Skull and Bones of Hero the Elephant
Vermillion, South Dakota
The W.H. Over Museum is a nice museum. Or, at least, it's probably a nice museum. We didn't inspect the whole place. We came here to visit with the bones of Hero.
Maxine Johnson, president of the museum's board of directors, showed us around. She told us that the museum created a great exhibit for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, but that not a lot of people saw it. They were probably too busy looking at the bullet-riddled skull of Hero.
Hero was a circus elephant, moved from town to town to entertain the locals. This was at a time, over a hundred years ago, when most Americans expected giant captive animals to provide a good show, and to behave themselves.
Hero weighed almost five tons and was the main attraction of the Orton Circus. He was a well-behaved elephant. But on May 14, 1916, in Elkton, South Dakota, he went crazy. Some blamed a "bulling spell" (i.e., he was randy). Some thought that the cold and snowy weather made him mean. Or... it might have had something to do with his keeper, Henry Newton, who failed to dope Hero by feeding him rosin, which was a common practice at the time, and then tried to flog the elephant after he bumped the water wagon.
Note to humans: Do not flog an elephant. Hero grabbed Henry Newton and threw him 30 feet. Newton tried to crawl under a wagon, but Hero knocked it over and crushed it. He then attacked two ponies with his teeth (he had no tusks) before stomping them flat. Hero tried to do the same to Newton, and only failed because that patch of ground was soft and muddy.
By this time the circus folk had broken out the firearms and were blasting away. Townspeople joined in. The bullets, however, only made Hero more angry. He stomped out of town and into the fields. Local farmers joined the shooting spree. Hero roamed the countryside for over 12 hours before he was brought down with a shot to the head. For all of the stomping and crushing and the flying projectiles, no people were killed. Only the ponies -- and Hero.
Elkton is 120 miles from the W.H. Over Museum, but its director quickly realized the value of Hero as an exhibit. William Henry Over grabbed Hero's bones -- the elephant had been gutted and skinned -- and and brought them here. According to Maxine, Mr. Over was very thorough in securing legal title to the bones. Elkton hasn't been able to get them back since, despite years of trying (The Community Museum in Elkton does display the gun used to kill Hero and a piece of luggage made from his skin.). "Hero is here to stay," Maxine told us. "They're not gonna get him."
Hero's bones are exhibited in a corner, flanked by stuffed dead animals and a stretched python skin. His skull is on a raised platform within a semicircle of tibiae and femurs. Photos along a back wall show men standing atop his carcass in a treeless field. The display has a 1950s feel to it, as we've seen in some other, timeless museums; Hero has obviously been here for many years. Children are encouraged to touch the leg bones.
We asked Maxine, who often acts as a guide for visiting school groups, what kids think about the story of Hero. "They get very sad," she told us. "They feel bad that he couldn't get away."