Offbeat History: The American Hippo Ranch Plan, Part 1

An offbeat episode from 2015: In 1910, the U.S. a meat shortage, and a water hyacinth overgrowth problem. The obvious solution to the dilemma: Import hippos from Africa.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, Here is an episode from our ten episode
playlist that we're calling Offbeat History. Yeah, we're adding this
to our our regular publishing schedule as one kind of
big drop all at the same time on March nineteen,
and that is so that you have maybe have a
little bit of extra entertainment options available to you, particularly

(00:23):
if you are self quarantined or sheltering in place. Welcome
to Stuff you missed in History Class a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh So, the US,

(00:46):
as well as many other parts of the world, but
we're talking about the US today has a well established
farming tradition and livestock is a huge part of that.
So when you think about American farming, you may envision
herds of cattle, or pig farms or even free range
chick ends when you think about what the livestock landscape
looks like. But there was a time when a very
different animal was being considered as a potential source of meat.

(01:10):
Uh This is one of those episodes that turned into
two because there is so much wild and really enjoyable
stuff here, and even so uh, two of the main
characters could easily fill episodes on their own outside of
what we include in this episode. And there's even more
to this story than we can include in two episodes.
But today we're going to talk about those two men
in their early lives and what led them to a

(01:32):
really wild partnership where they were working to try to
convince the US Congress, the press, and wealthy investors that
hippo bacon was the food that should be on American plates.
I really did just say hippo bacon. That's a bad idea.
This is such a wild story because that in and
of itself is kind of like a when I have

(01:53):
told people that this is what I was researching to
talk about, that sends them into peals of laughter and
like they are very excited to talk about it. But
then there's so much more because this is a story
with spies in it, swampland congress wars, as well as
of course hippos. So in nineteen ten, the United States

(02:15):
was really facing a big meat shortage. Immigration had caused
a huge surge in population and the meat industry really
couldn't keep up. Its attempts to keep up had led
to some pretty dicey and disgusting practices, and additionally, overgrazing
of food animals had caused really serious damage to the
lands where cattle were normally raised. Things were becoming dire

(02:38):
enough that people were considering using dogs as food, which
is a normal part of cuisine and other parts of
the world, but it's definitely taboo in the United States. Yeah, basically,
there were a lot of people brainstorming a lot of
different ways that we could supplement the meat um supply
here in the US as things were getting really, really

(03:00):
quite dire for a lot of people. But the grazing
lands that still did work that we're still viable. We're
already occupied by cattle and a lot of them. As
we said, we're in terrible shape even for that. However,
one thing that is very prevalent, particularly in the Southeast,
are swamps and bayous, and they were not being used
for farming. They were largely regarded at this point as

(03:23):
waste land. And moreover, uh, the floating water hyacinth that
was found in these swamp lands was growing out of control.
Water hyacinth had originated in the Amazon Basin and it's
considered an invasive nuisance plant because it can choke up
natural waterways, and it's extremely heavy. An acre, which is
a little less than half a hector of these plants

(03:45):
can weigh as much as two hundred tons, which is
more than a hundred and eighty one thousand kilograms. And
the water hyacinth was introduced to the US in eighteen
eighty four at the New Orleans Exposition, and it was
a gift from the Japanese delegation. But once it was
accepted as a gift and moved into the area, it's

(04:07):
spread at a downright alarming rate. Water hyacinth actually grows
more quickly than any other tested plants. Within seventy years
of reaching Florida, this plant had covered an estimated hundred
and twenty six thousand acres that's fifty hectares of waterways,
and it made them very difficult to traverse by boat.
It was really clogging up the existing system I imagine,

(04:31):
crowding out other other plant and animal life. Correct to
fight the overgrowing plant species and to try to provide
a new answer to what the media was calling the
meat question, Robert Brussard, who was a congressman from Louisiana,
hatched a plan they would import hippos. The hippos would
theoretically eat all the hyacinth, and then they would be

