June Gleanings: War on Dogs, the Ponca, and the Census of 1880
If you read any of the other “ Gleanings,” posts, you might recall that these “seen-around-town” sort of items were a regular column in the Coffeyville, Kansas newspapers, and many newspapers, in the 1870s and 1880s. I am compiling samples from Coffeyville for each month. One change I made is that if I am commenting on an item, I highlighted it.
17 June 1875
The war on dogs continues.
The county has thirteen paupers.
Plenty of new potatoes in market.
Ice wagon prompt – he yells at your chamber window just when you get started on that nap.
Montgomery county is the first of the counties in Southern Kansas to prepare for a county fair.
There will be a grand pic-nic at McLeary’s Grove, four and a half miles northwest of this place on Saturday, July 3rd.
I’m not sure what a war on dogs entailed exactly, but dogs were often mentioned in summer, with great concern, understandably, for rabies. With no vaccination, there was nothing to be done but to shoot any dog suspected of the disease. Dogs were frequently mentioned as the victims of poisoning. There was a dog tax very early in Montgomery County, with all tax funds going to the schools. (In my blog posts “Hogs and Dogs” I wrote of issues with these animals on the streets of Coffeyville.) The Coffeyville editor seemed to wage a personal war on dogs, frequently mentioning them as nuisances.
Ice was frequently an issue. Ice was often mentioned - whether it was thick enough to gather in winter, and what the ice supply was in summer. In 1888 the Topeka newspaper reported that there were six ice dealers in the city. One manufactured ice and the others harvested it from the Kaw River; 100,000 tons of ice were harvested and stored in ice houses. About half was for retail use. In July 1891 the Buffalo Enquirer included this poem in a story about ice wagons:
Whene'er the boarders homeward come,
From business cares set free,
And tired and hungry sit them down
To take their evening tea;
O, when they find the milk is sour,
The butter ran away,
The water's warm, the steak too strong,
And flies a-holding sway,
'Tis then the mistress smiles and says,
"The ice man's late today."
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Lots of Indian freight this week.
The ice used here has to be shipped in from elsewhere.
More Ponca Indians passed through town this week.
Some of the “town boys” have been working in the harvest field.
Peaches ripe.
Blackberries, we learn, will be very plentiful this year.
Mrs. Hoffman keeps ice cream only on Sundays now. The difficulty in getting ice will not permit it oftener.
Most of the business men, besides numerous other “small boys” witnessed the raising of the “Great Hippopotamus - Hippo-thea-tron, that’s it –” show tent last Tuesday.
The Ponca Indian tribe had the all-too-familiar story of a series of treaties with the U.S. government, with broken promises and the eventual forced relocation to Indian Territory from Nebraska in 1877. Nine tribal members died in the Ponca “Trail of Tears,” including Prairie Rose, a daughter of Chief Standing Bear, also known as Machunuzhe. After arriving in Oklahoma, Standing Bear’s son Bear Shield died. Standing Bear was determined that his son be buried back in Nebraska. The Ponca were not allowed to leave their new reservation without permission, which was not granted. He left anyway. Consequently, Standing Bear was arrested and he and about 30 of his followers were held in barracks in Fort Omaha.
A court case followed, United States , ex rel. Standing Bear v. George Crook, which began in 1879. The U.S. government argued that Standing Bear was neither a citizen nor a person (emphasis mine), and therefore could not sue the government. (American Indians were not granted U.S.citizenship until 1924.) The judge agreed with Standing Bear’s lawyers, that an “Indian is a PERSON within the meaning of the laws of the United States…” This was an early civil rights case considered by scholars to have the impact of cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. The judge released Standing Bear and his people, and the little boy was buried on their traditional land in Nebraska. Standing Bear, a person, a human being, was permitted to stay in Nebraska, and his followers with him. He died there in 1908 at age 79.
The Coffeyville newspaper mentioned the tribe fairly frequently from the time of their removal to Oklahoma through the 1880s, often with items as brief as the one above.
The Hippotheatron in New York
Barry & Co.’s Great Western Equescurriculum Hippotheatron and World Congress of Stars traveled through Kansas from May to September 1878. The name was taken from the Hippotheatron in Manhattan, an entertainment venue built for large scale performances such as horse shows and circus acts. It burned in 1872.
Barry & Co.’s show promised M’me. Belle Laiscell, the lady with the iron jaw, and Master Leon, the daring child trapezist. There were also song and dance acts and a minstrel show - not to mention a part everyone could see for free.
“Do not fail to see the great Balloon ascension made by Prof. Wallace in his great air ship, Columbia, to the clouds, hanging by his toes from a single bar one mile from the earth!” the ads blared.
