June 3, 2015 • 26 mins
Once the effort to import hippos to the U.S. got the backing of a politician, two men with wild and intertwined histories, Frederick Russel Burnham and Fritz Duquesne, were brought on board to serve as experts and advocates. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And this was
the continuing story of the attempts to bring hippos to
the US as a livestock animal. And in the first
(00:23):
part of this two parter, we talked about the meat
shortage in the US in the early nineteen hundreds that
initiated this desire to brainstorm new animals that might fill
in that meat gap. And we talked a lot about
one of the men in particular who worked to bring
hippos from Africa, who was Frederick Burnham. And today we're
going to pick up with another man who was brought
onto the project by Louisiana representative Robert Broussard, and then
(00:47):
we will discuss how all these men work together and
what happened to this hippo plan. So there's a little
uncertainty about exactly when Frederick Duquine was born. Allegedly it
was December one, seventy seven in the Cape Colony in
South Africa. There's some confusion, in part because his life
(01:08):
was more like a series of concocted details and varying identities.
Almost all of his biography comes with question marks. Even
his physical description shifts depending on the source. His hair
color is pretty universally described as dark, although sometimes dark
means black and sometimes it means brown. Likewise, his eye
(01:31):
color is sometimes brown and sometimes blue and sometimes hazel,
depending on who's doing the telling. Yeah, he's We've talked
about conmon before and how it's often difficult to pin
down their biographical details, and he definitely falls in line
with that whole system. Um. His father was a hunter
and he was often away from the family, and so
(01:53):
his mother and his blind uncle John raised him for
the most part, and during his youth he watched his
hippocarcus is were butchered for meat, uh, and he and
the other kids would collect the unused fat to sell
to soap makers from France. See how everything's connected again.
I didn't mean to connect to our bodies turning to
soap episode, but I kind of do on that one.
(02:14):
By accident, Duquesne was in Belgium and military school in
his family sent for him to come home. He was
needed to serve in the Boor military in the second
Boorer war, so at this point the Boars were being
run into prison camps by British forces, and the homes
that they were forced out of were being destroyed. It's
estimated that at their fullest, these prison camps contained a
(02:37):
hundred and sixty thousand Boars, thousand of whom did not
survive the ordeal. To deal with being vastly outnumbered by
the British forces, the Boor military, which was pretty rag tag,
takes to a more guerrilla approach to warfare. Ducane really
excelled at this looser, more stealthy style, and he wound
(03:00):
up working as a military courier. This conflict could be
its own episode easily. But during this conflict, the British
warfare tactics against the Boers were brutal and horrifying, and
Ducane's family was not immune. His father had died not
long after Fritz had been called to war, and Ducine
eventually learned that British troops had brutalized and murdered his
uncle that had helped raised him and his sister as well,
(03:24):
and that they had brutalized and kidnapped his mother disguised
as a British soldier. Ducane found his mother in a
concentration camp. She was at this point barely clinging to life.
She had an infant with her that was conceived with
one of her captors who had raped her. Both of
them were suffering from syphilis to a point that they
were too far gone to be saved, so they were
(03:45):
basically dying the most horrible way imaginable, and this, not surprisingly,
is believed to have significantly hardened Duquesne. This event really
is always pointed out as like the moment where he
shut down a little bit. He became a much colder
human being at this point. Despite being captured on several
occasions they were too documented and then more were suspected,
(04:08):
he always managed to escape, although one of his escape
attempts involved using a spoon to dig a tunnel in
a wall, only to have the wall collapse and pin
him there when he tried to go out the tunnel
he had dug. There's also a tale that during one
of his stints as a captive, he managed to seduce
the jailor's daughter. Yeah, basically everything you might read and
(04:29):
like a penny novel of the time, happened to him.
So again, we don't these are largely his accounts, so
we don't know how much of it's true and how
much of it isn't, But both of those are fun
to think about. Uh. Decane's biggest escape, though, which is
said to have happened after he was captured while plotting
a particularly massive explosion, was actually orchestrated through Morse code.
(04:50):
He collaborated using the code with prisoners that were in
other cells. These men, there were three of them all together,
jumped into the sea. They were still bound at this
point point, and they managed to live on the run
for several weeks before they reached a port town where
Duquesne actually became a pimp for a brief while. Again
his story is so wacky. Uh. He only had that
(05:12):
job for about a week, just long enough so that
he could steal the identity of one of the John's
involved in this prostitution plan and set sail for the
US under that assumed name. Decane's charm was so effective
that he ended up after a time, becoming an advisor
to President Theodore Roosevelt on a plan to travel to
Africa and hunt wild game. Once he had rubbed elbows
(05:35):
at the White House, he used that credential to bolster
his image in his career. At first he wrote newspaper
columns about the president's trip, and then he turned his
position and started writing smear pieces about how Roosevelt was
actually a pampered tourist. He even went so far as
to try to have the President prevented from returning to
the United States by suggesting that he was going to
(05:56):
bring back a deadly contagious disease. Yeah, it seems like
Ducane was not so much about loyalty as he was
about maximizing his own benefit in any given situation. And
this is just one example. Uh. And around this same time,
con Man Fritz had also started up a one man
touring stage show, and this was called East Africa, The
(06:17):
Wonderland of Roosevelt's Hunt. So he was still trying to
capitalize on kind of the fervor and excitement around this
trip Roosevelt was taking. And it's actually because of this
one man showed that Louisiana representative Broussard found him. So
at this point, as you may recall from our first
episode in this two parter, at this point, the US
(06:38):
was dealing with what they called the meat question, which
was how were they going to feed all of these
people that had immigrated into the US and the bolstering
population as they were running out of meat. And this
meat question, as it was called in the press, really
threatened to chip away at the idea that the U
s could sustain its own people and continue to grow. Uh.