(04:54):
used for their meat. But Brussard couldn't convince the rest
of Congress that his idea would work without help from
some experts. In addition to a researcher named William Newton
Irwin who actually specialized in fruit trees but was very
interested in the viability of this hippo idea, Brussar brought
two men together for his team of experts, named Frederick

(05:17):
Russell Burnham and Fritz Duchane. Frederick Russell Burnham was an
explorer and a really intense man. He's rumored to be
one of the potential inspirations for Indiana Jones. He thought
that quote civilizing Africa was an important effort. Yeah, that's
kind of just a quick We're going to talk a

(05:37):
lot more about him in a minute, but that sort
of gives you an idea of kind of who he
was in terms of being an explorer and a conqueror
of sorts. On the other hand, Fritz Duchaine was a chameleon. Uh.
He was, And this is one of those words that
were going to get a million pronunciation corrections on because
there are many different ways to say it, um the

(05:59):
Dutch or for CON's version, my understanding is Boer, but
Boer is very common in the when you're a native
English speaker, or even like just or even Bore. Yeah,
there are a lot of ways people say this word.
So his family were descendants of Dutch settlers who had

(06:21):
moved to Africa, and Duquesne really has a fascinating life story.
He used numerous aliases throughout his life and in many
ways was considered a grade A con man. Both Burnham
and Duquesne had fought in the Second Boer War on
opposite sides. The Second Boer War, also called the South
African War or the Anglo bor War, went on from

(06:45):
October eleventh eight to May thirty first, nineteen o two.
Great Britain went to war against two Bore republics, the
South African Republic and the Orange Free State. This was
an expensive war for Britain, though their troops really far
outnumbered the Boar troops at five hundred thousand British troops

(07:07):
to the Boers thousand. Yeah, you would think they were uh.
They they had the enemy so outgunned that it would
be a quick in and out, but it really costs
them a lot, both to send the people there in
the first place and to maintain it. Uh So, in
this war, Burnham worked as a spy for the British
and Duquesne as a spy for the Boers. The two
men were actually given missions to kill one another during

(07:29):
the conflict, although they probably never knew each other personally.
So that brings up the question of how did they
both end up working to bring hippos to Louisiana. So
we're gonna tell that story starting with talking about Burnham.
And first though, we're gonna have a brief word from
a sponsor. So Frederick Russell Burnham, as we said, we're

(08:00):
going to talk about him in a bit more detail,
was born in southern Minnesota in eighteen sixty one. So
during the Dakota War of eighteen sixty two and even
after that, the Burnhams often found themselves in danger being
white settlers in this area, and at times Frederick's father,
who was actually a Presbyterian minister, would arm himself to

(08:20):
protect his wife and child against attacks that were sometimes
made on white settlers, and there were several times they
found themselves in danger of being attacked. When Frederick was
two and his father Edwin was away, his mother Rebecca
saw a group of Lakoda men emerging from the forest
near their home. She knew that she could not run
from them while also carrying a toddler, so she hid

(08:43):
Frederick in a pile of corn and told him to
stay still and be quiet. She then ran six miles,
which is a little less than ten kilometers. Meanwhile, the
Lakota men she had seen burned the house down, but
little Frederick stayed quiet and still as he had been
instructed to do, and he was still waiting there silently

(09:04):
in the corn pile the next morning when his mother
got back. Yeah, that's one of those incidents where, when
he recounted it later, he would say that was like
the beginning of his training as a scout in a spy. Uh.
He stayed tough as nails throughout his childhood. At the
age of nine, he actually punctured a lung when a
log fell on him, but he recovered and he continued

(09:25):
to be very adventurous. He his spirit did not seem
dampened by this injury at all. The family moved briefly
to California, a couple of years later, although Edwin did
not live much longer than that, and after his death,
Rebecca returned east and Frederick, who was only thirteen at
the time, decided he was going to stay behind and
get a job, in part to pay off the money

(09:47):
that Rebecca had had to borrow to finance her travel
back home. He sort of famed for often riding horse
after horse to exhaustion, so he would basically just ride
a horse till it couldn't go anymore. He wouldn't take
a break, he would just switch to a new mount
when that previous one was exhausted, and then he would
continue to run messages. And he worked from a base

