| In the year 1910
I purchased my first automobile. A trip into the country was an
adventure often ending in a catastrophe, for roads were bad and every
one of the numerous parts of a motor car was susceptible to one kind of
disorder or another. If any part failed, that was generally the
end of further progress. But, inasmuch as I could go about as I
pleased as long as it did run, a conveyance of this sort offered
temptation too strong to resist. I
had
heard
of
a
man somewhere
near Minooka, Illinois, who had some prehistoric animals.
Nobody
seemed to know anything about them, but my curiosity was aroused and
so, one morning, I cranked up the car and
sallied forth to have a look. But I had not much hope of finding
anything of particular interest. |
| I drove west
from Joliet into Kendall County, where roads of soft, black dirt made
the traveling difficult. I did not know just where I was going,
and that made it all the harder. I went too far north and had to
come south and, having gone too far west, I turned and drove east until I reached a
tiny hamlet called Whitewillow.
That
was
my
first
objective.
A
certain farmer lived in that region, and the
next task was to find him. This, I finally accomplished after
considerable manouvering; I reached the farm of one John Bamford. |
| Mrs. Bamford answered my knock on the
door of the house. Her husband had gone away for two weeks.
Yes, he had some prehistoric animals cluttering up the place.
They were in the cellar. This was said most ungraciously, and I
made a mental note of it. Mrs. Bamford procured a lighted
candle. "That cellar was a hard place to get into," so she said,
"and it might hold a whole Winter's supply of wood if it were not
chucked full of bones." |
| It was not
really a cellar, for there were no stairs leading down to it. We
had to go outdoors to find the entrance. This was about
two-and-a-half-feet square. I crawled in on my hand and
knees. Once in, I could not stand erect because the cellar or
space beneath the floor of the house was less than five feet
deep. What I saw recalled the ancient Catacombs of Rome, but in
this case the skulls and bones of human beings were [replaced by]
something else. Bones were everywhere, piled up like cordwood;
the
cellar was packed with them from floor to ceiling. I had felt
much like a dog crawling into a kennel, and now I could imagine the
place as a dog's idea of Heaven, a paradise filled with great big bones. |
| With my first shock of surprise over
with, I took stock of my surroundings under the flickering
candlelight. I felt some of the bones; they were soft, not
mineralized, and crumbled to my touch. Some of the bones were as
big around as my body at their ends. Others were smaller.
More than one animal was represented, but all were of one kind. I
was in the midst of a herd of elephants - what was left of them.
But they were not circus elephants; the many jaws and teeth showed
that. They ranged in all sizes, from a yearling calf to a
full-grown adult. The circus-elephant tooth has a
flat surface with slightly raised enamel ridges suitable for grinding hard, tough
substances, such as oats and hay. But these teeth were pig-like,
with
protruding
cones
and
valleys
between.
As far as I could tell in the
dim light, every bone and tooth in that cellar were once parts of
mastodon elephants. Parts of them had been found before in this
region, but never so many in one place. Mastodon
elephants
were
plentiful
in
Illinois
when the glaciers
had
finished
transporting
their
loads
of ice and gravel, dumping them
in northern Illinois.
The melted ice had formed into many ponds and lakes, and this was well
suited for mastodon development. But in time, the ponds an lakes
shrunk or dried up entirely, and that did not suit the mastodons at
all. They died off and finally became extinct. They were
among the last of our prehistoric animals to disappear, so recently
that some of them were doubtless seen by the first Indians that settled
in America. |
| I crawled out of the cellar.
Those mastodon bones had long been neglected and would be done for
pretty soon if they were not properly cared for. I said so to
Mrs. Bamford, and she agreed with me. She further admitted that
she was sick and tired of having them around, cluttering up the
place. But her husband, John Bamford, was stubborn. He
would not give up those bones. But he would have to do more than
think about it, because they would be moving away before long.