(06:58):
You know, it was kind of a point of it
as well as being an issue just a survival for
a lot of people, and so Representative Broussard, like many
other politicians, really wanted to solve this food gap problem.
Once the idea of introducing hippos to the South came
Upstired sent a field agent to survey the Louisiana swamp
(07:20):
land and give an assessment about how viable it was
going to be to introduce hippos into that environment. The
report was titled Why and How to Place Hippopotamus in
the Louisiana Lowlands, and it indicated that the swamps would
provide a great environment for hippos. It was actually estimated
by an official at the Agricultural Department that a herd
(07:42):
of hippos eating through the swamps free range would produce
an estimated million tons of meat each year. Word also
circulated that hippo meat was delicious as well as potentially plentiful,
particularly the brisket area. So, just in case anyone doesn't
know cuts of meat, the brisket is normally a cut
of meat from the lower chest of an animal, and
(08:04):
The New York Times dubbed these proposed cuts of hippo
meat from this brisket area as Lake cow Bacon. So
Representative Broussard was winning people over with this idea. His
supporters really thought it was an ingenious solution to the
multiple problems it was set out to address. A lot
of them volunteered to help with capture and transport of
(08:28):
these beasts. He had not only come up with a
plan that seemed like it could solve the meat shortage
and the water hyacinth problem, but it also appealed to
the sense of American pride and problem solving. The whole
candy attitude of this hippo plan, Lippincott's Monthly magazine wrote, quote,
this animal homely as a steam roller, is the embodiment
(08:50):
of salvation. Peace, plenty and contentment lie before us, and
a new life with new experiences, new opportunities, new vigor,
new romance. It's folded in that golden future, when the
meadows and the bayous of our southern lands shall swarm
with herds of hippopotami. Like, have you seen a hippopotami?
(09:11):
It sounds so idyllic, But if it does, it's homely
as a steam roller that is going to charge your
face and trample your Yeah, they were under the mistaken
impression that they were very docile, because they're big and lumbering.
In most depictions. If you've ever seen a hippo run,
it's terrifying, But in most depictions you see them kind
(09:32):
of floating in the water, looking very chill. I think
that led people to believe, Yeah, if there was some
false testimony along the way, that they were going to
be completely easy to handle. If there were an award
for like the most angry dangerous herbivores, I think it
might go to two hippo's. So in March, a bill
(09:55):
was introduced in the U. S. House of Representatives called
H one by Brussard. This bill proposed that two d
and fifty thousand dollars be appropriated to import animals into
United States for useful purposes. That came to be known
as the Hippo Bill, with Burnham's influence. The bill was
endorsed by former President Teddy Roosevelt, and prominent news outlets,
(10:18):
which included The New York Times, were praising the hippo concept.
Plans for hippo ranching, We're starting to gain serious support.
Mutual friends connected Broussard, who was called cousin Bob by
his constituents with Burnham, and the men first met the
morning that the bill was introduced for discussion. And Burnham
(10:40):
had previously attempted to secure funding for an animal import
project of his own, like completely separate from this, but
it actually got bogged down by politicking in Washington. But
now Burnham felt like with Brussard he had a political
ally and they might actually get some traction. When Burnham
spoke to the Congressional Committee, he urged them to consider
the fact that most of the animals Americans eat were
(11:02):
imported from Europe, with the exception of the Turkey, So
why should hippos be seen any differently. He felt like
after the initial adjustment, hippo meat would come to seem
just as natural a part of the North American diet
as beef or chicken. I have to admit when I
read that very my research. It gave me such a giggle,
like just the thought of, of course, hippos are a
(11:24):
natural part of our lives, because they're so not. Additionally,
Burnham pointed out that other seemingly exotic animals had been
imported in more recent times, such as ostriches. He actually
brought up the camels that we talked about in our
US camel Core episode, and to bolster the argument that
imported animals, no matter how alien they may initially seem
(11:45):
to the US, often fared well once they were imported.
Uh he mentioned that he himself had seen camels. These
were the offspring of those that had been part of
the abandoned military plan to use them, thriving on their
own in the American Southwest. So to Burnham has absolutely
sealed the case. It provided clear evidence that adaptation of
imported animals was absolutely possible and even highly likely beyond
(12:08):
what we expected. I guess they were not really aware
of what was happening with rabbits in Australia. So Docane's
testimony before the committee was more theatrical. Here's how it opened.
I am as much one of the African animals as
the hippopotamus end quote. He told the hearing that hippo's
(12:30):
were easy to raise and domesticate, and that they were
perfect animals for livestock, and that the meat was delicious.
