At the community level on the prairies, people of the late nineteenth century took threats of hydrophobia, or rabies, seriously. Authorities and editors knew news when they heard it, but did not want to incite reactionary panic, the phobia of the phobia.
So when in 1886—the very year after the advent of Pasteur's vaccine in Paris—several newspapers in the southeastern part of the territory reported hydrophobia outbreaks, the Yankton Telegraph denounced the incipient panic. Restraint was utterly lacking, however, when a neighboring editor declared, “Mad dogs are running wild through the country.”
The same year, in Fargo, there was a report a dog “has been seen on North Broadway with symptoms of hydrophobia and several other dogs may have possibly been bitten by the brute. Look out for the dogs.” A measured report, words parsed, no incitement to violence.
The well-known tendency for rabies rumor-mongering resulted in the following report in the Pembina Pioneer Express in 1889: “Judge Armstrong was bitten by a dog last week. The dog wasn't mad but the judge was.”
Local editors knew something about the disease. The one in Grand Forks in 1893 described the stages of hydrophobia with knowing precision, chilling in the end:
The bark of a rabid dog is a thing which once heard cannot be forgotten . . . a hoarse, muffled bark, followed by three or four gurgling efforts from the bottom of his throat.
A few years later the editor in Cando, noting numerous skunks in the vicinity, asserted that “the bite of a skunk is sure to produce hydrophobia.” He cited vaguely the experiences of “numerous soldiers and cowboys on the plains being bitten by them when asleep and death from hydrophobia has invariably been the result.” Upon which we might inquire, for the cowboy, or for the skunk?
In Dawson in 1895, a dog, it was said, “showed symptoms of hydrophobia and was killed.” The dog had bitten its owner, one of his children, and several other dogs. People in town then killed several dogs, chained up the rest. Since there was no press follow-up of tragic consequences, it appears the dogs in question died in vain.
There was a happier outcome in Bismarck in 1890, described thus in the press:
Quite a scare originated at Professor Abbey’s residence yesterday. Their dog, which is a great pet, began to act very singularly and exhibited symptoms of hydrophobia. The ladies ran into the house, and began calling for help.
I pause to say, this narrative partakes of the popular prejudice that “ladies” were inclined to panic about hydrophobia. What they needed was a man around the house! So, the reporter continues, “Captain Braithwaite went to their relief.” This valiant knight saved both the ladies and the dog when he determined the canine was just cranky from having been kicked by a horse.
There are other, more detailed accounts of rabies scares in late nineteenth-century Dakota worth examining in more deliberate detail.
