Everything Old is New Again. Yeoman's laws of History and Behavior and the U.S. Military Sidearm.

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Yeoman's Second Law of History.  Everything last occurred more recently than you suppose.

Here too, it doesn't matter what the topic is, it happened much more recently than you think it did.  Almost everything and every behavior is really durable, if it had any purpose in the first place.

For example, last bayonet charge?  Are you thinking World War One?  Nope, the British did one in Iraq.  Small unit, but none the less they did it.  And in the Second Gulf War.  Last cavalry charge?  Civil War?  No again, they've happened as recently as the current war in Afghanistan.  Last use of horse mounted troops?  Well. . . we aren't there.  It's still going on.  We're never as far from what we think is the distant past as we imagine.

From Yeoman's Laws of History.

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 Soldiers training with M1911 .45 ACP pistols during World War Two.

This past week, the U.S. Army announced that it is giving up on an effort to replace the M9 pistol it adopted in 1985 (basically because Congress forced it to) with another 9mm pistol.  It wants a pistol that shoots a larger cartridge.  Something in the .40 to .45 range.

The pistol that never really left.  A Greek soldier coaches a Polish soldier in the shooting of the M1911 handgun.  How exactly a scene like this comes about, I don't know, but the M1911 kept on keeping on in the hands of soldiers who really needed an effective handgun.

Instruction on the M9, the Army's current (well, one of the current) handguns, taking place in Afghanistan.

People who follow such things will recall that the U.S. Army had been using the .45 ACP cartridge and the M1911 pistol since 1911.  The Army never saw any reason to replace either, but Congress did and ultimately the Army was forced into adopting the 9mm cartridge, which was the NATO pistol standard.  The Army ended up adopting a Beretta pattern of pistol as the M9, and has been using it ever since, sort of.

Truth be known, just as with the 5.56 cartridge and the M16, there were those in the Army who were never very happy with the change, and ongoing criticism went on for a long time.  There were always efforts to paint a happy picture on the pistol situation, in spite of persistent rumors of the cartridge being inadequate and the M9 having problems, but they were basically officially denied.  Then wars happened.

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Yeoman's Thirteenth Law of Human Behavior:  The measure of the utility of something is how well it accomplishes a task, not how new it is.  Nonetheless, people tend to go with the new, even if less useful.

People tend to believe that they adopt new technology or implements because they are better or more efficient than what came before them.  Very often they are. But they aren't always.  Nonetheless, the new tends to supplant the old, simply because its new.

There are plenty of examples of this.  Some old tools and old methods accomplish any one job better than things that came after them, and some things remain particularly useful within certain condition or niches.  Nonetheless, it takes educating a person to that to keep those older things in use, because they are, well. . . older.

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For reasons that are a bit of a historical oddity, the U.S. Army has always been pistol heavy compared to other armies, and so unlike many other armies, the Army's pistol actually ends up being used in combat.  Given that, the .45 ACP began to creep back into use for special troops in the service, followed by the M1911.  Recently, the Marine Corps simply gave up on the 9mm M9 and readopted a new version of the M1911 for combat troops. The Army now appears set to do so, and in fact has been issuing variants of the M1911 to special troops for some time.  The Navy too has been issuing a .45 ACP pistol, although it's not a M1911, when conditions require it.  This follows the interesting story of the service's 7.62 NATO M14 rifle creeping back into use after decades of denying it was more effective than the 5.56 M16, although there's no indication that the M14 will replace the M4/M16, and I am sure it will not. The M1911 .45 ACP pistol may very well end up replacing the M9 and the 9mm completely. At least some big cartridge pistol will.  This basically proves the critics of the M9 and the 9mm to have been right all along.

 

U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.  All of the firearms that can be seen in this photograph are M16A1 rifles, a rifle that came into service due to being first adopted by the USAF for service (as the M16) in Vietnam.  The rifle supplanted the M14 over the objection of Springfield Armory, which ended up ceasing to exist in the process.  In spite of repeated efforts to fix various problems associated with it, which has resulted in the rifle remaining in service to this day, there have always been grumblings about it.



U.S. soldier of the 1st Infantry Division in Afghanistan, with an updated version of the M14 rifle.  Like the M1911, the M14 never really left the services, as it carried on in the hands of special troops before coming roaring back into service due to the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's sort of an interesting story in context of the lessons of history.  The Army has played out this story before.