So obviously we know that this is a lot of
it is false. Hippos are widely regarded as one of
the most dangerous species in Africa. He also suggested numerous
other animals they could consider importing from Africa and including
(12:53):
to rafts and elephants. So, between Burnham's confident, logical approach
to the issue at hand and Ducane's enthusiastic flare and
alleged expertise in handling wild animals, the hearing really convinced
a lot of people that hippo ranching had a very
real future in the United States. So the two men
traveled to Louisiana with Brussar to discuss next steps so
(13:16):
that they could set up the new Food Society. Despite
having been enemies literally assigned with killing one another during wartime,
the pair of them seemed to have a lot of
respect for one another and they were really united by
this one common hippo goal. Yeah, a lot of a
councils say that Um Burnham really felt like Ducane had
(13:40):
gotten kind of a raw deal out of life, and
that if he could kind of help him along this
path of kind of like legitimate enterprise, that he would
help make a better man out of him, and he
could really help him turn his life around. But of
course he was a flim flamm even during this um,
as evidenced by the fact that he was talking about
how incredibly easy it is to domesticate hip Bo's UH.
(14:04):
At some point while they were forming this new society UH,
an inventor named Elliott Lord joined the group. It's unclear
how this exactly happened, how he became part of it,
and there's some speculation that he kind of just managed
to insert himself into what had been a trio with
no invite at all. He does seem to have rubbed
(14:25):
Burnham the wrong way, in part because he wanted to
go immediately to potential financial backers asking for money, whereas
Burnham wanted to take a little time before doing that
and put together a full detailed plan for what they
were then calling the New Food Supply Society before they
started asking people to donate. He did not want his
friends and associates because it was a lot of people
(14:47):
that Burnham knew that they were going to be approaching
to feel pressured to buy into something that wasn't thought
through and could potentially cave in its infancy, and basically
be throwing their money away. During a lecture at the
Humane Association of California, Burnham's desire for a clear plan
was really apparent. He said, quote, let us not make
(15:08):
the same mistakes again. This nation has reached a stage
in its development where we should take stock of our
assets and make full use of them in an intelligent manner.
The country had really overused its resources, that is, as
it established and then overthrottled the beef industry. So with
the Hippo Plan, Burnham was insistent that a more careful
(15:29):
strategy should be established from the very outset. Now, if
you have ever been part of a startup or a
fledgling project that had difficulty getting off the ground, the
way things start to play out at this point may
sound very familiar. These four men all had very different
approaches to this new venture, and it caused a lot
(15:49):
of problems. Elliott Lord seemed to want to do a
lot of glad handing and hustling for backers, without much
in the way of actual money materializing from these words.
Duquesne was writing article after article about African animals and
their adaptability, and he felt like he was the only
one doing any real work, and he was doing it
(16:10):
at his own expense. So he started to feel put
upon about it, which is very funny to me, because
he was making things up. Yeah, it wasn't like he
was spending a lot of time on research. No. He
also grew frustrated that some papers were crediting other men
for this idea, and he wanted to get the attribution,
especially because he felt like it was his personality that
(16:31):
had given the Hippo plan real credibility. He yeah, he
wanted pretty much all of the credit, even though really
he was just kind of a jazz hander in that
whole group. H Burnham meanwhile, was speaking with colleagues. He
was giving occasional talks about organizing the New Food Supply Society,
and he kept trying to stay positive, but he was
(16:53):
really getting frustrated at the lack of real progress as well,
and he even kind of sympathized with Duchane. It was like,
I know, this is not going the way we thought.
Um Broussard, who you know, had initially put this whole
thing together, seemed to be really busy with politics, so
he would answer queries from Burnham, but he would simply
(17:14):
tell him that nothing was really happening. Yet he was
still laying groundwork. He was no real progress had materialized.
Burnham went to Washington in early spring of nineteen eleven
to talk to be Sorde about reintroducing the Hippo Bill.
As part of the plan, Burnham would go to Africa
once again to look for suitable animals and gain additional
information to help build out the plan, but he never
(17:37):
made the trip because the revolution in Mexico and he
had to drop everything and look after some other business
dealings there. Yeah, just as Burnham's other work called him
away from the Hippo Plan, the other men that were
involved in this project eventually got absorbed in their other
activities as well. The Hippo Bill was never like the
(17:59):
entire focus of any of their work or lives. You know,
they all still had other things going on the side.
So in short, the whole thing just kind of fizzled out.
I would like to say thank goodness just because based
on like I don't actually know whether hippos would wind
up flourishing in the southeastern United States, but based on
(18:20):
other efforts to do things by introducing non native species.
