IMPORTANT PUBLISHED VIEW OF NATE CHAMPION, KEY FIGURE OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR

Outdoor view of Nate and Dudley Champion with companions on horseback near a chuckwagon. Albumen boudoir card. Central City, Colorado and Cheyenne, Wyoming: Charles Weitfle, circa 1880s. Weitfle's illustrated imprint and advertisement to mount verso. 

A rare and important view of Wyoming rancher Nate Champion (1847-1892), one of the key figures of the Johnson County War, and to many, an unsung hero of the American West. 

Stopping for a chuckwagon dinner, Champion is captured on horseback, second from the left. Along with two unidentified figures, his brother, Dudley Champion, is pictured astride the brown horse at far right. 

One of 17 siblings in a Texas family, Nate Champion worked as a cowboy and made his way to Wyoming territory, working on several ranches before acquiring his own land. In the late territorial period and early statehood, most of the land in Wyoming was public domain, open to free-range stockraising and homesteading. Precipitated by the harsh, ravaging winter of 1886-7, a rivalry between wealthy cattle ranchers and small independent homesteaders emerged.

Champion was one of these ranchers with small holdings who became one of the most outspoken homesteaders, opposing the cattle barons of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA). Branded a rustler by the WSGA, he was targeted by a band of hitmen, narrowly escaping death on 1 November 1891. Violence further escalated when the WSGA hired a posse of 50 Texans to eliminate the so-called "rustlers" in Johnson County. 

In April 1892, the vigilantes trapped Nate in his cabin, and laid seige for several hours. While attempting to fend them off, Champion kept a diary, his last entry reading: "Well, they have just got through shelling the house like hail. I heard them splitting wood. I guess they are going to fire the house tonight. I think I will make a break when night comes, if alive. Shooting again. It's not night yet. The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again." (c.f. Davis). 

Once the cabin was alight, Champion made a run, armed with a Colt revolver and Winchester rifle. He was gunned down by four assailants, hit by 28 bullets. 

The outrage was immediate, with counter-vigilantes organizing to pursue the Texas invaders. The acting Governor Amos W. Barber and President Benjamin Harrison intervened, deploying the 6th Cavalry from Fort McKinney. 

In the continuing violence, Nate's brother, Dudley, also pictured here, was also killed, shot on 24 May 1893. He is credited as the last person killed in the Johnson County War. 

Views of Nate Champion are highly desirable and extremely scarce. A keystone acquisition for any advanced Western collection. 

References

Paul Trachtman. The Gunfighters. Time Life Books, 1981, p.217.

True West Magazine. June 2016, p. 23. 

John W. Davis. Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. 

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