The U.S. Army went big into sidearms during the frontier era, when effective revolvers first became available.  Revolvers ended up being issued to every single cavalryman by the mid 19th Century, which was not the case for most armies, which relied much more on sabers and perhaps a long arm of some sort.  American cavalrymen, by the post Civil War frontier era, were all provided with a carbine, a saber and a sidearm.  In the field, sabers were often omitted.  Because of this, sidearms were regarded as a serious combat arm by the American military, and in spite of efforts to change that over the years, this remains the case.  American troops carry sidearms to an unusual degree.

In the mid 19th Century, cap and ball service revolvers were generally .36 or .44, with .44s being the more common issue arm in the U.S. Army (and also in the Confederate army).  .36s were used, but they were not used as much as .44s.  The .44 "Dragoon" revolver had come in the prior two decades, and it remained the standard up until 1873, at which point the Army adopted the M1873 Colt revolver in a .45 cartridge.  Why the change from .44 to .45 I don't know, as there was already a big .44 cartridge available, but that brought in the .45.  

Civil War Union Cavalryman with Colt 1860 model revolver.  This cap and ball revolver was the last of the series of successful cap and ball Colts.

The .45 as the service caliber remained in use for decades but in the late 19th Century an effort was made to replace it with a .38 cartridge and a new, double action, revolver was adopted.  It was used, along with old stocks of .45 revolvers, in the Spanish American War, but it was a failure in the Philippine Insurrection and .45 revolvers were reissued and a new one adopted.

 The 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry on the San Juan Heights. Theodore Roosevelt carried, and used, a .38 Colt revolver that had been recovered from the USS Maine in the action.

Sound sort of familiar?

Finally, a brand new .45 cartridge and a new automatic pistol were adopted in 1911. That pistol and cartridge carried right on until 1985, and it appears set to come back on it.  History repeating itself.

  

American soldiers in France with captured German 9mm P08s. The 9mm cartridge is actually a little older than the .45 ACP.

This is an interesting story, to followers of things of this type, as it shows the "history repeating itself maxim, and it's a story the US has actually lived through more than one.  The US military had a .45 sidearm and started to replace it with a lighter .38, but that failed, and the US went back to the .45.  Later in the 1980s, the US again replaced the .45 with a lighter cartridge, this time the 9mm. Granted, politics and pressure were involved with it, and an aspect of it was the adjustment of the service to increased numbers of women combined with the erroneous belief that women couldn't handle the bigger handgun.  It's not really a simple story. Yet here again, the 9mm is set to be replaced, apparently, with a .45 again.

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Yeoman's First Law of History.  Everything first happened longer ago than you suspect.

It doesn't matter what the topic is, but the first occurrence of anything is always further back in time than originally thought.  This is why certain distant dates are continually pushed back, and will continue to be. So, take whatever you like, say the first use of the horse, or the first appearance of humans in North America, and you'll find the "first" date gets more and more distant in time.  Things that were thought to happen, say, 5,000 years ago, turn out to have happened 50,000 years ago, or 500,000 years ago, as we gain better data.

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We've done that with rifles too, actually.  At the turn of the century, when smokeless powder weapons were coming in, the .45-70 single shot "Trapdoor" Springfield was replaced by the .30-40 Krag in the Army.  In the Navy and Marine Corps, however, the .45-70 was replaced by the 6mm Navy Lee, which proved too light and was soon thereafter replaced itself.  

U.S. Marines on board the USS Wyoming, equipped with Navy Lees.

Ultimately, the .30 became universal in the US military until the 5.56 came in, but then the .30 started coming back in again, with the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The point?  I suppose there really isn't one, other than that this provides an interesting way to explore the operation of some of the prime Yeoman's Laws of History and Yeoman's Law of Human Behavior.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 25 The Bannock War.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 25:

1895 Bannock Indians surround 250 settlers in Jackson Hole but are dispersed by the 9th Cavalry.  This was part of the Bannock War of 1895, which was spared by the State of Wyoming prohibiting the killing of elk for their teeth and the subsequent arrest of several Bannock hunters that year.

Bannock Indians in Jackson's Hole by Frederic Remington.

What an amazingly late Indian War.  And frankly, I wasn't even really familiar with the Bannocks being in Wyoming.

Throwback and carrying on.