I just imagine a giant barrier wall walling off all
of what used to be Louisiana and possibly adjacent states,
also with like a big sign saying Louisiana is overrun
with hippos. That will kill you. I feel like you're
(18:45):
gonna have hippo nightmares after this. I might, but first
we're going to have a break for a word from
a sponsor. So while things kind of fizzled out, that's
not really the end of the story. Um as his
focus on setting up the Food Supply Society waned. Frederick
Burnham worked in Mexico. He was setting up copper mines
(19:05):
and other projects before he moved to t Lair County, California,
for a quieter life than Pasadena offered. Pasadena had been
quiet when he and his wife first moved there, but
eventually it grew into a bigger town and he didn't
like that. He wanted to live out in the middle
of nowhere, so he also became heavily involved in the
preparedness movement. Ducaine had been a very busy man both
(19:27):
before and after the Hippo Bill initiative ground to a halt. So,
as we mentioned earlier, he was a con man and
that kept him busy for a while. Yeah, in addition
to using his connection to the Hippo Bill to get
funding for a variety of ventures, from things like banquet
events where he would speak about his knowledge of African animals,
(19:48):
to trying to stage a trip to South America where
he would film uh and then return to the US
to make it into a multi media event detailing his trip.
He basically was just trying to parlay his connection to
all of these people into more activities and money for himself.
The start of World War One really shifted Duquesne's alias
work into high gear. He was in South America when
(20:12):
the war broke out with his wife and he sent
her home to the States. He still held a firm
hatred for Britain left over from the Second Border War
and the destruction of his family, so he thought the U.
S should join forces with Germany to crush Britain, and
if the US wouldn't, he would do his part to
bring his sworn enemy down. It's a whole other story
(20:36):
that could easily be its own episode, but he basically
assumed more than a dozen other identities as he attempted
to sabotage Britain using his explosives knowledge. Yeah, he was busy.
He just had some connections with the Germans. Um was
basically on kind of a uh revenge trip, still based
(20:57):
on that previous Um war that he was part of,
and his work led him eventually to being wanted for
murder by Great Britain. So he did the only sensible
thing for a conman, and he faked his own death.
He basically planted the story in the media, using one
of his aliases as a byline, and he like sent
this in as a freelance writer, so it got picked
up and reported. But then he decided pretty quickly after
(21:20):
that that he actually didn't want to be dead, so
he instead made up a crazy story that kind of
painted him as this hero and that he survived this
attack and no, no, we thought he was dead, but
really he barely survived. Duchesne was finally arrested in New
York for insurance fraud in late nineteen seventeen. Burnham had
been consulted by police when they realized that the man
(21:43):
they were hunting had worked with him and Broussard on
the Hippo Bill. There is so much more to both
Burnham and Duquesne stories. Each of these men, as I've
said a couple of times, could easily be an episode
on their own, and they very well maybe at some
point because like seriously, Duchene even ran a I ring
in World War Two. There is a lot to talk
about with both of these gents. But back to hippos. Now,
(22:07):
we have plenty of meat in the United States and
we don't have hippos, So how did that happen? So eventually,
the idea that people have been focusing on for such
a long time of bringing in non native species into
a space that couldn't be farmed through traditional means i e.
These swamp lands, was replaced by the idea of landscape engineering.
(22:28):
So instead of finding uses for seemingly unfarmable land, agricultural
industry found ways to turn that land into usable pastures
and feed lots. As for the water highest, since that
the hippos were supposed to be eating, that is still
a problem. Cool temperatures outside of the South keep it
from spreading quite as far, but in the country's more warm,
(22:50):
moist areas in the South. It has to be really
carefully managed. Frederick Russell Burnham eventually died of a heart
attack in He was eighty six at the time, and
Ducane died in ninety six at the age of seventy eight. Yeah,
after he had done a stint in prison. Like I said,
there's there's a lot of interesting tales that go along
(23:12):
with those two men, and I actually hope to tell
them at some point in time. Uh. In the meantime, though,
I will tell you a tale of email. And it
is another cool connection history that someone has. And this
is from our listener Haley, and she says, I love
your show. It helps me through housework and other boring activities.
And I super love that you did an episode on
(23:33):
Filo T. Farnsworth. So that one was a while back,
but she just recently wrote us. She says, Filo as
my great grandmother's cousin. I actually found that out by
accident one day in fourth grade when we lived in Idaho.
I read his name in a textbook and saw that
he was in the same area of Idaho as my
great grandma. My great grandma's name was Vonda Farnworth. There
(23:53):
was a long standing story in the family that three
Farnsworth brothers arrived in America together, and however, at Ellis Island,
one brother, my great great great question Mark Grandpa, accidentally
had his s dropped. With this story and other evidence,
I approached my mom and when we looked at our
family trees, lo and behold there is Filo T. Farnsworth,
a cousin. I didn't know a whole lot about him,
(24:14):
so I appreciated your podcast on him. I was super
excited to realize that he went to bring hup Young
University since I graduated from their last year. Hey, Lee,
that's so cool. It's such a cool connection to history.
I always love when people realize that they are related
to or otherwise connected to someone we've talked about. I
sort of feel like it's that thing that I never
let go of talking about, but like we are all
connected to history and we're all part of it, and
(24:35):
that's why I love it. So if you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We're on Facebook
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(24:57):
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Type in the word hippo in the search bar, and
one of the fun things that comes up is amazing
animals the Hippopotamus quiz, and they are quite amazing, if deadly. Uh.
