dual personalities

Tag: John Wesley Prowers

January 29, 2014

How the West Was Won

by chuckofish

Today is the 176th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite ancestors, John Wesley Prowers, who was born on January 29, 1838 near Westport, Jackson County, Missouri.

bent1881_jwprowers

Readers of this blog will recall that John was the older brother of our great-great-grandmother Mary Prowers Hough. Not much is known about their parents, Susan and John Prowers. Some say they came from Virginia, arriving in Missouri where John built a sturdy two-story log cabin near the Missouri River, which stood for nearly 75 years. The senior Prowers died (we know not why) in 1840, leaving 22-year-old Susan alone (literally) in the wilderness with two children under two and very little else save the sturdy cabin. She re-married–what else could she do?

Anyway, John Wesley Prowers did not get along with his step-father and skidaddled in 1856, at the age of eighteen. He went to work for Robert Miller, Indian agent for the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of the Upper Arkansas region. They headed for Bent’s new fort. Soon he was working for Colonel Bent at the fort, who put him in charge of the wagon trains, freighting supplies from the trading posts on the Missouri to those west, making twenty-two trips across the plains over the next six years.

In 1861 he married the 15-year-old Indian “princess” Amache Ochinee, the daughter of Ochinee, a sub-chief of the Southern Cheyennes, near Camp Supply in Indian Territory. In 1862 when John made his usual trip to Westport he took his bride east with him and she remained there with his sister, giving birth to their first child. They named the baby Mary Hough Prowers after her aunt (my great-great-grandmother, Mary Prowers Hough)–which has been confusing genealogists ever since.

The Prowers went on to have nine children, eight surviving to adulthood. John became a cattle baron, building up his herds until at the fall round-up of his ranch, the cattle shipment was a matter of train loads, not carloads. Sometimes, according to his daughter, as many as eight train loads left the ranch for eastern markets. At one time, the fall “check-up” showed 70,000 cattle bearing the Box B and the Bar X brands. Later Prowers cut out the middle man, building his own modern slaughter-house in Las Animas.

For a man with very little formal education, he was a creative and scientific rancher/statesman. He was always trying to improve his herd and his ranch. He experimented to find the cattle best suited to the plains country, bringing cattle from Ireland (the Kurry breed) and he bought “Gentle the Twelfth” from Frederick William Stone of Guelph, Canada. At last he turned to the Hereford as the best North American beef animal, calling it the “American type.” Thus he set about systematically improving and enlarging his herds and acquiring larger range. During his lifetime he fenced 80,000 acres of land in one body and owned forty miles of river front on both sides of the Arkansas River, controlling 400,000 acres of land.

He liked to experiment with things other than cattle as well. He introduced prairie chickens and Bob White quail at the mouth of the Purgatoire River. Hoping to increase the wild game in the county he brought in white tail deer. He also experimented with irrigation, having miles of ditches dug on his ranch.

Unlike his sister, who was a devout Baptist, he belonged to no church or lodge, but he always gave generously to resident pastors, no matter what denomination. He founded a bank and had numerous partners who ran stores and shipping operations. He was elected to represent the county in the Legislature and again to represent Bent County in the General Assembly. Furthermore, he sent all his children, boys and girls, to school and to college.

My great-great-grandmother was a great believer in women’s rights and the need for women to be educated and to have their own property. I have no reason to believe that her brother didn’t feel the same way. I’m sure this stemmed from their own mother’s predicament when her husband died.

When a new county was created from Bent County on May 3, 1889, it was named for Prowers, the pioneer and cattleman. I could go on about this great man, and I haven’t even mentioned his dealings with the Cheyenne, but that’s enough for now. Tonight let us raise a toast to him in remembrance.

These words, attributed to the great warrior Tecumseh, seem appropriate:

“Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart…Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and in the service of your people…Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself…
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose lives are filled with the fear of death, so that when time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

John Prower's 14-room house in Boggsville, Colorado

John Prower’s 14-room house in Boggsville, Colorado

boggsville

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November 29, 2012

Massacre at Sand Creek

by chuckofish

Today is the 148th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado.

You can read about it here. It is a sad episode in American history, in which our family played a small part. Our great-great grandmother’s brother, John Wesley Prowers, a southern Colorado cattleman credited with bringing the first Hereford breeds into the territory, was 26 at the time, a married man with two daughters, Susan and Mary.

He’s a lot older here, but you get the idea.

His wife, Amache Ochinee, was a full-blooded Cheyenne Indian, the daughter of one of Black Kettle’s sub-chiefs, One Eye. In 1864 Chief One Eye had negotiated a truce between the Cheyenne and Arapaho and the U.S. government. According to the truce the Cheyenne were guaranteed a safe camping area for the winter at their reservation along Sand Creek. But on the morning of November 28 soldiers from the Colorado First Volunteer Calvary rode onto the Prowers ranch and held the Prowers family and seven cow-hands hostage, under house arrest. Early the next morning at the camp along Sand Creek, Colonel John Chivington ordered his regiment to attack the Indians despite the fact that an American flag flew over their camp. The massacre claimed the lives of 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho. Among the dead was Chief One Eye, John Prowers father-in-law. John Prowers was later called by the government to testify at the investigation held at Fort Lyon.

Kit Carson, a close family friend of the Houghs and the Prowers, had this to say about the terrible events:

Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer ‘spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ’em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.

Old Kit describes it pretty succinctly I’d say.

In an attempt to make reparations to the Indians, the U.S. government gave a 640-acre parcel of land to each of the survivors. Amache, her mother and the Prowers’ two oldest daughters were each given tracts along the Arkansas River, on which, along with other Cheyenne lands, John Prowers ran his cattle. The young Cheyenne dog soldiers who terrorized the countryside following the Massacre, left the Prowers alone.

I am happy to know that my ancestors were the “good guys” and not on the side of that dog, Chivington. Years later, Amache attended a meeting of the Eastern Star in Denver and someone brought Colonel Chivington over to meet her and asked, “Mrs. Prowers, do you know Colonel Chivington?” Ignoring his outstretched hand, she looked him straight in the eye, “Know Colonel Chivington? I should. He murdered my father.”

John and Amache Prowers had nine children. All those who lived to adulthood went to college. John died in 1884 at the age of 46 and a few years later when a new county was created by the Colorado General Assembly, they named it after the great cattleman.

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