This is a current advertisement:

Subject: Mule Packing Instructor (Fort Campbell, KY) (UNCLASSIFIED)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:06:05 +0000
From: Shelton, Sharene N NAF (US)

To:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO
**THIS IS A CONTRACT POSITION LOCATED AT FORT CAMPBELL KY**

We are in need of an experienced, prior service Mule Packer to instruct personnel on proper packing techniques. Looking for someone with extensive military experience as a packer. Certified is preferred but not required. Must have experience packing various weapons systems, ammunition, and movement missions. Requires extensive, proven knowledge of packing gear and practices. Highly qualified candidates will take priority.

We are a facility that offers Mule Packing Training to Soldiers as well as for Corporate Team Building. This position is on an as needed basis. Contracts vary in pay depending on what the client wants. Pay ranges from $1,000 to $8,000 weekly, possibly more. All interested candidates, please use the contact information below.

S h a y C u r e n t o n : Fort Campbell Riding Stables Clerk
Stables Coordinator: [ Volunteers | Events | Soldier Camp ]
Office: (270)798-2629 / Fax: (270)798-4157 / MWR-ODR

Neat, really.  Every now and then you see an advertisement that shows that some things really keep on keeping on.

The Post World War One Homesteads

Recently, on our companion site Holscher's Hub, I posted two photo threads about Post World War One homesteads.  Those posts are here and here.

 

People commonly think of homesteading in the 19th Century context, often having a really romantic concept of it.  What few realize is that the peak year for homesteading in the United States was 1919.

That's right, 1919.

Homesteading itself carried on until the Taylor Grazing Act ended it in 1934 in the lower 48 states.  It carried on in Alaska for longer than that, under the Federal law, and still exists under Alaska's state law, although its really a different type of homesteading than existed in the lower 48.  There were some exceptions, which I'm unclear on, that opened lands back up after World War Two, on sort of a GI Bill for the agriculturally minded type of concept, but the enthusiasm for it was apparently limited.  In Canada I think that homesteading may have continued on into the 1950s.

But it was World War One that caused the last big boom in U.S. homesteading, and it was they year immediately following the war, which was also the last year that farmers had economic parity with urban U.S. populations, that saw the greatest amount of homesteading.  And it was a homesteading boom, in some ways, that was uniquely 20th Century in character.

Truth be known, homesteading was never really viewed the way that we have viewed it in the post homesteading era.  Our modern romantic view of it is unique to the post World War Two industrial era in some ways. There's always been a strain of romanticism attached to it, to be sure, because it fit in with the Frontier character of the country that existed in the 18th and 19th Centuries. And it also tended to define, as we've forgotten in modern times, a real difference between Americans and Europeans.  American farmers, which meant most of the population, could own land and do well by it.  European farmers, which meant most of the population, often did not.  Europe became an urban center earlier than the US in part for that reason, as the landless could have a better chance of owning something of their own off the farms, and getting  a farm of your own was extremely difficult, if not impossible, in most European nations if you were not born with ownership of one.  Indeed, the desire for land fueled immigration to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and various other areas that Europeans colonized, far more than any other source.  We may imagine that immigration was mostly the tired, hungry, and downtrodden, and of course it was. But land hungry made up a big percentage of immigrants as well.

19th Century homesteading, even at the time, was seen as sort of a transitory affair, and you can find a lot of contemporary articles about farmers being the vanguards of civilization. This is particularly true of stock raising homesteaders, i.e., ranchers, who were seen as a pioneering, but temporary, force, except by themselves.  Theodore Roosevelt, himself a rancher, commented in one of his late 19th Century articles about how herds of stock inevitably gave way to the plow, comparing ranchers to Indians, which meant that even he saw his ranching activities as doomed by history.  If so, he misjudged the progress of the plow.  Even as late as the early 20th Century, however, people seriously believed that "rain follows the plow."  It doesn't.

20th Century homesteading was something else, however.  The homesteading boom  of the teens was fueled by the globalization of the grain market, and a unique but temporary boost in the market and a unique, but temporary, increase in the amount of annual rainfall.   All of these combined created the conditions which allowed for a spike in homesteading, followed by an inevitable collapse in the agricultural sector.

