes often lack a clean-cut schedule.
Western cattle ranching became part of this era. It depended on itinerant cowboys who rode, moved, watched, and guarded herds of thousands of cattle on the “open” (unfenced) range.
This story also includes the Eastern and foreign investors who after the Civil War played the speculation game. Lured by reports of large profits, those investors sought ways to capitalize from a rising demand in beef from a rapidly growing national population.
These larger outfits didn’t put up hay to feed the cattle but banked on mild winters and their cattle having the “open” (unfenced) range with ample grass. Demand for beef continued to rise so the push was on to get more cattle to market. However, not understanding the complexity of raising cattle nor that parts of Montana receive less than fifteen inches of moisture a year, they failed to factor in the preceding drought year and its effect on grass.
In the winter of 1886-1887, most owners of large outfits lived out of state or in a larger Montana town. Charlie Russell worked in the Judith Basin for the large Stadler and Kaufman firm. At one point, ranch foreman Jesse Phelps received a letter from Kaufman asking how their cattle herd was weathering the winter. Charlie and the foreman discussed how to word a truthful answer. The next day Charlie used a collar box-top and created the now famous picture of one starving cow, a brindle, surrounded by wolves in a snowstorm. The foreman said, “Hell, that picture tells them the story better than I can write it” and sent it off to the owner.
What was the news that was so difficult to explain? From his shack in Judith Basin country, Charlie witnessed the die-off in which the Northern Plains lost nearly seventy-five percent of its livestock. The capital that entered the beef business for huge profits pulled out, leaving the “stickers” and those with boot-strapped capital.
When Kaufman later visited the ranch, Phelps asked him if he expected to see the brindle cow that “came around the ranch hanging behind the horse barn for protection.” Kaufman responded in the affirmative. He was correct. That cow would live in many ways.
Kaufman shared Charlie’s painting around, including to a nearby harness shop owner, Ben Roberts, who knew Russell and in whose home Russell would later be married. Kaufman saw little value in the picture and gave it to Roberts. The painting stayed in the harness shop, sometimes displayed in the window and sometimes just gathering dust.
In 1913, rancher Wallis Huidekoper bought the postcard-sized piece and had it cleaned and framed. He took it to Russell in Great Falls for the artist to sign, then donating it in 1941 to the Montana Stockgrowers Association. They still own it and have lent it to the Montana Historical Society. The postcard sealed Russell’s international fame as an artist of the West.
Track forward nearly 135 years. In 2021, we sold our herd of Highland cows that we had nurtured for 25 years. Three or four weeks after their departure, I was still teary-eyed with thoughts of our “clouty coos.” It felt like a door had closed forever. The feeling haunted….Then the unexpected happened.
This young cow in the photo emerged from the willows and trees along the Missouri River. We had missed her when shipping out the rest of the herd weeks before. The cow not only survived on her own despite the coyotes, but she bore her first calf. Protected it against the coyote patrols. Then brought that babe the two miles back to the buildings.
The sun shone a bit brighter that day. And it reminded me of something else.
The cow in the Russell painting and our straggler could be dismissed as merely sad reminders of loss. A Highland herd with our years of stewardship scattered to the wind. And Russell’s drawing of a cow standing against weather and wolves, a grim reminder of a winter that nearly crippled livestock raising on the Northern Great Plains.
But in loss lies the chance to turn the page and study its other side. Both cows represent what is passing, but each also provides a peek into a future with room for other possibilities. That cow in Russell’s drawing was in the twenty-five percent that survived. Although her “Open Range” soon disappeared, replaced by new trajectories like homesteading and inventions like the railroad and barbed wire, cattle ranching changed and survived.
And a Highland cow? She carries memories of the past. But she also reminds us of the possibilities that lie in the space ahead. New things to learn and create. New trails to shape.
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