In one of our family photo albums is a snapshot of me, age pre-school, sitting astride our prize polled Hereford bull. I’m pretty sure his name was Domino. I’m also pretty sure if such a photo were taken and viewed today, there would be charges and investigations.
In the mid-1950s Hereford bulls were docile dwarves, and without horns. Previous generations, however, were accustomed to hearing and reading horror tales of mortal or near-mortal gorings by bulls and cows. Such things were everyday hazards that made convenient newspaper copy with shock value. (Trigger warning: some of the content to follow here details incidents of violence.)
Interestingly enough, there are few reports of such incidents befalling cowboys on the range or in pastures. More commonly they have to do with farmers or even townspeople, such as the unfortunate Mrs. John Poole, of Grand Forks, in 1895. Her husband had gone out of town and left her to care for a bull that was chained to a post.
Evidently the bull broke the chain, and when Mrs. Poole attempted to re-attach the beast, she was, press reports said, “horribly mutilated and literally gored to pieces.” The bull commenced bellowing, which attracted the attention of neighbors. “The bull was finally killed,” says the news report, “after 15 Winchester rifle bullets had been fired into his body.”
The same year Robert Ewing, of Pembina, was attacked by a bull he was taking to water. By the time Mrs. Ewing has driven off the attacker by siccing the dogs on him, Mr. Ewing had suffered broken ribs and a horn driven through his leg. He died the next day. “It is a very sad case,” said the press report, “as the widow and children are without money or means.”
A few years before, in 1891, regional readers had learned the sad fate of Albert St. John, who farmed a few miles east of Hope. Some family members flagged down the mailman, Casey Foster, and took him to the barn, where a gory scene awaited. “Mr. St. John was lying a crushed and lifeless mass in the manger,” reported the Hope Pioneer, with his dead bull atop him.
Family and friends reasoned the bull had attacked and gored Mr. St. John in the barn, tossed him into the manger, become entangled in his tether rope, and fallen in atop his master. “It was a horrible sight and a terrible death,” mourned the reporter, “and his family have the sympathy of the entire community in their terrible affliction.”
Country newspapers not only detailed such local tragedies but also reprinted exchange reports of gorings from across the country, to the point where a certain reader numbness may have set in. This could explain why the editor of the Washburn Leader was emboldened to ungentlemanly reportage in 1893, when he wrote that a woman in Milton had suffered a three-inch-deep stomach wound inflicted by a bull, but was not mortally wounded “because of her extreme corpulancy.”
News reports, such as a couple from the year 1900, dealt also with violence done against other animals by horned beasts. A new settler named Behan, near Bottineau, demanded satisfaction when a valuable cow of his was killed by a cow belonging to Charles West. “Chas. paid the expenses like a man,” reported the Bottineau Courant. More fortunately, after a bull gored a prized horse belonging to a Manfred farmer, the local vet saved the horse by removing four feet of damaged intestine and splicing it back together.
It is little wonder that during the times I have been describing, the practice of dehorning cattle--controversial but effective--commenced and caught on. That campaign for public safety is the subject of my next essay.
~Tom Isern