Bamford had gone to Minnesota to make arrangements for settling on a
farm there. |
| All of these things favored the
proposals which I then made. I could not and did not want to buy
Bamford's elephants, but I could relieve him of a lot of trouble and
maybe find a buyer for the bones. I would take them to my office
in Joliet, put them in good order, and they would still be his to do
with as he liked. After considerable reflection, Mrs. Bamford
favored the idea, but with one reservation. Her husband would be
pretty mad when he returned and found the bones gone. "But I
suppose he will get over that if he finds that they still belong to him
and you do as you promise." |
| With that part of my job over with, I
plunged into the next and bigger one. Getting those bones safely
to Joliet, over 16 or more miles of bad roads, was no simple
task. My car, loaded to its limit, would not hold one-tenth of
them. They were soft, and it would not take much jolting to shake
them to pieces. I was alone; I had no packing material; all of
the work had to be done by myself. But I felt that I had to
manage somehow and get all of those bones back to my office before John
Bamford returned. |
| Nearby was a field of daisy-like wild
flowers with stems nearly three feet long. These were to provide
my packing material. Then I crawled in and out of that cellar,
bringing out bones until I had enough of them for a load. Mrs.
Bamford loaned me a sickle, and I went after my packing material.
Before long I denuded a large area of its daisies until I had
enough. I wound them around the bones, poked them into
crevices. My car had no top, and so I gradually built up my load
until it towered high above the driver's seat. I filled the space
beside it with bones. My first load consisted mostly of jaws,
teeth and tusks. Mrs. Bamford loaned me a rope which helped
greatly to tie everything down securely. She laughed when I drove
off. It all looked funny to her, but I did not feel that
way. I had put my spare tire and all tools where I could get at
them, and there was nothing more to do but go ahead and hope for the
best. |
| The going was tough, and much of my
driving was done in low gear. But nothing worse happened. Lady
Luck was with me. I got through the black dirt to gravel roads
and breathed easier. I thought that trip would never end, but I
finally reached the western boundary of Joliet, along Jefferson
Street. As I drove slowly into town, passers-by stopped and
looked. Their number increased as I proceeded. Small boys
began to gather, shouting and attracting attention. As I entered
the busy down-town section, people gathered all around me, pointing to
my load of bones and shouting questions. Near the Court House, I
stopped at Chicago Street to let traffic go by, and the crowd
piled up in front of me. I could not proceed. A police
officer dashed up, and then, more of the same kind. I explained
to them as best I could that I had a load of elephant bones and was
taking them to my office on the eastern side of town. So the
officers cleared a way for me and I went on, with boys still following
and many people stopping to wonder what it was all about. I
suppose that I should have cherished a feeling of pomp and pride as the
central figure in an elephant parade down one of Joliet's main streets
but, feeling tired and annoyed, I could not see things that way.
I reached my office and unloaded the bones, which I took to the
garret-like second floor. That was all I could do for one day,
and I was beginning to wonder if I would ever do it again. |
| But next morning, things looked
different. Nate Hurd, my assistant in our small steel works, had
a car just like mine, and he was more than willing to help me get those
where I wanted. So that made two of us with two cars. We
took plenty of rope and packing material along with us. Nate was
a good sport, ready for anything in the way of fun or trouble, and that
meant a lot to me. We got our loads back to Joliet without any
mishap, and then we did it again and again until all were safely stowed
away in our office. We had no flat tires, no breakdowns, and no
storms to bog us down until the job was done. |
| And then, as I expected would happen
soon, there came a visitor, John Bamford. There was blood in his
eye at first, but this soon disappeared when I took him upstairs to see
his elephants in their new quarters. They looked pretty good, and
as his ownership of them remained unquestioned, he was quite willing to
forgive and forget my high-handed methods. Before he left, we sat
down, and I jotted down everything he had to say about the bones; just
where and how he found them; and many other bits of information. It was in 1903, and
Bamford was then
living on another farm from the one he was now occupying on the western
side of the road leading south to Minooka in Kendall County. His
old house was close by the eastern side of the road, from which a
little side road ran east to his house, passing close by a surface well
equipped with a hand pump. It supplied water for Bamford's
cattle. But the supply was running low, so he decided to widen
and deepen the well and thus secure more water. |
| Apparently the well was clogged with
tree stumps or something, but the first ones he got out turned out to
be gigantic bones. Bamford informed his neighbors, and the news
soon got around. People came to wonder and help dig up the bones,
bigger than anything they had ever seen. Bamford had visions of
wealth. He would organize a prehistoric animal circus and tour
the country. So he and his friends dug up all they could find,
and the work was done, none too gently. Finally all were removed,
the excitement died away, and Bamford was left alone to ponder over his
pile of bones. Nobody wanted to buy them. He moved to
another farm across the road and took the bones with him. Rain
and
cold did them no good, and so he piled them in his cellar, where I
found them. |
| In answer to my question as to whether
or not he had found remains of animals other than mastodons, he replied
that there were a few; some deer-horns and skulls, probably of cattle
that had been trapped in the soft ground around the well.
