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The Cat Pioneers©

by

Shebby Lee

Presented at the
West River History Conference
Rapid City, SD
October 14, 2006

The Cat Pioneers

by

Badger Clark
Skylines and Woodsmoke, 1935
 

The dark was deep on hill and dale
    And I inclined to snore
When I responded to a hail
    Outside my cabin door,
And in there stalked from outer gloom
    A stately Thomas cat
As black as Wind Cave’s deepest room,
    With jaunty white cravat.

I bowed and, all impressed to see
    His grooming sleek as silk,
With Western hospitality
    Offered a drink - of milk.
He licked his chops with mien demure
    And then the silence broke.
(I may have dozed, and yet I’m sure
    That lordly Thomas spoke.)

“Your garb, sir, and your rude life here
    In this sequestered heaven
Are like those of a pioneer
    Of Eighteen Seventy-Seven.
That year of cats! That year of fame!
    Of deathless memory!
When fifty cats to Deadwood came
    From old Bismarck, D.T.

Ah, they were cats who feared no fate,
    Cats of adventurous blood,
Real Western cats who’d emigrate
    Through hardships, fight and flood,
Steamboating cats who voyaged far
    To reach that river port
And trim and swagger cats of war
    Who served about the fort.

Four hundred miles by plan and slope
    They rode through dust and heat,
And gristly scraps of antelope
    Were all they got to eat,
Yet with a pluck that did not cease,
    That kept aloft each tail,
They bravely risked nine lives apiece,
    Along the Black Hills trail.

When Deadwood town at last they made
    Their welcome was not cold.
Ten dollars each for them was paid
    In glittering dust of gold,
And they were drafted to afford
    The homesick miners cheer
Or guard the grocer’s precious hoard
    Bull-freighted out from Pierre.

One talented young tiger tom
    Whose voice could charm the moon
Forgot the teachings of his mom
    And worked in a saloon.
There with a dissipated bunch
    Who swilled their midnight grogs,
He lapped up Tom and Jerry punch
    Till he went to the dogs.

But most soon won an honored place
    And raised the social tone
By that serene and subtle grace
    Peculiarly our own.
And swiftly grew their family trees.
    For cats believed and dealt
In large and frequent families
    Long before Roosevelt.

The hairy miner on a spree,
    Full of remorse and beer,
Gazed at a kitten on his knee
    And shed a scalding tear,
Then vowed to quit the maddening cup
    And mend his ragged life
And get a shave and straighten up
    And send and fetch his wife.

Thus were the wild Hills gentled, sir;
    The wanderers ceased to roam,
And round a cat’s contented purr
    Built many a happy home,
And soon the Black Hills nights were gay
    With cattish carolings
From clothesline posts up Spearfish way
    To fences in Hot springs.

No more important episode
    Marked all those early years
Than that historic wagonload
    Of feline pioneers,
For though the horse and dog were prized
    And praised for this and that,
Who made the Black Hills civilized?
    The cat, my friend, the cat!

I am the old breed down to date
    For in that wagon’s straw
Rode my great-great-great-great-great-
    Great-great-great-grandmaw and paw.
Those Rovers I’m descended from
    And their blood rules me yet,
For though I am a gentle tom
    I’ll be no household pet.

Along beneath the mystic dark
    I raid the pack rat’s den
And range the woods of Custer park
    And shun the haunts of men,
So, pardner, you and I are peers
    And ere I leave you now,
We’ll give three cheers for pioneers.
    Meeyow! Meeyow! Meeyow!”
 