You would like to research that, you can do that
(25:18):
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(25:45):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
it has to work st
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And this was
the continuing story of the attempts to bring hippos to
the US as a livestock animal. And in the first
(00:23):
part of this two parter, we talked about the meat
shortage in the US in the early nineteen hundreds that
initiated this desire to brainstorm new animals that might fill
in that meat gap. And we talked a lot about
one of the men in particular who worked to bring
hippos from Africa, who was Frederick Burnham. And today we're
going to pick up with another man who was brought
onto the project by Louisiana representative Robert Broussard, and then
(00:47):
we will discuss how all these men work together and
what happened to this hippo plan. So there's a little
uncertainty about exactly when Frederick Duquine was born. Allegedly it
was December one, seventy seven in the Cape Colony in
South Africa. There's some confusion, in part because his life
(01:08):
was more like a series of concocted details and varying identities.
Almost all of his biography comes with question marks. Even
his physical description shifts depending on the source. His hair
color is pretty universally described as dark, although sometimes dark
means black and sometimes it means brown. Likewise, his eye
(01:31):
color is sometimes brown and sometimes blue and sometimes hazel,
depending on who's doing the telling. Yeah, he's We've talked
about conmon before and how it's often difficult to pin
down their biographical details, and he definitely falls in line
with that whole system. Um. His father was a hunter
and he was often away from the family, and so
(01:53):
his mother and his blind uncle John raised him for
the most part, and during his youth he watched his
hippocarcus is were butchered for meat, uh, and he and
the other kids would collect the unused fat to sell
to soap makers from France. See how everything's connected again.
I didn't mean to connect to our bodies turning to
soap episode, but I kind of do on that one.
(02:14):
By accident, Duquesne was in Belgium and military school in
his family sent for him to come home. He was
needed to serve in the Boor military in the second
Boorer war, so at this point the Boars were being
run into prison camps by British forces, and the homes
that they were forced out of were being destroyed. It's
estimated that at their fullest, these prison camps contained a
(02:37):
hundred and sixty thousand Boars, thousand of whom did not
survive the ordeal. To deal with being vastly outnumbered by
the British forces, the Boor military, which was pretty rag tag,
takes to a more guerrilla approach to warfare. Ducane really
excelled at this looser, more stealthy style, and he wound
(03:00):
up working as a military courier. This conflict could be
its own episode easily. But during this conflict, the British
warfare tactics against the Boers were brutal and horrifying, and
Ducane's family was not immune. His father had died not
long after Fritz had been called to war, and Ducine
eventually learned that British troops had brutalized and murdered his
uncle that had helped raised him and his sister as well,
(03:24):
and that they had brutalized and kidnapped his mother disguised
as a British soldier. Ducane found his mother in a
concentration camp. She was at this point barely clinging to life.
She had an infant with her that was conceived with
one of her captors who had raped her. Both of
them were suffering from syphilis to a point that they
were too far gone to be saved, so they were
(03:45):
basically dying the most horrible way imaginable, and this, not surprisingly,
is believed to have significantly hardened Duquesne. This event really
is always pointed out as like the moment where he
shut down a little bit. He became a much colder
human being at this point. Despite being captured on several
occasions they were too documented and then more were suspected,
(04:08):
he always managed to escape, although one of his escape
attempts involved using a spoon to dig a tunnel in
a wall, only to have the wall collapse and pin
him there when he tried to go out the tunnel
he had dug. There's also a tale that during one
of his stints as a captive, he managed to seduce
the jailor's daughter. Yeah, basically everything you might read and
(04:29):
like a penny novel of the time, happened to him.
So again, we don't these are largely his accounts, so
we don't know how much of it's true and how
much of it isn't, But both of those are fun
to think about. Uh. Decane's biggest escape, though, which is
said to have happened after he was captured while plotting
a particularly massive explosion, was actually orchestrated through Morse code.
(04:50):
He collaborated using the code with prisoners that were in
other cells. These men, there were three of them all together,
jumped into the sea. They were still bound at this
point point, and they managed to live on the run
for several weeks before they reached a port town where
Duquesne actually became a pimp for a brief while. Again
his story is so wacky. Uh. He only had that
(05:12):
job for about a week, just long enough so that
he could steal the identity of one of the John's
involved in this prostitution plan and set sail for the
US under that assumed name. Decane's charm was so effective
that he ended up after a time, becoming an advisor
to President Theodore Roosevelt on a plan to travel to
Africa and hunt wild game. Once he had rubbed elbows
(05:35):
at the White House, he used that credential to bolster
his image in his career. At first he wrote newspaper
columns about the president's trip, and then he turned his
position and started writing smear pieces about how Roosevelt was
actually a pampered tourist. He even went so far as
to try to have the President prevented from returning to
the United States by suggesting that he was going to
(05:56):
bring back a deadly contagious disease. Yeah, it seems like
Ducane was not so much about loyalty as he was
about maximizing his own benefit in any given situation. And
this is just one example. Uh. And around this same time,
con Man Fritz had also started up a one man
touring stage show, and this was called East Africa, The
(06:17):
Wonderland of Roosevelt's Hunt. So he was still trying to
capitalize on kind of the fervor and excitement around this
trip Roosevelt was taking. And it's actually because of this
one man showed that Louisiana representative Broussard found him. So
at this point, as you may recall from our first
episode in this two parter, at this point, the US
(06:38):
was dealing with what they called the meat question, which
was how were they going to feed all of these
people that had immigrated into the US and the bolstering
population as they were running out of meat. And this
meat question, as it was called in the press, really
threatened to chip away at the idea that the U
s could sustain its own people and continue to grow. Uh.