The unique and temporary boost in the market was caused by warfare.  The second decade of the 20th Century was one of the most violent of the 20th or the 19th Centuries, and even the horror of World War One did not occur in a vacuum.  European wars started in the teens with a series of Balkan Wars; wars limited to the Balkans and Turkey, but which presaged the international conditions which would expand past that region and into Europe in general. The Mexican Revolution broke out south of the border in 1910, and was really rolling by 1911.  But it was World War One that really strained the global agricultural system to the limit.

In the abstract, how a war could do that is sometimes difficult to understand, in our modern, overabundant, era.  But the reasons are fairly plain.  The war put millions of men into the field, in harsh conditions (the war was accompanied by unusually harsh weather in Europe) where their caloric requirements were high.  Additionally, and now much more difficult to appreciate, the war also put millions of horses into the military service with a high caloric requirement as well.  For the men, their needs were met with meat and grains, and for the horses, grains and fodder.  The requirements were vast.  And this was compounded by the fact that animal production also provided the leather and wool upon which the armies also depended.

Not only, however, were the requirements vast, but the labor to do the work was now serving in various armies. Not only did the war require a lot of agricultural production, but it required the men who were doing it, in large part, to serve in the armies.  This caused a shortage of farmers, just as there was a great need for them. And not only was there a shortage of farmers, but of farm animals as well, as agriculture remained mostly horse driven.

 War time poster encouraging the saving of wheat, based on a famous contemporary photograph of women serving as the power for an implement, in the absence of draft animals, in France.

Farm labor shortages were partially made up by pressing women into service as farmers, everywhere.  There's a very common myth that women entered the workplace during World War Two, but it simply isn't true, or even close to true (we'll address this in an upcoming post).  Women entered the factory and fields in massive numbers during World War One.  Their role in food production became a national campaign in most Allied nations, where there were official efforts to put them into the field.

American Women's Land Army poster.

U.S. poster encouraging men below the age the Army was then seeking to serve on farms.  In short order, the Army would be taking me down to 18 years of age.

The American appeal was more rustic than the Canadian one, which made a martial appeal to young men to serve on the farms, relating that service to military service.

Resources became so tight that, even though rationing was never required on a national level in the United States (at least one state rationed, however) there was also an official campaign to encourage food conservation, and even conservation of some particular foods, so that more was available to feed the troops.

Canadian wartime poster encouraging consumers to switch to other foods to save food for the armies.

The war also had the impact of physically taking millions of acres of land directly out of production.  Not everything can be produced everywhere, which is fairly obvious.  Grains remain the staple of life in modern times just as much as they did in ancient, and this is particularly true in the case of grains. Grain can be grown, and is grown, in many regions, but large scale export grain crops are not. Grain production has greatly increased since World War One, but something that may not be readily apparent is that grain growing regions have expanded as well.

During the First World War era, grains were widely grown in Europe, North America, Argentina and Russia.  Much of the European production, however, was part of a regional market.  Italy, for example, has always been a grain growing region, but we tend not to think of it as a grain exporting region (although it actually is to some extent).  Of these regions, only two remained unspoiled by the war that being Argentina and North America.  Russia, one of the worlds most significant grain producing regions (well, the Ukraine actually) was taken completely out of the picture by the disaster of the war, which was followed immediately by the Russian Civil War.

This is also true of livestock production.  Horses, a critical item for every army, were so much in demand that Europe was basically stripped of them, nearly causing the extinction of one breed, the Irish Draught.  The United Kingdom, a major horse user, had always replied on imports for military horses and had worried about the supply pre-war, and now found itself fighting with an ally that had the same concern.  The large horse producing regions of the planet, North America, Australia and, at that time, Argentina remained relatively unscathed.  This was true for beef cattle production as well.  It was less true of wool production, which was a critical fiber in the war, and the United Kingdom itself was a significant producer.

 Wartime Canadian poster appealing to economic opportunism and patriotism.

While all of this was a human disaster, it was an agricultural opportunity of unprecedented scale.  A vast demand for agricultural products was created, and in certain regions, the means to exploit it existed.  And not only did the means exist, in the United States the government was encouraging it.  The US government encouraged homesteading, particularly for grain production, as if the boom would never end. And, as the Homestead Act remained in effect, and as the weather was unusually wet and therefore farming easier than usual, a land rush was soon on.