Introduction

          South Dakota’s first poet laureate, Badger Clark, grew up in 1890's Deadwood, just two decades after the last great gold rush in America. By his day the streets were no longer a muddy quagmire, and the wooden shacks hastily thrown up in the heat of gold fever had been replaced with respectable - and hopefully fireproof - brick buildings. Still, there were charter members of the pioneer fraternity among the town’s inhabitants who gladly related stories of the “bad old days” to eager young listeners who had missed all the fun. The poem relates a charming tale of historic Deadwood, but it seems that the story we have just heard is only one of many versions. Badger Clark knew better than most that yarns have a tendency to become embellished over the years. When describing the purported relationship between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock in Roderick Peattie’s The Black Hills, he stated - perhaps somewhat ruefully - that “Just what kind of people they were, and what they were to each other doesn’t matter. They are legends, and nobody worries about the factual details of a legend.” 
          Perhaps the truth of the matter is therefore irrelevant, but as a historian I felt compelled to at least try to sort out the facts. Discrepancies that I encountered relate to the reason for the enterprise, the name of the freighter, the date, and even the origin of those cat pioneers.
          Some accounts list Charlie Utter, the indomitable Deadwood pioneer and pal of Wild Bill Hickock, as the wagonmaster. The fact that he was a freighter by trade, lends some credence to this scenario, though there seems to be no evidence one way or the other.
           Cheyenne, Wyoming claims that the cats came from there, not Bismarck, as the poem relates. The city’s website identifies the freighter as one Phatty Thompson but lists the year as 1887. An interesting twist from the folks at the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce: the cats arrived on the Deadwood Stage! 
         The April 2006 issue of Deadwood Magazine has the date a year earlier than

does Badger Clark = 1876  and even goes so far as crediting the episode for spawning the word “cathouse” - while acknowledging the total lack of proof for such an assertion.
          The Dean of Black Hills historians, Watson Parker, doesn’t mention the year but
does identify Cheyenne as the point of origin and Phatty Thompson as the enterprising freighter. 
          A September 3, 1879 obituary contradicts all of the above: “Alexander Davidson, of Denver, Col, died Aug. 24. Mr. D. will be remembered as the man who, during the fall of 1876, brought a load of cats from Denver to this place.” 
          In light of these discrepancies, it seems likely that the great cat migration of Badger Clark’s poem occurred on several occasions and at the hands of more than one entrepreneur. But there is little doubt that somebody brought cats to Deadwood during the gold rush years, made a profit, and changed the history of the town.

The Cat Pioneers

          During Deadwood’s salad days, just about anything that could be had in the states was also available in Deadwood Gulch - for a price. With shipments of 150,000 pounds of freight bound for a single merchant in one day in 1878 (and over a million pounds delivered that same week) one would think there might have been room for a few cats. Such was apparently not the case however. Feverish gold miners had no use for families, let alone pets, and didn’t plan to stay anyway after making their big strike. But whether home-sickness or a local rat infestation were the deciding factors, the need for cats soon came to the fore. With shipments from Cheyenne taking anywhere from twenty to thirty days,  this was obviously a job for some wildcat freighter who could travel light and fast.
          Unfortunately, solitary wagons setting out for the Hills from any direction in the summer of 1876 were subject to Indian attack, and most independents found it prudent to cool their heels in a likely staging area until enough wagons had accumulated to provide protection. This makes it unlikely that a lone wagonload of cats journeying to the Hills could have succeeded before the fall of 1876, when more miners were flowing out of the hills than into it. This date is corroborated by a nearly unimpeachable source: Deadwood’s first sheriff.
          Seth Bullock’s account of Deadwood in 1876 places the arrival of a “spring wagon load of house cats” in October of that year. He identifies the freighter only as a “speculator from Cheyenne” who charged $15 to $25 apiece on the first crate-load of cats, but suffered the loss of the remaining cargo when an obvious cat-lover liberated those still awaiting the auction block.           However uncommon this event must have been, it was not recorded in the local paper until long after the fact. The first mention came in the June 11, 1877 issue of the Black Hills Daily Times, when a letter to the editor suggested importing some cats. I quote the letter and the editor’s response in full because the writing style is so delightfully florid, and the libel laws apparently quite forgiving in those days:

“We have sometimes wondered why some enterprising, speculative individual had not yet thought of importing a load of cats to the Black Hills.  An ordinary freight wagon could be partitioned off so as to carry with ease and safety two hundred cats. These cats could be obtained with little or no cost in any of the towns along the Missouri river, and they would find a ready market here at an average price of ten dollars each. The man who has the sagacity and nerve to bring a load of cats into the Black Hills can lay claim to having struck a rich feline lode. Champion.