John Dutton Sr.

John Dutton Sr., originally known as John Dutton, is a main character in 1883 and 1923: A Yellowstone Origin Story. He is the eldest son of James and Margaret of the Dutton Family.

John second child of James and Margaret Dutton and their eldest son, born in 1878. He was five when they arrived by train in Fort Worth, Texas and set out with the Texas-Oregon Wagon Train. He survived the trip and arrived in Paradise Valley with his family just as his older sister Elsa was dying from a poisoned arrow wound. John would endure attacks from bandits and natives, extreme weather and dangerous river conditions along the way but survived the trip despite his young age.

Ten years later in the winter of 1893, John and his younger brother Spencer accompanied their father James with their cattle to meet with a group of natives that had arrived on their property. As the natives’ ancestral grounds, a representative plead with James to allow them to bury his father on the land, which James agreed to and instructed his sons to help him cut a steer out of the herd to give to the natives for food. That same year, John witnessed the death of both parents as his father succumbed to a fatal gunshot wound he received after killing a band of horse thieves, and his mother Margaret froze to death shortly thereafter.

Roughly a year later in 1894 John’s uncle Jacob and aunt Cara arrived at the ranch after receiving Margaret’s leader asking for them to come help after James died. In the intervening time between Margaret’s death and Jacob’s arrival John and Spencer were forced to fend for themselves. In the 29 years since Jacob’s arrival in Montana John helped Jacob build the ranch and learned from his uncle everything he knew.

While his brother Spencer left to fight in Europe during World War I, John remained on the ranch with his wife Emma and son Jack. A range war emerged when the Dutton’s came into conflict with Banner Creighton, an Irish sheepherder who ran out of viable grazing space on his land and began grazing his sheep on the Yellowstone property. When Jack Dutton came upon the sheepherders and the herd they open fired on him, unprovoked, nearly killing him. John, Jacob, Zane, and the other Yellowstone Cowboys rode to his aid, killing some of the sheepherders before the rest surrendered. They hanged Banner and his accomplices in such a way that they could potentially free themselves if they were patient. Banner was the only one who succeeded while the others died. Meanwhile, the Duttons gifted the herd of sheep to the Chief Runs His Horse and the rest of the Broken Rock Reservation.

In retaliation, Banner rallied all of his fellow Irish sheepherders and ambushed the Duttons as they returned to the Yellowstone from Bozeman. After fending off multiple waves from the sheepherders on horseback, Banner arrived in a car and proceeded to open fire on Jacob and John with a Thompson submachine gun. Jacob was nearly killed with multiple wounds to his chest and abdomen, and John was killed instantly with multiple gunshot wounds in the same region plus a fatal shot through his left eye. He left behind his widow, Emma and his son Jack.

Emma buried John alongside the other Duttons in the small family cemetery on the ranch.