Long time listeners of The Oldest Profession Podcast will know that sex workers played a big part in settling the American West. Sex workers were entrepreneurs, property owners, and philanthropists who shaped the “wild west” into what we know today. But although women were able to exert an unprecedented amount of independence during this time period, the stigma against sex workers was still used to bully and defame independent women whether they engaged in the trade or not. Cattle Kate’s story shows how rich ranchers used whorephobia to get away with lynching an innocent woman.
Ellen “Ella” Watson was born in 1860, the eldest of ten children. In 1877 she married a farm laborer named William Pickerell, who ended up being physically and verbally abusive. Her biographers note that Pickerell often beat Ella with a horsewhip. Ella tried to leave her husband and return home to her parents, but her father chased her away. She eventually divorced Pickerell and made her way to Wyoming.
During this time it was not easy for women to make a living outside of sex work, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ella ever spent time in a brothel or even entertained a gentlemen outside of the men she married. In 1886, she met James Averell, a homesteader who operated a restaurant and store for westbound travelers along the Sweetwater River. He hired Ella as a cook and waitress before the pair married later that year.
In 1888 she filed her claim to property under the Homestead Act of 1862 and built a cabin on her land. Ella continued to work as a seamstress, mending clothing for traveling cowboys. She purchased cattle from travelers along the trails, but her small farm wasn’t large enough for her small herd to graze.
In 1872 a group of the wealthiest ranchers in the area organized to create the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) to control land ownership and claim unbranded cattle in the area. Ranchers, including Ella and James, were required to file for a brand to claim cattle they purchased. Each time they filed, the WSGA denied their claim.
In 1889 Ella and James Averell received several offers to purchase their property from other land surveyors and ranchers, particularly Albert Bothwell. They rejected every inquiry to sell, which angered Bothwell and other ranchers. Historians argue that these ranchers may have plotted for months about how to remove James and Ella from their land.
On July 20, 1889, six men rode to Ella’s cabin, destroyed her fence, and forced her into a buggy. They also kidnapped James and took the pair to Independence Rock where they were lynched for allegedly stealing unbranded cattle.
The men responsible for the murder immediately circulated the rumor that this was not a happily married couple, but that Ella was a notorious prostitute named “Cattle Kate'' and that James was her “pimp.” This is the story that was printed in papers across the country. The six men were never prosecuted for their crimes and historians have argued that the lack of justice in this case was because of the stigma against sex workers.
Why the moniker “Cattle Kate”? Ella Watson never used this name, but false stories of her as a sex worker combined with the accusations of cattle rustling created the image. Newspapers conflated her identity with a notorious and fictional sex worker named Kate Maxwell and branded her a sharp shooter with a masculine physique who took pride in horse whipping cowboys.
In reality, Ella was simply an independent and industrious woman seeking to create a life of her own on the frontier. But like so many women before and after her, Ella got in the way of some powerful men in town, and all it took to justify this murder was to call her a “whore.”