And the boom was experienced in other areas of the agricultural sector as well.  Horse ranching went into a massive boom in the West, starting just as soon as British and French remount agents started scouring the US and Canada for horses; a need which could never be fully met, in spite of a global effort.  Soon, with the Columbus, New Mexico, raid of Pancho Villa, the U.S. Army was in that market as well, pushing off French and British agents in the US so that it could acquire the horses and mules it required for a much larger Army that was nearly completely horse powered.

 

Remount shipping point.

Thousands of Americans who had previously had no direct connection with agriculture entered the rush, so lucrative was the grain trade at first, and so little, it seemed, had to actually be done in it.  In Kansas new towns sprung up full of such entry level farmers, many of whom didn't actually live on their farms, but in the towns, a practice that is common in some regions, but in this instance reflected an urban centric way of thinking.  Soon, these thousands were joined by discharged or soon to be discharged servicemen, many thousands of whom did have practical farming experience and agricultural roots, but who had the surplus cash to start up a farm, or small ranch, for the first time.  In Wyoming, hundreds of tiny homesteads, at most 640 acres in size, were filed, which with the favorable weather and market conditions, were actually viable in spite of their tiny size.

The boom couldn't last.  It trailed into the 1920s, but by then the prices began to fall. Soon after, the rain began to stop falling. An agricultural depression hit the US far earlier than the general Great Depression did.  By the 1930s the situation was desperate, and not only had the economy turned against farmers, but the weather had as well. Finally, in the early 1930s, the government repealed the Homestead acts, and new entries stopped.  Many of the teens homestead had already been abandoned by that time, once prosperous hopeful small units, but out place both economically and, as it turned out, climatically.

 Related Posts:

When Resources were Tight.

Disappearing Homesteads.

Dugout.

The Old Homesteads.

Brunton Compass

Brunton Pocket Transit, folded for carrying.

This is a Brunton Pocket Transit.  Probably most people who know of them just think of them as the Brunton Compass.  It's an old, old design, having been first made in 1894, although the patent date on the compass references 1896.  I'd be curious to know when  they really started to be common, if we can consider a specialized instrument like this as ever having been common.

I ran across my Brunton compass recently as, for some reason, I'd taken it out of the carrier this fall in order to use it for something.  At this point, I frankly don't know what that something was, as I very rarely use it anymore.  I have a nice Garmin GPS with the topographic map software loaded into it, and I use that now, even though its a model that's now discontinued, and the last software up data makes it a little slow

Brunton Pocket Transit, opened for use in the geologists fashion.

I sure remember getting the compass, however.  It was in 1986, during my last year at the University of Wyoming, when I was a geology student. We had to buy them for our summer field course, which took us all over Albany and Carbon counties, mapping, and all the way down to New Mexico, where we did field work, as well.  At that time, having a compass of this type was an absolute necessity, and they saw 100% employment by geologists who did field work.  I'm told that at one time, graduates of the mining engineering school at the Colorado School of Mines could be identified by the short brim Stetsons they all acquired upon doing their field work (back in the sensible headgear days).  If so, graduates of any geology program anywhere could be identified by the fact that they all owned Brunton compasses.

Brunton compass opened up with mirror facing to catch the sight, in the fashion used by geologists in the field.

The reason for this wasn't fashion, it was necessity.  The compass is a precision instrument, and the official name of "transit" is accurate.  A transit is a surveying instrument, and so is a Brunton compass.  Extremely precise, the location of about anything can be accurately determined by triangulation or even just flat out using it in concert with a drawing compass (the plastic device) and a topographic map.  But we made topographic and geologic maps with them, which requires not only the compass, but more work.

Compass opened, showing the interior device for measuring angles, for determining elevation.  This one is not set, as the level clearly shows.

The reason that the compass can do this is that it not only features the typical magnetic compass feature, but it also has the ability to sight elevations with the use of an internal scale.  And when set on a Jacob's staff, a pole of a known size, distance on the ground may be measured over any sort of terrain while using that feature, with the compass attached to it, while the mapper walks over the ground.  A marvelous instrument.

My first exposure to this instrument didn't come in a geology class, however.  It came at Ft. Sill Oklahoma.  The Brunton Pocket Transit, to soldiers, is known as the artillery compass, and that's where I first learned how to use it, in basic training.

Compass set to site in the Army fashion.

I was actually surprised to learn, while a geology student, that my old friend the Brunton Compass, was used as a geologist's tool.  I just thought it was a marvelously precise Army compass.  Adapting to geology use was, therefore, very easy, even though the Army uses the sights differently.

