West by Southwest Ernie Bulow

THE LEGENDARY JACKALOPE

SYMBOL OF THE MODERN AMERICAN WEST

Up front I need to get something out of the way: bison are buffalo and vultures are buzzards and I refuse to change that. Frogs and toads are not the same animal, nor crows and ravens the same bird. On the other hand, jackalope is wrong on two accounts; first, that those cute little head mounts that were once a common sight in bars, bedrooms, motel lobbies, and the like almost never have antelope horns; second, the word police say that the American antelope is properly called a pronghorn— I see the two names together quite often—and the jackrabbit is actually a hare.

Now that’s out of the way, who wants to call them harealopes or jackadeer? Doesn’t have the same kick, does it? Stagbunny is another entry in literature. So jackalope it is. Horned rabbits have been around for a very long time. The ancient Persians had one, a Medieval book on animals actually pictures one.

But where did the first one in the West come from, and when? It is generally accepted that a Wyoming taxidermist named Herrick put a dead rabbit next to some antlers and the first jackalope sprang to life. This was in the early thirties. It went up in a local hotel, and the little bugger was an instant success. Herrick kept on making them, and when the public kept on buying, them other taxidermists took up the cause. I bought mine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, years ago, but the moths eventually ate it.

I would have chosen Texas as the birthplace because they have really huge jackrabbits, and rather puny deer—especially in the headgear department. To make a really effective jackalope, the rabbit has to be really big and the antlers (not horns, antelope have those) must seem in proportion. So, we know what a jackalope is (or ought to be), but what does it do, where did the mythological beast come from, what sound does it make, and how fast can it run? All very good questions. Discounting the taxidermy theory, the original one was said to be a cross

THESE TWO HEAD MOUNTS SHOW WONDERFUL IMAGINATION ON THE PART OF THE TAXIDERMIST, WHO TOOK A MORE INTERESTING APPROACH TO HIS WORK.

DEER ARE SOMETIMES FOUND WITH LOCKED HORNS FROM FIGHTING. between a small female antelope and a large jackrabbit. But like the mule, offspring would be sterile. A slightly better origin story has the big bunny having his way with a now extinct miniature deer. Still this has the mule problem.

It is said to be very aggressive, and even dangerous if picked up with bare hands. Besides the antlers, it has big teeth and claws. It can run 90 miles an hour (antelopes can do 60 or more), jackalope milk is good for whatever ails a body, it can be lured close with whiskey—it has a taste for hard liquor. They can imitate the human voice, and old cowboys singing around a campfire would hear one now and again, singing along in a sweet tenor. That raises the question of how many men on a trail drive sang around the campfire rather than getting some sleep?

Is the jackalope a folk symbol of the Old West? Well, folklore has no known author, is repeated in variant versions by common folk, and is passed on from one generation to the next. If the horned rabbit was created in the early thirties by a known taxidermist, there is no folklore, unless the traders and shop owners, who sell them and are the only source for the stories, are somehow identified as “folk.”

It seems more logical that they are a symbol of the New West, rather than the older version. It is also true that they were never meant to be believable, but a joking nod to the outrageous exaggeration we have given to the Western United States.

Years ago, Jack Schaefer (author of Shane and movies like Monte Walsh) told me he offered a thousand dollars (maybe two or more) to anyone who could show proof that there had ever been a historical “walk-down” gunfight. You know, a duel, two guys in the middle of the street walking toward each other with murder in their eyes. Nobody ever claimed the prize. As a matter of fact, the duel, a staple of Western movies, never happened in the Old West. But what would High Noon be without one?

I have long been interested in this sort of mythmaking. Both George Armstrong Custer and Billy the Kid were being pushed toward fame in their own time. Both these famous characters had their legends pretty

Ernie’s Selfie

West by Southwest

by Ernie Bulow

well established before they were cold in the grave. Both have an extensive library dedicated to their lives, and much of the information is made up, even though they were live human beings and known by other famous Americans. I am stumped by real characters getting the legend treatment with all the misinformation involved, though they were being widely covered by newspapers

THE CLASSIC JACKALOPE and magazines of the period. It seems HEAD MOUNT, BUT IT SHOULD impossible we can’t

HAVE MUCH BIGGER EARS even agree on Billy the Kid’s real name. He is said to have been pals with New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben Hur.

I believe that it was this extensive print coverage that was a major factor in creating the legends, along with Jesse James, Davy Crockett, and New Mexican Sheriff Elfego Baca and hundreds of others. Women were not left out, though perhaps less well known: Belle Star, Calamity Jane, Big Nose Kate, and many others. Max Evans wrote a great biography of Madam Millie, a madam from Silver City, New Mexico.

Perhaps that is the problem: most famous women of the Old West got infamous as gamblers and prostitutes, even though their main contributions were in finance, politics, either up front or behind the scenes, and sometimes just the people they were identified with. New Mexico’s Sister Blandina, who had dealings with Billy the Kid and Comanche and Apache Chiefs, has recently been proposed for sainthood.

Perchance the single greatest factor in legend-building was the “dime novel,” which came on the scene in 1860. They were cheap paperback books that were hastily written and with little care for truth, often just exaggerating the subject’s main claim to fame. “Lurid potboilers” is one of the nicer terms used to describe them. They sold by the thousands.

At this point, it is a little harder (maybe) to sell the public some silly, fact-twisting, fictional person, or incident. The jackalope is a similarly made up, but in a joking way, symbol of the Wild West. My only question is who is it aimed at? Westerners who want to have something mysterious and fascinating that belongs to them, or Easterners who will fall for it? Probably both.

-ernie@buffalomedicine.com

THE JACKALOPE WITH ANTELOPE HORNS IS A RARE THING.

THIS HORNED RABBIT IS FROM A SEVENTEETH CENTURY BESTIARY. IT WAS COMMMON FOR ANIMAL ENCYCLOPEDIAS TO OFTEN INCLUDE MYTHIC BEASTS.