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Congressman Johnson's "Mosquito Tall Tale"

The very best tall tale about North Dakota’s gigantic mosquitoes came from Martin N. Johnson, a Congressman and storyteller. Johnson often repeated his ‘Mosquito Tall Tale’ – a perfect example of exaggeration and unabashed overstatement.

It goes like this:

“In [1883], I was breaking a section [of farmland] in North Dakota. The mosquitoes made me so wretched, that in despair I crawled under an enormous iron cooking kettle. In my fancied security, I felt a prickling sensation in my left shoulder. An enormous mosquito had actually bored [its] way through that iron kettle. Taking a small sledgehammer from [my] pocket, I managed to bend his stinger in such a way that it could not be withdrawn. The fuss the mosquito made attracted a thousand of his brethren … a cloud of mosquitoes … and before I knew it, there were sting[er]s coming through the kettle in every direction. … One by one the mosquitoes bored their stingers through the kettle … until the inside bristled with their stingers. I hammered each stinger until it bent, so they could not withdraw. [I hammered the stingers] as fast as I could, when, after an hour or so of this labor … just as I was exhausted with hammering, the mosquitoes suddenly tired of this attack, and being unable to extricate themselves, lifted the kettle and flew away with it.”

Upon the truth of his story being questioned, Johnson would say, “Well, were you ever out on the North Dakota prairie in 1883?”

When the listener replied “No,” Johnson would say, “Well, then you ought to have faith in a man who was.

It was on this date, in 1899, that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a variation of Johnson’s tall tale, proclaiming that North Dakota’s mosquitoes were “bigger and stronger than the New Jersey breed” – the worst of all American mosquitoes.

Martin Nelson Johnson, born in Wisconsin in 1850, came to Petersburg, North Dakota, in 1883. In 1880, he was elected to Congress and served 8 years. In 1908, he was elected to the Senate. Eleven years later, in 1909, he died “very suddenly.”

Remembered as an entertaining storyteller, newspapers commented on his famous his mosquito story by calling it the “tallest lie of the season.”

Dakota Datebook by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, MSUM History Department

Sources:

“Those Westerners,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 9, 1899, p. 7.

“Gossip of Washington,” St. Paul Globe, May 10, 1892, p. 4.

“Tallest Lie of the Season,” Morning Post [Raleigh, NC], March 9, 1899, p. 4; “Sine Qua Non Mosquitoes of North Dakota, New York Sun, March 6, 1899, p. 6; “Sine Qua Non Mosquitoes,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1899, p. 12.

Petersburg Diamond Jubilee, 1882-1957 ([Petersburg]: N.P., 1957), p. 81-82.

“U.S. Senator Johnson Dies Very Suddenly,” Wahpeton Times, October 28, 1909, p. 1; “Senator M.N. Johnson Dies Suddenly at Fargo,” Williston Graphic, October 28, 1909, p. 1.

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