Compass set to sight in the Army fashion.

Artillerymen used the compass as it is so much more precise than the conventional infantry compass, and artillery needs to be spotted accurately.  Even so, we never used it to the same degree of precision that geologists did.

Combined geology use and artillery use made me glad to have one, even when it turned out that I was never going to be a field geologist, that occupation having entered one of its cyclical slumps at that point in time at which I graduated from the University of Wyoming.  It's just been a field companion since then, which I used for many years when out in the sticks.

But not so much lately. As noted, I've gone to the GPS, although I was a late adapter of that technology.  Indeed, I hadn't looked at the compass for quite some time.

In looking at it, and then determining to post, I thought that it was probably a thing of the past now, but I see that this is one of those many things to which Yeoman's Second Law of History apply, they're still being made today. And they're still pretty pricey, although all in all I actually think they aren't as expensive in real terms now as they used to be.  Indeed, my recollection on this may be inaccurate, but I think the Classic model with the Aluminum body is now cheaper than the plastic cased variant shown in these photos.  It pleases me, frankly, so see that such a useful item is still in use.

I don't know if they're still in Army use or not, but I did learn the following, thanks to Gordon Rottman who sent me the text from his book on World War Two equipment:

M1 and M2 compasses with M19 carrying case This sophisticated compass was based on the William Ainsworth & Sons-made D. W. Brunton’s Pocket Transit dating back to 1894, but adopted by the Army in 1918. The M1 designation was assigned in the 1930s. The “artillery compass” combined a highly accurate surveyor’s compass with a clinometer (for measuring vertical angles and slopes), tubular horizontal level, and circular bubble plumb (vertical level). The circular level was for leveling the instrument before the azimuth values were read and the tubular level for measuring horizontal angles. There was an angle-of-site mechanism and an azimuth scale adjuster assembly making this a complex instrument requiring specialized training. It was used by artillery forward observers. It had a dustproof and moisture proof, dark OD-painted brass case (smooth or crinkled finish), squarish in shape with rounded corners, 2-3/4 x 3in and 1-1/8in thick; 5-7/8in long when  opened exclusive of the sights. A mirror was fitted inside the lid with a black sighting wire. The mirror also proved useful for shaving. There was a black folding front sight on the lid’s top edge. On the rear was a black hinged rear sight holder with a folding sight on top. The compass card was black with white markings. The M1 compass was graduated in degrees only and was phased out before the war by the M2 graduated in mils. M1s may have seen limited use. The mil scales was graduated at 20-mil intervals with 10-mil intermediate tick marks divided into 1-mil ticks. The angle of sight scale was graduated in mils in the same manner, 1200-0-1200 mils. On the compass card, north was indicated by a star and the other cardinal directions by W, S, and E. The radium-painted white end of the needle indicated north. The light brown leather M19 case had a rigid rounded pocket with a snap-secured lid and a trousers belt loop on the back. The rigid dark OD  plastic case (10543560) is post-WWII. Today it is known as the “M2 unmounted magnetic compass.” 0.5-b.

Pretty impressive.  Showing that the test of a tool is its usefulness, not its age.

Help Wanted and Yeoman's Second Law of History

From this past Sunday's Casper Star Tribune.  A couple of great, descriptive advertisments of some iconic Western jobs, which people like to imagine are a thing of the past, but which actually are not.

