Spring Creek Raid Exhibit

In the 1870s, in Wyoming, Texas and Colorado, sheep ranchers with their herders and “woolies” began to encroach on the open range in significant numbers. There was immediate dislike and antagonism on the part of the cattlemen and their cowboys towards the newcomers. The ensuing battles were, however, really being fought over the use of the rangeland grass and the wealth it could provide in the form of beef or mutton and wool.

The 1909 raid in Wyoming was a particularly brutal attack by cattlemen on a sheepherder’s camp. It received protracted and widespread news media coverage at the time and marked the beginning of the end of such conflicts. The cattlemen involved were tried in the local court and, for essentially the first time, convicted of major crimes. All prior such cases that made it to court were either dismissed or won by the cattlemen because of expensive legal defenses and/or sympathetic jurors.

After this raid, the battle for use of public land for grazing would continue sporadically until about 1921. During their half-century duration, cattlemen-sheepmen battles numbered more than 120 over 8 states. They caused at least 54 human deaths along with the slaughter of more than 53,000 sheep. The cowboys found a number of ways to kill the hated sheep during their raids, including “rimrocking”, i.e., driving a flock over a high cliff.

The Spring Creek Raid began in the Spring of 1909 when two sheepmen, Joe Allemand and Joe Emge, along with their three sheepherders, drove 2,500 head of sheep from Worland, Wyoming, east to Tensleep, some 25 miles distant. Allemand was well liked by both the cattlemen and the sheepmen of the area even though he ran sheep. Allemand was having some financial difficulty for some of his sheep had been lost in a couple of raids so he had sold a partnership to another Spring Creek rancher, Joe Emge. The latter, a squatty dark man, was not so well thought of. Emge had at one time been with the cattlemen but after taking over the sheep he had boasted that he’d graze his sheep any place he liked and that he’d run the cattlemen off the range.

On this April day in 1909, the two sheepmen were driving two bands of sheep across the badlands from Worland to the Spring Creek ranches. Allemand had telephoned his wife to say that he would be home that evening. Listeners over the party line hurried to inform some of Emge’s enemies that Allemand would not be in the camp that night and Emge would be alone with the herder and the camp tender. But after camp had been made with one band of sheep and a sheepwagon on each side of the creek, two brothers who lived nearby stopped to visit and eat supper and by the time they left, Allemand thought it was too late to ride on home. So Allemand and his young nephew, Jules Lazier, a French subject, and Emge went to sleep in the upper wagon. A newly hired young herder, 16 year old Bounce Helmer and another Frenchman, Pete Cafferal, were in the lower wagon.

When it grew dark the raiders struck, two headed toward the wagon with the sheepmen and the other five after the sheep. Shots were fired at the herds and Helmer, fearing for his dog sprang, half-dressed out of the other wagon. He was immediately captured by the raiders as was Cafferal and both were tied up. Helmer who had lit a lantern was able to see and recognize some of the men but Cafferal could not.

When no one came out of the upper wagon, the two men who were near it started firing into it. One of them started a fire by throwing Kerosene from Helmer’s lantern on the sage brush that had been piled under the sheepwagon to build the morning fire. As Allemand came out of the wagon he was shot and killed. The fire grew so rapidly that Emge and Lazier were trapped. When the raiders realized that they had killed the wrong man, they fled in a panic. In the meantime, Helmer and Cafferal freed themselves and ran to the neighbors for help.

It was almost noon the next day before Big Horn County sheriff, Felix Alston and Judge Percy Metz reached the scene of the raid. Joe Allemands body was lying near the smoldering embers of the sheep wagon and one of his sheep dog’s puppies was curled up on his chest. The burned bodies of Emge and Lazier were found nearby.

Seven men were eventually arrested for the crime. Albert Keys and Charles Ferris turned states evidence and told the whole story. They were jailed in Sheridan and the other five in the Basin jail. A long trial was held in the fall of 1909. Herbert Brink was found guilty of first degree murder. George Henry Saban and Milton Alexander were found guilty of second degree murder. All three were sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. Tommy Dixon, and Ed Eaton were sentenced to two years on arson charges.

The Spring Creek Raid did indeed prove to be a major turning point in the relations between cattlemen and sheepmen. However, while such conflicts continued for the following decade, the day of the gunman in Wyoming was rapidly fading.