Montford T. Johnson, the Chickasaw Rancher Who Built a Cattle Empire

Who Was Montford T. Johnson?

Montford Thomas Johnson was a Chickasaw cattleman who built one of the largest ranching enterprises in nineteenth-century Indian Territory. He was born in November 1843 in the Chickasaw Nation, in country that is now Johnston County, Oklahoma. His father, Charles B. Johnson, was English. His mother, Rebekah Courtney, was Chickasaw. The Oklahoma Historical Society's encyclopedia entry records that after his mother died and his father left the family, he was raised by his maternal grandmother's relatives.

By the 1870s and 1880s he was running cattle on the western edge of the Chickasaw Nation, operating stores, and employing partners from several backgrounds. When he died in 1896 he left twelve children and a business that his oldest son carried into the twentieth century.

Early Life in the Chickasaw Nation

Johnson grew up with his sister, Adelaide, in his grandmother's household. The Chickasaw Hall of Fame biography says he began by looking after his grandmother's livestock and then built a herd of his own. That small start mattered, because it meant he learned stock handling and trading as a boy rather than inheriting a ranch.

He also dealt with poor health for much of his life, according to the encyclopedia entry. He still managed to expand his holdings steadily for about twenty-five years, and the record shows he did so with a lot of help from relatives and partners.

How He Built the Ranches

Johnson was a contemporary and friend of Jesse Chisholm, the trader and scout whose route became the Chisholm Trail. According to the encyclopedia, Chisholm encouraged him to start ranches on the Chickasaw Nation's western edge. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum adds that Chisholm helped him reach agreements with Plains tribes so that he could ranch there without constant threat of attack.

In 1868 Johnson founded his first ranch about two miles northeast of present-day Washington in McClain County. He hired Jack Brown, a Chickasaw freedman, to run it and share in its operation. The encyclopedia describes this as the first of many ventures run by nonwhite partners that prospered under his leadership.

Over the next quarter century, with support from the Campbell and Bond families, who were related to him by marriage, his operations spread from Johnsonville, north of present-day Byars, west to Newcastle, and on toward Chickasha and Tuttle. For several years he also kept a ranch at Council Grove, in what is now western Oklahoma City. By the late 1880s his cattle ranged as far west as present-day Hydro.

Stores, Banking and Town Building

Cattle were only part of the business. Johnson ran a trading store at Silver City, north of Tuttle, where the Chisholm Trail served as the main street. In the early 1880s his oldest son, Edward Bryant Johnson, known as E. B., and partner Joe Lindsay bought Montford's interest in that store.

The Chickasaw Hall of Fame says he helped establish two stores and a bank, and that his family helped establish eight towns in Oklahoma. It also reports that at his peak he held about 35,000 cattle across 1.3 million acres. Because that figure comes from a tribal hall of fame rather than a ledger, treat it as a reported number.

Feeding Neighbors and Raising Orphans

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum describes Johnson as a man who regularly fed Native Americans neglected by the federal government and who raised many orphaned children in his own home. It says he made arrangements that let Native people confined to reservations take cattle from his herds when they needed food.

The Chickasaw Hall of Fame adds that he advocated for the release of Native prisoners held at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, during the 1874 Red River War. His reputation as an honest and charitable businessman comes mainly from these accounts.

Family, Death and What Came After

Johnson's first wife, Mary Elizabeth Campbell, died in 1880. He then married Addie Campbell and moved northeast of present-day Minco, where he died on February 17, 1896. He left twelve children from his two marriages.

After the Dawes Commission allotments, E. B. Johnson consolidated the family property into three ranches and extended the cattle operations into the Texas Panhandle. The Johnson businesses thrived until the 1980s, when they were dissolved into individual holdings. The allotment era reshaped land ownership across Indian Territory, and the family's restructuring shows how even a large operation had to adapt to it.

Honors and Where to Learn More

Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in April 2020 and into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame in 2024. His life is also the subject of The Chickasaw Rancher by Neil R. Johnson, first published in 1960 and later revised, and Chickasaw Nation Productions has made a feature film, Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher, a documentary, Montford: An Original Brand, and school curriculum.

For more on the cattle trails and ranches that shaped the Southern Plains, browse the ranching section at farm.FM, or read a farm.FM story about Oklahoma ranch country. The Hall of Great Westerners page and the Chickasaw Hall of Fame profile are good starting points.