FARM & RANCH Livestock Worker (Open Range) , Wyoming 3 Livestock Workers (Open Range) wanted. Performs any combination of the following seasonal duties involved in the open range tending of commercial livestock to assist ranch owners. Primary responsibilities are: Attend to livestock on the open range: harness, drive and feed cattle with teams of horses; feeds and waters livestock; herds livestock to pasture for grazing; examines animals to detect diseases and injuries; assists with the vaccination of livestock by herding into corral and/or stall or manually restraining animal on the range; applies medications to cuts and bruises; sprays livestock with insecticide; assists with castration of livestock; clips identifying notches on or brands animals; may assist with irrigating, planting, cultivating, and harvesting hay. Workers must be able to ride and handle horses in a manner to assure the safety of the worker, co-workers, and livestock. Must be able to find and maintain bearings to grazing areas. Must be willing and able to occasionally live and work independently or in small groups of workers in isolated areas for extended periods of time. Attend to cow-calf pairs principally on vast rugged fall, winter, and spring ranges using horses and trained dogs to keep range cattle in designated grazing areas in accordance with federal grazing permits; assist with monitoring/maintenance of water sources, water tanks, pipelines and reservoirs to ensure movement of range cattle to adhere to grazing plans; assist with calving; may help with supplemental feeding of range livestock using trucks, tractors and related trailers; protect and care for cow-calf pairs; may assist with branding, ear notching, dehorning, castrating, vaccinating livestock; report observations of livestock to rancher concerning health and injuries and help with administration of medications; assist with gathering, sorting, weaning and shipment of range livestock; assist with movement of cow-calf pairs through chutes/corrals & onto scales during sorting & shipping process; care for horses including shoeing horses; may assist with care of small herds of sheep/goats; maintain/construct fences/corrals (metal & wood) using related equipment. May assist with irrigation of hay meadows using gravity flow, wheel and pivot; may assist with planting, maintenance and harvest of hay meadows which provide supplemental feed or forage for range livestock; may use tractors, trucks, trailers, other supplemental feeding and hay harvesting equipment, other equipment, etc. necessary for performance of above duties; may assist with maintenance of machinery and equipment; may assist with maintenance of ranch buildings. Lives in mobile camps or other housing principally on the range. On call 24 hrs./day, 7 days/week. Work tools, supplies, equipment provided w/out cost to worker. Employment for of work contract guaranteed. Transportation & subsistence expenses to worksite provided by employer, 6 months experience (exp.) in above duties req'd. & references req'd. to verify exp. ( if exp. has not been in immediate preceding 12 months, up to 2 references req'd.). Must be physically able to perform above job duties. 3 job openings; positions are temporary from 3/01/2013 12/31/2013. Wages: $1500/month plus housing provided at no cost to workers who cannot reasonably return to their permanent residence at the end of the work day. Employer: Pretty Water LLC. Location: primarily on range land south of Rock Springs, Wyoming (Sweetwater County) (Southwest Wyoming). Report or send resume to nearest Wyoming Dept. of Workforce Services office. Main office: 100 W. Midwest Ave., Casper, WY 82601 Ph: 307-233-4657. Job Order #2518282

LIVESTOCK WORKER 5 Livestock Workers wanted. Performs any combination of following seasonal duties for range production of livestock: attend to cow-calf pairs on vast ranges using horses & trained dogs to keep in designated areas; assist w/monitoring/maintenance of water sources, water tanks, pipelines & reservoirs; assist w/ calving, supplemental feeding of range livestock; protect/care for cow-calf pairs; may help w/ branding, ear notching, dehorning, castrating, vaccinating livestock; report observations of livestock concerning health/injuries & help w/ administration of medications; assist w/ gathering, sorting, weaning & shipment of range livestock; may assist w/ care of small herds of sheep/goats; maintain/construct fences/ corrals (metal/wood) using related tools; may assist w/irrigation of hay meadows using gravity flow, wheel & pivot; may assist with planting, maintenance & harvest of hay meadows; may use tractors, trucks, trailers, other supplemental feeding & hay harvesting equipment, etc. necessary to perform above duties; may assist w/ maintenance of machinery & equipment. Live in mobile camps/ housing principally on range. On call 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week. Work tools, supplies, equipment provided w/out cost to worker. Employment for of work contract guaranteed. Transportation & subsistence expenses to worksite provided by employer, 6 months experience (exp.) in above duties req'd. & references req'd. to verify exp. ( if exp. has not been in immediate preceding 12 months, up to 2 references req'd.). Must be physically able to perform above job duties, Employer: Vermillion Ranch Limited Partnership. Location: principally on range land south of Rock Springs, WY, extreme NW CO & NE corner of UT. 5 job openings; positions are temporary from 3/01/2013 11/30/2013. Wages: $1,200/month plus housing and board. Report or send resume to nearest Wyoming Dept. of Workforce Services office. Main Office: 100 W. Midwest Ave., Casper, WY 82601 Ph. 307-233-4657. Job Order # 2518574.