(06:58):
You know, it was kind of a point of it
as well as being an issue just a survival for
a lot of people, and so Representative Broussard, like many
other politicians, really wanted to solve this food gap problem.
Once the idea of introducing hippos to the South came
Upstired sent a field agent to survey the Louisiana swamp
(07:20):
land and give an assessment about how viable it was
going to be to introduce hippos into that environment. The
report was titled Why and How to Place Hippopotamus in
the Louisiana Lowlands, and it indicated that the swamps would
provide a great environment for hippos. It was actually estimated
by an official at the Agricultural Department that a herd
(07:42):
of hippos eating through the swamps free range would produce
an estimated million tons of meat each year. Word also
circulated that hippo meat was delicious as well as potentially plentiful,
particularly the brisket area. So, just in case anyone doesn't
know cuts of meat, the brisket is normally a cut
of meat from the lower chest of an animal, and
(08:04):
The New York Times dubbed these proposed cuts of hippo
meat from this brisket area as Lake cow Bacon. So
Representative Broussard was winning people over with this idea. His
supporters really thought it was an ingenious solution to the
multiple problems it was set out to address. A lot
of them volunteered to help with capture and transport of
(08:28):
these beasts. He had not only come up with a
plan that seemed like it could solve the meat shortage
and the water hyacinth problem, but it also appealed to
the sense of American pride and problem solving. The whole
candy attitude of this hippo plan, Lippincott's Monthly magazine wrote, quote,
this animal homely as a steam roller, is the embodiment
(08:50):
of salvation. Peace, plenty and contentment lie before us, and
a new life with new experiences, new opportunities, new vigor,
new romance. It's folded in that golden future, when the
meadows and the bayous of our southern lands shall swarm
with herds of hippopotami. Like, have you seen a hippopotami?
(09:11):
It sounds so idyllic, But if it does, it's homely
as a steam roller that is going to charge your
face and trample your Yeah, they were under the mistaken
impression that they were very docile, because they're big and lumbering.
In most depictions. If you've ever seen a hippo run,
it's terrifying, But in most depictions you see them kind
(09:32):
of floating in the water, looking very chill. I think
that led people to believe, Yeah, if there was some
false testimony along the way, that they were going to
be completely easy to handle. If there were an award
for like the most angry dangerous herbivores, I think it
might go to two hippo's. So in March, a bill
(09:55):
was introduced in the U. S. House of Representatives called
H one by Brussard. This bill proposed that two d
and fifty thousand dollars be appropriated to import animals into
United States for useful purposes. That came to be known
as the Hippo Bill, with Burnham's influence. The bill was
endorsed by former President Teddy Roosevelt, and prominent news outlets,
(10:18):
which included The New York Times, were praising the hippo concept.
Plans for hippo ranching, We're starting to gain serious support.
Mutual friends connected Broussard, who was called cousin Bob by
his constituents with Burnham, and the men first met the
morning that the bill was introduced for discussion. And Burnham
(10:40):
had previously attempted to secure funding for an animal import
project of his own, like completely separate from this, but
it actually got bogged down by politicking in Washington. But
now Burnham felt like with Brussard he had a political
ally and they might actually get some traction. When Burnham
spoke to the Congressional Committee, he urged them to consider
the fact that most of the animals Americans eat were
(11:02):
imported from Europe, with the exception of the Turkey, So
why should hippos be seen any differently. He felt like
after the initial adjustment, hippo meat would come to seem
just as natural a part of the North American diet
as beef or chicken. I have to admit when I
read that very my research. It gave me such a giggle,
like just the thought of, of course, hippos are a
(11:24):
natural part of our lives, because they're so not. Additionally,
Burnham pointed out that other seemingly exotic animals had been
imported in more recent times, such as ostriches. He actually
brought up the camels that we talked about in our
US camel Core episode, and to bolster the argument that
imported animals, no matter how alien they may initially seem
(11:45):
to the US, often fared well once they were imported.
Uh he mentioned that he himself had seen camels. These
were the offspring of those that had been part of
the abandoned military plan to use them, thriving on their
own in the American Southwest. So to Burnham has absolutely
sealed the case. It provided clear evidence that adaptation of
imported animals was absolutely possible and even highly likely beyond
(12:08):
what we expected. I guess they were not really aware
of what was happening with rabbits in Australia. So Docane's
testimony before the committee was more theatrical. Here's how it opened.
I am as much one of the African animals as
the hippopotamus end quote. He told the hearing that hippo's
(12:30):
were easy to raise and domesticate, and that they were
perfect animals for livestock, and that the meat was delicious.
