In late nineteenth century, rabies scares animated communities all over the northern plains. Most were brief, and published reports lacked analytic detail. Certain episodes, however, attracted attention and produced documentation that gives us some insight into prairie community dynamics.
Everyone knew something about rabies, often by experience, or what they thought was experience. There was plenty of information, much of it erroneous. There was a vaccination available in Paris in 1885 and in America soon after, but I find only one record of anyone in Dakota Territory or early North Dakota availing himself of it.
An intriguing report comes from Devils Lake in May of 1885. The Inter-ocean reported a mysterious dog had appeared in the neighborhood and bit some cows belonging to Ed Poole. The same dog then “followed [Harry] Romney to Odessa” and bit his dog, which four days later “showed symptoms of the madness.” Chained up, the poor dog got worse and had to be shot. “It was a very valuable dog Harry had brought with him from Minnesota,” mourned the local editor.
A sad story, not too tragic, but notice the dynamic of what we today would call contact tracing. A mysterious dog attacks some cows, follows a farmer home to his farm, bites his dog, which sickens and has to be put down. Also notice the open ends of the narrative. The canine agent of infection just appears from nowhere, remains unidentified, and disappears, not heard from again.
There was a more celebrated rabies case at Devils Lake in the fall of 1898. Again, a mysterious canine, “a strange shepherd dog,” as it was described, appeared near the community of Bartlett and commenced snapping at horses, cows, pigs, sheep, and other dogs. It bit a cow at the farm of Ole Anderson, and bit then his daughter; ran to the farm of the farm of a fellow named Thompson, who drove it off after it bit his cows; and proceeded to the farm of a brother, Andrew Thompson, who, finding the beast worrying his stock in the barn, killed it with a pitchfork. Word was sent to the state veterinarian in Bismarck, Dr. Wilton Crewe.
Case closed? Not so fast. Farm animals began showing symptoms of incipient hydrophobia. Andrew Thompson had to kill several head of livestock, including a horse that exhibited the classic gnawing habits of a rabid animal, chewing up the walls of its stall, knocking out its own teeth. A neighbor put down a calf and a pig, still another a cow. “Many farmers” put down livestock acting suspicious, the papers said. Fortunately, the Anderson girl developed no symptoms.
Meanwhile, at a farm some twenty miles away, Thomas Maloney (no doubt having heard of the uproar in Bartlett) killed his dog after it bit a mare. The mare then attacked a cow and a bull, and so Maloney killed the mare, too. More generally, the papers reported, “There have been reports of strangely acting dogs having been seen in other parts of the county,” constituting “a well defined mad dog scare.”
Then Dr. Crewe arrived, having hustled down from Bismarck, arriving at the Anderson farm to find a horse tied up to a wagon, “acting strangely and thought to be mad,” he said, refusing food and water, eating dirt, “pawing and bellowing,” finally commencing convulsions. Crewe ordered the animal dispatched.
Then he gave a report to the press, tracing contacts and confirming details in sequence, as they were known. Interestingly, there were no more incidents after Crewe posted his report. We are left to imagine the sensational reports that must have passed person-to-person across the county, the exasperation and anger of farmers having to put down livestock, and just why the local editor called the whole affair not an emergency, but a “panic.”