FARM & RANCH Sheepherders 10 Sheepherders wanted: Using horses & trained dogs, care for & herd large flock of sheep on open range; guard flocks from predators & from eating poisonous plants; round up strays; may assist in lambing, docking, branding, drenching, medicating, vaccinating, shearing; tag, clip, & sort/cut culls; check animals for illness/injury; assist w/ supplemental feeding using wagon pulled by draft horses; care for & shoe horse(s), work w/ horses to train to direct ewes back to lambs; repair/construct fences; may assist w/ water pipeline delivery system for sheep. On call 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week. Work tools, supplies, & equipment provided at no cost to workers. Employment for three-forths of work contract guaranteed. Transportation & subsistence expenses to worksite provided by employer. Wages: $750/month + free housing & board to all workers. 3 months experience req'd. & reference req'd. to verify experience. Must be physically able to perform above job duties. 10 job openings; positions are Temporary from 3/5/2013-3/4/2014. Employer: Midland Livestock Company. Location: primarily on range land near Farson & Rock Springs, Wyoming. Report or send resume to nearest Wyoming Dept. of Workforce Services office. Main office: 100 W. Midwest Ave., Casper, WY 82601 Ph: 307-233-4657. Job Order #2518400

Post World War Two Homesteading

I was reading the recent issue of Annals of Wyoming, the journal of the state historical society, and there was an article that somebody had written on cultural geography and Heart Mountain, Wyoming.  Heart Mountain is the location outside of Cody Wyoming, where, during World War Two, there was an Internment Camp for Japanese Americans.

The article was on the relationship of Heart Mountain to the minds of various groups of people, and I wasn't wholly impressed.  Like some academics, the author was overly impressed with the fact that locals put images of Heart Mountain on signs or name things after it. Well, so what?  If you have a business you have to name it something, and a prominent local landscape feature is one of the more obvious choices.  After all, you are unlikely to name a veterinary clinic in Cody something like "The Giant Florida Swamp Vet Clinic."  I did find it interesting that the mountain was somewhat less mentioned by internees than you'd suspect, and that regional Indians didn't seem to mention it at all in their lore.

Anyhow, one of the things the author keeps bringing up again and again is that it featured in the photographs taken by post World War Two homesteaders.  The article suffers from the author's apparent view that everyone knows that there were post wWII homesteaders in the area, even though the Homestead Acts were repealed in in the early 1930s. 

Does anyone know the story of post WWII homesteading?  I know that some lands were opened back up for returning veterans, sort of an agricultural GI Bill, but that's all I know.

Some native examples of Holscher's First & Second Law of History

Recently I posted an entry on Holscher's Law of History.  In doing that I expounded that the first law is "Everything first happened longer ago than you suspect" and the second law is "Everything last occurred more recently than you suppose.". 

Here's some interesting example from the story of American Indians.

This photograph was taken in 1906.  We'd tend to think of it as well after the Indian Wars, but it really is not.  Indeed, at this point in time, amazingly, one last conflict between Native Americans and the U.S. Army was yet to occur, although that scrap was an accident.  Be that as it may, we see a family with some native attire, and some not.  The degree to which native attire is hanging on in this photographs is a little surprising.  This photo, for context, was taken after the invention of the airplane and the introduction of the Model T.

But what's really surprising ins the sewing machine.  I wouldn't have expected that.  An example of the first law, to a degree.

This family, by the way, was photographed on the  Crow Reservation of southern Montana.

How about this photograph of a woman drying fish?  She's in a traditional camp, with a teepee and all, drying a traditional food.

This photograph was taken in 1913.  World War One would break out the following year.  Here we see, however, an Indian woman engaged in a very traditional activity.

 

What about this photograph?  For all the world, this photo looks like it was taken in the 1870s or so, but for the fact, perhaps, that the Indian rider (here a Crow Indian in Montana0 is riding a western stock saddle, a detail that's hard to catch without knowing what to look for.  But this is also a 20th Century photograph, taken in 1908.

While this scene comes near, if not in, the 20th Century, it's telling none the less.  This member of the Crow tribe is out riding in winter, probably hunting or otherwise out in some activity that requires his presence outdoors.  In Wyoming, I've seen photos of Indians from the Wind River Reservation out tenting (with teepees) while hunting, on the North Platte, as late as 1912, long after some maintain that long range native hunting forays did not occur.

What about this photograph?  The front rider (the father of the boy in back) is dressed in fairly typical Western attire with modern tack.  He retains the long braids of traditional Indians.  The boy, or rather young man, in back is wearing a newsboy cap.  The 1910s?  1920s?

No, 1941.