Death's Roundup

Spring, 1887. A swift torrent of death washes down the Little Missouri River country of the northern Plains. It churns along without mercy, choked with ice and the broken bodies of cattle beyond number taken by a vicious winter. And ends a brief way of life forever tied to the saga of the American West.

As buffalo disappeared from the boundless landscape of the Great Plains in the late 1870s, their cousins filled the vacuum. American settlers brought vast herds of cattle to the unfenced open range. The first half of the 1880s resembled a gold rush on the Plains. But as with most booms, disaster loomed on the long, low horizon.

The winter of 1885-86 had already devastated the southern Plains, courtesy of a January blizzard, but optimism prevailed. Throughout the short-lived years of the new open range, most winters had been mild, especially in the north. The winter of ‘86-‘87 bore down with a vengeance for the soft years of plenty.

In the fall, dark portents of early bird migrations and beaver wood-stockpiling followed a dry and fiery summer. Thin cattle met an early winter when a brutal blizzard blew down over the Plains in November. Then another one came; and another. Relentless.

Temperatures remained below zero for extended periods. Cattle sought shelter in the draws of streams and creeks, where the snow drifts were deepest. The conditions made it difficult for the ranchers to even know if any of their herd survived. In the spring, they ventured out to survey the damage. An apocalyptic scene greeted them. Lincoln Lang, a cattleman in the Dakota Territory, described it:

“For days on end tearing down with the grinding ice cakes went Death’s cattle roundup of the upper Little Missouri country. In countless valleys, gulches, washouts and coulees, the animals had vainly sought shelter from the relentless Northern Furies on their trail. Now, their carcasses were being spewed forth in untold thousands by the rushing waters, to be carried away on the crest of the foaming, turgid flood rushing down the valley. With them went our hopes.”

Most ranchers lost between 50 and 90 percent of their herds. Many panic-sold the survivors later in the year. The Plains recovered quickly, but the open range never returned. Cattle ranching was forced to become “more a business, less a gamble”. Fences proliferated, laws materialized, railroads appeared, farms broke out, and the open range became legend. Death’s Roundup left scars, visible and otherwise, across the entire breadth of the American Ghost Coast.

As the rivers of death wound their course in the spring of 1887, they carried away the bodies of innumerable animals, the dreams of a generation, and the last visage of an unbroken landscape.

Charles M. Russell, Waiting For A Chinook (The Last of the 5,000)

The legendary western artist worked on a ranch in the Judith Basin of Montana during the winter of 1886-87 and sent this drawing in response to the absentee owners' inquiry about the conditions out there.