Everything he had found was put into the loft of his barn and kept
there for a time. A few days after Bamford's visit, I drove over
to the place to have a look. |
| The farm was occupied by a man named
Kittelson. He allowed me to look about and take notes. With
his permission I climbed up into the loft of the barn and examine
it. Bones had once occupied a part of the loft. I
found a number of mastodon vertebrae and ribs and, among them, some
smaller bones. Kittelson did not want them and said that I might
take them them away if I chose. This I was glad to do.
There were antlers of our common deer and elk and one that appeared to
have belonged to a moose. There were also several skulls and jaws
of what looked like cattle, and a foot-bone which resembled that of a
deer. But when I got these bones home where I could look them
over at my leisure, they shaped up a bit differently. |
| The
presumed moose antler once belonged
to a deer-moose (Cervalcese)
a species now extinct. The skulls and jaws resembling cattle
turned out to be those of Bison which we call, "buffalo." The
small foot-bone was that of some unknown species of Musk-sheep.
All of these things were near the top of the mass of mastodon bones
which began about five feet below the ground surface and continued
eight feet down into the gravel. There were no complete mastodon
skeletons, merely parts of nine or more animals of all ages and sizes,
washed into a pocket when the site was covered by an extensive body of
water. |
| For about a year
all of my spare time was given to mending and hardening the bones
stored in my office, until most of them were restored to fairly good
condition. The tusks had suffered most from neglect, but one of a
pair which I mended was about the best mastodon tusk I have ever
seen. It was nearly nine feet long and, with such wide, sweeping
curves that one would think it belonged to a mammoth, which was another
kind of prehistoric elephant. |
| As for John
Bamford, he came to see me a second time, several weeks after his first
visit. He was moving to Minnesota soon and could not take his
elephants with him, He thought they were in safe hands and would
be made good use of. I gave him a sum of money, as much as I
could afford, and that made the parting easier. That is how I
acquired a small herd of American Mastodon Elephants. |
| I retained
possession of Bamford's
Mastodon Elephant bones from 1912 to
1919. That was a long time, and the wonder is that my wife stood
for it. Most of the collection was up in my office storeroom but
there were more than enough in my house on the third floor, mostly the
jaws and teeth. |
|
|
| Meanwhile my
collection of fossils was otherwise increasing. Among them were
two mosasaur
skulls from the Niobrara
(Upper
Cretaceous) Chalk of
Kansas. The bones reached me, buried in large stone slabs,
but I
carved them out, mended them, and restored the two skulls as open
mounts. This was a long hard job. |
| I also acquired
a lower jaw and tooth and the tooth of another lower jaw of a so-called
"Columbian
Mammoth
Elephant" from Sternberg's
"Elephant Bed" near Ottawa, Kansas. I restored the
missing jaw in plaster and made one mount of the lower jaws with
teeth. I was also doing considerable fossil-hunting, and the
stuff was piling up fast. |
| Several
institutions offered to relieve me of my elephant bones if I would
donate them. Richard S.