(10:07):
of operations in Los Angeles, and from there he ran
roots out to Anaheim, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. So he
just was kind of this tireless, hard working, super adventurous kid.
And again he was only thirteen when he was doing
all of this. When he was fourteen, he briefly lived
with relatives in Clinton, Iowa, but he became bored and

(10:28):
restless pretty quickly, so he ran away. A year later.
He made his way down the Mississippi in a stolen canoe,
eventually ending up in Texas. There he met an old
scout named Holmes, who taught him all about how to
make his way through varying types of terrain. Holmes and
other old timers in the area gave Burnham a whole
education in the skills he would need in survival uh

(10:52):
and you know, gave him the knowledge that he would
need to prosper on his own. Burnham also became a
really expert shooter during this time. He actually practiced to
shoot ambidextrously so that he would have equal skill in
both hands, and he really got to a point where
he had great precision. He also trained himself to handle

(11:12):
almost any hardship he might encounter on missions as a scout,
So he trained himself to go without food, sleep, and
water to endure great pain. And allegedly he trained himself
to slow his own heartbeat. And he developed this unique
food source that he would use throughout his life. UH

(11:33):
that enabled him to travel fairly light and stealthily, and
also so he would not have to cook as he traveled,
because if you are trying to travel on the download,
you don't want to be starting a campfire. So to
do this, he would pulverize dried venison into a powder,
and then he would mix that powder with flour and
bake this into little loaves that he could put in
his his little bag, and he could eat a little

(11:56):
bit of it each day and keep himself going. This
sort of made me think of it being the wild
West Scout version of Limbus. I always think that uh
limbus is a vegetarian food. But you know, that's just
me well, just in that it's like this thing that's
very sustaining and that you can carry for long periods
of time. It wasn't so much the content that made

(12:19):
me think of Limbus. So he tried his hand at
searching for gold in the American Southwest, but he only
met with success one time. He used the money that
he got from this one success to go back to Iowa,
where he returned to a young lady named Blanche Blick.
The two of them got married and moved to Pasadena
to start a citrus grove. They weren't very successful at

(12:41):
doing this, though, and his restlessness eventually led him to
speak adventure again. This time he headed for Africa with
his wife and their infant son, Roderick. The three of
them departed on New Year's Day, and eventually landed in
South Africa. So, while he was not a particularly big
and his reputation was enormous, and he first made a

(13:03):
name for himself as a freelance scout. So for a price,
he would, for example, creep into enemy territory in search
of information. He would patrol for interlopers, he would perform
discreet acts of sabotage, and he eventually got the nickname
King of Scouts for his skill and his stealth, and
he was described by the militaryman he sometimes served as

(13:24):
being half jack rabbit and half wolf. He was also
pretty disarming in social situations. He loved to tell stories
of his adventures in Africa and in the American Indian territories.
One tale of his skill at entertaining a gathering goes
that he was, you know, spending a tale at one
of his skirmishes that he had been in Africa, and

(13:45):
at one point in the middle of the story, he said,
we'll kill that snake when I finished this story, And
then he gestured casually to a rattlesnake that had been
heading towards the group and their outdoor gathering, but no
one else had noticed it before that point. Yeah, just
cools a cucumber. I'm going to get to that snake.
Let me finish what I was saying, which then becomes

(14:06):
a wonderful, hilarious story in and of itself. It's probably
no surprise then that a man like Burnham, who was
full of swagger and this sort of old school machiessm
was friends with Theodore Roosevelt. I swear I did not
mean to make a Roosevelt series, because I knew we
just talked about Alice. But in fact, Burnham made friends
with a lot of people in high places, particularly if

(14:27):
they were men that were like him, that were drawn
to adventure. They He just kind of always connected with
those kinds of people. While he was traveling in Rhodesia,
he became friends with Englishman Robert baden Powell, and eventually
Baden Powell would found the Boy Scouts, inspired in part
by Burnham's adventurous spirit and fortitude. And we're gonna continue