The show would come into town, a team would set up an 80-foot canvas tent, and the performers would settle in at the local hotel. When it was show time, the band would play down the street and into the tent. Tickets were 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children twelve and under. In addition to Coffeyville, Barry & Co.’s show played in Humboldt, Fredonia, Osage Mission, Neodesha, Independence, Wichita, Florence, Eureka, Emporia, El Dorado and Jewell City, to mixed reviews. The Coffeyville editor said that although the show was pretty good overall, it could be improved “muchly.”
5 June 1880
Vegetation is booming.
New hay is being made.
Census taking began Tuesday.
Fresh strawberries from Kansas City.
The Coffeyville Band will play at Hamlin’s grove July 3rd.
It is said that some 1,500 acres of cotton are now growing, under the care of Exodusters, around Coffeyville.
The 1880 census was the first to ask not only the birth place of each resident, but the birthplaces of each person's parents. It also asked for the first time how many children a woman had born, and how many were still living. Another first was it asked the relationship between the head of household and the others living at that address.
Virtually all of the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire in 1921, and subsequent water damage from firefighters putting out the fire. It was a tremendous loss - regarded as a tragedy - by researchers from a variety of fields. So there is a big gap for genealogists between the 1880 and 1900 censuses, making them even more important. Incidentally, the fire led to the creation of the National Archives. The National Archives building opened in 1934.
Exodusters were the thousands of Black people who left the South and took advantage of the Homestead Act to try life in Kansas and Nebraska and other Western states. Early in 1879 there was such an exodus of Blacks to Kansas that it came to be known as the Great Exodus of 1879 and “Kansas Fever Exodus.” It was caused in part by an 1878 election in Louisiana in which the Democratic party won overwhelmingly and Reconstruction gains giving Blacks rights were ende, often violently. An estimated 6,000 people came from Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi in the first quarter of the year. The exodus ended by summer 1879, for a variety of reasons.
In 1870 the Black population of Kansas was 16,250. By1880, there were about 43,100. Few found it to be the promised land. They faced the casual, open, accepted racism of the times, including mentions in the Coffeyville newspapers. But conditions were still better than the deep south with less racial interference.
23 June 1888
Wheat all cut.
Peaches are fine.
What grand corn-growing weather.
The colored Masons’ celebration of St. John’s Day will be held in this city tomorrow. The committee is making considerable preparations and a large crowd is expected.
Miss Nannie Rammel went to Kansas City on Monday where she expects to take a thorough course in stenography and typewriting. Miss Nannie is a most excellent young lady, pure minded, industrious and deserving…
Black Masonry started immediately after the Civil War in Kansas. Lodges were begun in Lawrence, Topeka and Leavenworth in 1865. Coffeyville’s Lodge No. 29 started by at least 1876, as members invited the public to a concert. The newspaper reported that there were 33 “colored” Masonic lodges in the state. They were part of the “Golden Era of Fraternal Societies,” and were particularly important sources of identity and support in the Black community.
The June 30th 1888 edition of the Coffeyville Weekly Journal described the “colored” St. John’s Day celebration. Some 200 people arrived on a special excursion train from the town of Parsons. The “Famous band (colored) of Parsons” led a march down Ninth Street to Walnut to Eighth Street and back to Ninth Street to the Masonic Hall, where ceremonies were conducted. This included speakers, glee club performances and more from the Famous band.
Sources:
Arrington, Todd. “Exodusters,” Homestead National Historic Park, Beatrice, Nebraska: 2015, https://www.nps.gov/home/learn/historyculture/exodusters.htm#:~:text=Many%20individuals%20and%20families%20were,it%20were%20called%20%22exodusters.%22
Blake, Kellee, "First in the Path of the Firemen - The Fate of the 1890 Population Census," Prologue Magazine Genealogy Notes, Vol. 28 No. 1 (Spring 1996), National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1890-census
“Cutting Crystals - Not Diamonds But Very Near As Precious,” Topeka Daily Capital, 24 Nov 1888, p. 5.
Davis, Jennifer. “Chief Standing Bear and His Landmark Civil Rights Case,” In Custodia Legis - Law Librarians of Congress, Library of Congress Blogs, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2019/11/chief-standing-bear-and-his-landmark-civil-rights-case/
“The Ponca Trail of Tears,” Nebraska Public Media, nebraskastudies.org
Skocpol, Theda and Jennifer Lynn Oser, “Organization Despite Adversity - The Origins and Development of African American Fraternal Associations,” Social Science History, Vol. 28 No. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 367-437.
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