So obviously we know that this is a lot of
it is false. Hippos are widely regarded as one of
the most dangerous species in Africa. He also suggested numerous
other animals they could consider importing from Africa and including
(12:53):
to rafts and elephants. So, between Burnham's confident, logical approach
to the issue at hand and Ducane's enthusiastic flare and
alleged expertise in handling wild animals, the hearing really convinced
a lot of people that hippo ranching had a very
real future in the United States. So the two men
traveled to Louisiana with Brussar to discuss next steps so
(13:16):
that they could set up the new Food Society. Despite
having been enemies literally assigned with killing one another during wartime,
the pair of them seemed to have a lot of
respect for one another and they were really united by
this one common hippo goal. Yeah, a lot of a
councils say that Um Burnham really felt like Ducane had
(13:40):
gotten kind of a raw deal out of life, and
that if he could kind of help him along this
path of kind of like legitimate enterprise, that he would
help make a better man out of him, and he
could really help him turn his life around. But of
course he was a flim flamm even during this um,
as evidenced by the fact that he was talking about
how incredibly easy it is to domesticate hip Bo's UH.
(14:04):
At some point while they were forming this new society UH,
an inventor named Elliott Lord joined the group. It's unclear
how this exactly happened, how he became part of it,
and there's some speculation that he kind of just managed
to insert himself into what had been a trio with
no invite at all. He does seem to have rubbed
(14:25):
Burnham the wrong way, in part because he wanted to
go immediately to potential financial backers asking for money, whereas
Burnham wanted to take a little time before doing that
and put together a full detailed plan for what they
were then calling the New Food Supply Society before they
started asking people to donate. He did not want his
friends and associates because it was a lot of people
(14:47):
that Burnham knew that they were going to be approaching
to feel pressured to buy into something that wasn't thought
through and could potentially cave in its infancy, and basically
be throwing their money away. During a lecture at the
Humane Association of California, Burnham's desire for a clear plan
was really apparent. He said, quote, let us not make
(15:08):
the same mistakes again. This nation has reached a stage
in its development where we should take stock of our
assets and make full use of them in an intelligent manner.
The country had really overused its resources, that is, as
it established and then overthrottled the beef industry. So with
the Hippo Plan, Burnham was insistent that a more careful
(15:29):
strategy should be established from the very outset. Now, if
you have ever been part of a startup or a
fledgling project that had difficulty getting off the ground, the
way things start to play out at this point may
sound very familiar. These four men all had very different
approaches to this new venture, and it caused a lot
(15:49):
of problems. Elliott Lord seemed to want to do a
lot of glad handing and hustling for backers, without much
in the way of actual money materializing from these words.
Duquesne was writing article after article about African animals and
their adaptability, and he felt like he was the only
one doing any real work, and he was doing it
(16:10):
at his own expense. So he started to feel put
upon about it, which is very funny to me, because
he was making things up. Yeah, it wasn't like he
was spending a lot of time on research. No. He
also grew frustrated that some papers were crediting other men
for this idea, and he wanted to get the attribution,
especially because he felt like it was his personality that
(16:31):
had given the Hippo plan real credibility. He yeah, he
wanted pretty much all of the credit, even though really
he was just kind of a jazz hander in that
whole group. H Burnham meanwhile, was speaking with colleagues. He
was giving occasional talks about organizing the New Food Supply Society,
and he kept trying to stay positive, but he was
(16:53):
really getting frustrated at the lack of real progress as well,
and he even kind of sympathized with Duchane. It was like,
I know, this is not going the way we thought.
Um Broussard, who you know, had initially put this whole
thing together, seemed to be really busy with politics, so
he would answer queries from Burnham, but he would simply
(17:14):
tell him that nothing was really happening. Yet he was
still laying groundwork. He was no real progress had materialized.
Burnham went to Washington in early spring of nineteen eleven
to talk to be Sorde about reintroducing the Hippo Bill.
As part of the plan, Burnham would go to Africa
once again to look for suitable animals and gain additional
information to help build out the plan, but he never
(17:37):
made the trip because the revolution in Mexico and he
had to drop everything and look after some other business
dealings there. Yeah, just as Burnham's other work called him
away from the Hippo Plan, the other men that were
involved in this project eventually got absorbed in their other
activities as well. The Hippo Bill was never like the
(17:59):
entire focus of any of their work or lives. You know,
they all still had other things going on the side.
So in short, the whole thing just kind of fizzled out.
I would like to say thank goodness just because based
on like I don't actually know whether hippos would wind
up flourishing in the southeastern United States, but based on
(18:20):
other efforts to do things by introducing non native species.
I just imagine a giant barrier wall walling off all
of what used to be Louisiana and possibly adjacent states,
also with like a big sign saying Louisiana is overrun
with hippos. That will kill you. I feel like you're
(18:45):
gonna have hippo nightmares after this. I might, but first
we're going to have a break for a word from
a sponsor. So while things kind of fizzled out, that's
not really the end of the story. Um as his
focus on setting up the Food Supply Society waned. Frederick
Burnham worked in Mexico. He was setting up copper mines
(19:05):
and other projects before he moved to t Lair County, California,
for a quieter life than Pasadena offered. Pasadena had been
quiet when he and his wife first moved there, but
eventually it grew into a bigger town and he didn't
like that. He wanted to live out in the middle
of nowhere, so he also became heavily involved in the
preparedness movement. Ducaine had been a very busy man both
(19:27):
before and after the Hippo Bill initiative ground to a halt. So,
as we mentioned earlier, he was a con man and
that kept him busy for a while. Yeah, in addition
to using his connection to the Hippo Bill to get
funding for a variety of ventures, from things like banquet
events where he would speak about his knowledge of African animals,
(19:48):
to trying to stage a trip to South America where
he would film uh and then return to the US
to make it into a multi media event detailing his trip.