(14:48):
to talk about Burnham's life in the time he spent
in Africa, as well as his activities once he returned
to the US. After we have a brief word from
one of our sponsors, So we talked about how Burnham
was eating these like dried venison cake things, and he

(15:12):
continued throughout his life to eat other odd stuff in
the interest of not letting his stomach get in the
way of what he needed to do. He would live
off of milk and ox blood or stolen uncooked corn
during his adventures in Africa, even if these were misery
to eat. Yeah, if you've ever eaten uncooked corn, like
fresh not even entirely ripe corn, that is not easy

(15:35):
to eat. There are also stories that he would sometimes
eat rotten produce that had been discarded that he would
kind of snatch so that he would stay on the
d l keep himself fed, but not not necessarily in
the most delightful or yummy of ways. Uh. And while
the Burnhams were actually in Africa, they had a second child,
the daughter named Nada, and the family was actually caught

(15:57):
in the conflict of the Second Matabili War when they
were living just outside the city of Bulawayo. And this conflict,
combined with a horrible livestock virus, actually resulted in a
huge tragedy for Frederick. So, while this colony that they
were in was constantly under siege, his two year old
daughter not a developed an intense fever and she eventually
died and uh when Burnham identified the leader of the

(16:20):
uprising that had been behind this attack on the colony,
he is said to have tracked him to a cave
where he shot him, and Burnham would later write that
he the whole time this conflict was happening with this man,
where he was killing this man, he had these visions
of his wife clutching their dying daughter, and that sort
of drove him to this murder. He left Africa the

(16:40):
following year, chasing rumors of gold once again, but then
he abandoned that enterprise when he was called back to
Africa to serve in the Second Boer War. After that
war was over, he spoke with a great deal of
respect about the Boars, and especially he was impressed with
their lead scout and another man reporting to the lead
scout he went by the name Black Panther of the Veld.

(17:02):
He would later say that the Black Panther, who he
had actually spent the war trying to kill, was the
craftiest man he had ever met, and in truth, that
Black Panther was Fritz Duquesne. As we said at the
top of the episode, they had actually been assigned to
kill each other so that they could eliminate these very
stealthy scouts the other side each had. Burnham had actually

(17:22):
been captured during this conflict, but he managed to avoid
being identified by showing how very smart and philosophical he was,
since he knew that the description the Boers had of
him described him as an Offish American, and so he
kind of led this brief double life. But he eventually
made an escape in the dark of night, and he
spent the next week's cutting the Boers supply lines and

(17:44):
blowing up their railways after dodging a great deal of
fire while he was hunkered down in the brush, Burnham
was eventually retrieved by British forces and he was sent
to England to be treated for his injuries. He actually
met Winston Churchill on the ship to London. Soon Blanche
and the couple's third child, Bruce, joined him. Another tragedy struck, though,

(18:06):
because young Bruce later drowned in the Thames. Their oldest son, Roderick,
at this point, was nineteen and was in school in California.
He had actually had a premonition about Bruce's death, which
he relayed to his grandmother before they got the news
of the child's passing. The Burnham's returned to Pasadena once uh,
Frederick was recovered and they were still grieving. Uh So

(18:28):
they were morning and regrouping there. And it was during
this time that the scout began working on an article
that he would eventually publish in early nineteen ten. And
that article was called Transplanting African Animals. And this article,
once it came out, immediately got people talking, and because
of the meat shortage, all kinds of people wanted to
speak with Frederick Burnham. And that's where we're going to

(18:50):
cliffhan this one. In our next episode, we're going to
talk more about how Burnham and another wild character worked
with Robert Brussar to try to bring hippo's in the
United States as livestock, which still is a terrible idea,
but also terribly funny to think about. It's funny except

(19:11):
that hippos are actually really aggressive and territorial and they
will look just that murder. Only that gets left out
of a lot of the discussion. Thank you so much
for joining us today for this classic. If you have
heard any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook

(19:31):
you are l During the course of the episode that
might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we
have changed our email address again. You can now reach
us at history podcast at i heart radio dot com,
and we're all over social media at missed in History
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
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(19:52):
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hm