Excerpt from Solomon Butcher’s Tearing Down of Settlers’ Houses by Cowboys
Early in the fall of 1884 a few settlers located homesteads in the northeast corner of the Brighton Ranch Company's pasture, on Ash creek. . . . The land being government land, and subject to entry, these settlers served notice on the ranch company to remove their fence from about their claims within thirty days.
The company paid no attention to this request, and. . .the settlers made a raid on the fence and appropriated the posts to make roofs for their sod houses. Roofs in those days were made by laying a large log, called a ridge log, lengthwise of the building at the top. The fence posts were then laid up to form the rafters, to which brush was fastened, the whole being covered with one or two layers of prairie sod, coated with several inches of yellow clay procured from the canyons. . . .
In a short time after the appropriation of these posts the foreman of the ranch had the settlers arrested. . . The sheriff had no sooner departed with the prisoners than the second foreman of the ranch rigged up two large wagons, drawn by four mules each, and proceeded to the houses of the settlers, accompanied by a number of the cowboys. They drove up to a house, took a team and large chain, hitched onto the projecting end of the ridge log, and in about three seconds the neat little home was a shapeless mass of sod, hay, brush and posts mixed up in almost inextricable confusion. The ranchmen then culled their posts from the wreck and loaded them into the wagons, when they went to the next house and repeated the operation, leaving the occupants to pick their few household goods out of the ruins at their leisure.
Use the excerpt to answer the question.
Which of the following is the primary source of conflict in the excerpt?
Responses
employee misconduct
employee misconduct
settlers' behavior
settlers' behavior
house construction
house construction
land ownership