He basically was just trying to parlay his connection to
all of these people into more activities and money for himself.
The start of World War One really shifted Duquesne's alias
work into high gear. He was in South America when
(20:12):
the war broke out with his wife and he sent
her home to the States. He still held a firm
hatred for Britain left over from the Second Border War
and the destruction of his family, so he thought the U.
S should join forces with Germany to crush Britain, and
if the US wouldn't, he would do his part to
bring his sworn enemy down. It's a whole other story
(20:36):
that could easily be its own episode, but he basically
assumed more than a dozen other identities as he attempted
to sabotage Britain using his explosives knowledge. Yeah, he was busy.
He just had some connections with the Germans. Um was
basically on kind of a uh revenge trip, still based
(20:57):
on that previous Um war that he was part of,
and his work led him eventually to being wanted for
murder by Great Britain. So he did the only sensible
thing for a conman, and he faked his own death.
He basically planted the story in the media, using one
of his aliases as a byline, and he like sent
this in as a freelance writer, so it got picked
up and reported. But then he decided pretty quickly after
(21:20):
that that he actually didn't want to be dead, so
he instead made up a crazy story that kind of
painted him as this hero and that he survived this
attack and no, no, we thought he was dead, but
really he barely survived. Duchesne was finally arrested in New
York for insurance fraud in late nineteen seventeen. Burnham had
been consulted by police when they realized that the man
(21:43):
they were hunting had worked with him and Broussard on
the Hippo Bill. There is so much more to both
Burnham and Duquesne stories. Each of these men, as I've
said a couple of times, could easily be an episode
on their own, and they very well maybe at some
point because like seriously, Duchene even ran a I ring
in World War Two. There is a lot to talk
about with both of these gents. But back to hippos. Now,
(22:07):
we have plenty of meat in the United States and
we don't have hippos, So how did that happen? So eventually,
the idea that people have been focusing on for such
a long time of bringing in non native species into
a space that couldn't be farmed through traditional means i e.
These swamp lands, was replaced by the idea of landscape engineering.
(22:28):
So instead of finding uses for seemingly unfarmable land, agricultural
industry found ways to turn that land into usable pastures
and feed lots. As for the water highest, since that
the hippos were supposed to be eating, that is still
a problem. Cool temperatures outside of the South keep it
from spreading quite as far, but in the country's more warm,
(22:50):
moist areas in the South. It has to be really
carefully managed. Frederick Russell Burnham eventually died of a heart
attack in He was eighty six at the time, and
Ducane died in ninety six at the age of seventy eight. Yeah,
after he had done a stint in prison. Like I said,
there's there's a lot of interesting tales that go along
(23:12):
with those two men, and I actually hope to tell
them at some point in time. Uh. In the meantime, though,
I will tell you a tale of email. And it
is another cool connection history that someone has. And this
is from our listener Haley, and she says, I love
your show. It helps me through housework and other boring activities.
And I super love that you did an episode on
(23:33):
Filo T. Farnsworth. So that one was a while back,
but she just recently wrote us. She says, Filo as
my great grandmother's cousin. I actually found that out by
accident one day in fourth grade when we lived in Idaho.
I read his name in a textbook and saw that
he was in the same area of Idaho as my
great grandma. My great grandma's name was Vonda Farnworth. There
(23:53):
was a long standing story in the family that three
Farnsworth brothers arrived in America together, and however, at Ellis Island,
one brother, my great great great question Mark Grandpa, accidentally
had his s dropped. With this story and other evidence,
I approached my mom and when we looked at our
family trees, lo and behold there is Filo T. Farnsworth,
a cousin. I didn't know a whole lot about him,
(24:14):
so I appreciated your podcast on him. I was super
excited to realize that he went to bring hup Young
University since I graduated from their last year. Hey, Lee,
that's so cool. It's such a cool connection to history.
I always love when people realize that they are related
to or otherwise connected to someone we've talked about. I
sort of feel like it's that thing that I never
let go of talking about, but like we are all
connected to history and we're all part of it, and
(24:35):
that's why I love it. So if you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We're on Facebook
dot com slash Misston History. We're on Twitter at misst
in History. We're at Misston History dot temller dot com,
and we're on pinterest dot com slash missed in History.
You can purchase stuff you missed in history class goodies
for yourself or your friends or loved ones at Misston
(24:57):
History dot spreadshirt dot com. If you would like to
learn a little bit more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our parents site how stuff works.
Type in the word hippo in the search bar, and
one of the fun things that comes up is amazing
animals the Hippopotamus quiz, and they are quite amazing, if deadly. Uh.
You would like to research that, you can do that
(25:18):
at our parents site. As I said, howso work dot com.
If you would like to connect more with us, you
can do so at missed in history dot com, where
Tracy and I have put together show notes for all
of the episodes we've worked on together, as well as
uh an archive of all of the episodes of the
show ever and at the occasional blog post, and you
can check that out at missed in history dot com
(25:45):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
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