Lull of Yale thought that my 8 foot, 10 inch tusk
would look fine on his "Otis
Mastodon" that was shy on tusks. A
few of the Joliet residents suggested that my elephants be kept at
home, and I was agreeable to that. However, nobody offered to
help carry out the idea. The World War came on and I became a
member of the Township High School Board. The Superintendent,
J.
Stanley
Brown, offered to assist in establishing a museum, and part
of
the old Elwood residence on the southern side of Jefferson Street was
ear-marked for that purpose. One of the teachers, Duncan, with
some knowledge of geology, was given the summer job of resurrecting
remnants of High School fossil collections from coal bins and other
places with the idea of classifying them for exhibition. In this
I agreed to help by identifying the various specimens. Eventually
my Minooka elephants and other fossils would be added when we found
room for them. This was before the extensive additions were made
to the High School, and many outlying buildings were rented and used to
accommodate the overflow of pupils. |
| But the whole
thing blew up. Duncan decided to vamoose on a vacation, and Brown
decided that every square inch of floor space available must be used
for study only. That ended the museum idea. |
| The Armistice
came in 1918, late in the Fall. Scientists perked up and began to
look around. One day, Elmer
Riggs came down from the Field Museum
to look over what he called, "his charges." It was Riggs who went
down to the Bamford farm many years before and endeavored to dissuade
Bamford and his friends from digging up the Mastodon
Elephants
recently
discovered
there. Bamford had big ideas as to the value of
his
find, and Riggs went away in a huff. Then I butted in, salvaged
what remained, and here they were all safe and sound. Riggs was
delighted to see them again. I would restore them to the Field
Museum where they belonged, of course. |
| I had spent
quite a lot of time and money on the collection and, being short on
funds, I was looking for a paying customer. In the Spring of 1919
I was invited to call upon Mr.
Frederick
A.V. Skiff, Managing Director of the Field Museum. It was
soon discovered that I had spent nearly $500 on the collection, and I
wanted to be reimbursed at least that much. But Mr. Skiff refused
to consider such a huge sum, and after much haggling, it was whittled
down to $300. I finally agreed to this, and it was soon arranged
that the transaction would be completed in writing. I stipulated
that, inasmuch as the sum agreed was considerably less than what I had
actually spent in cash upon the collection, the latter was to be
considered as a gift to the Field Museum, the $300 being designated,
not as a purchase price, but in part as an expense account and not as
payment for my services. Mr Skiff agreed to this. |
| But Riggs, while
at my house, had seen my two Mosasaur
skulls and Mammoth Elephant
jaws. He wanted them. Mr. Skiff wanted them too - included
in the
original deal with no extra charge. This was stretching things,
and I raged inwardly. However, I needed the money, those
elephants were taking up a lot of room, and I finally consented.
Riggs spent the good part of a week as my guest, packing up the
collection. It took a freight car to take it all in to the Field
Museum. |
| I did not get up
to the Field Museum until several months later. At the entrance
of the Fossil Hall were quite a lot of my specimens variously
labelled. One large printed sign caught my eye: "Gift of Chauncey
Kief and George Langford." I foundered over this. Chauncey
Kief ? What had he to do with it ? And then I recalled a remark made by
Mr. Skiff that the Field Museum had no funds available, and he would
have to find the $300 somewhere else. Evidently, he got it from
Chauncey Kief. |
| Since
posting
the
above essay written by George Langford, Sr., I have found in his
papers the manuscript of a book, "The Story of
the Elephant,"
obviously laboriously typed and hand-corrected by the one-armed
author. I doubt that George, Sr., finished this manuscript, but
it clearly served as the background for several other tasks: (1)
Learning about the Minooka Mastodons, whose remains he was saving from
oblivion; (2) Two children's novels: "Pic the Weapon
Maker" (with the Introduction written by Henry Fairfield Osborn,
President of the American Musum of Natural History) and "Kutnar Son of
Pic," both published by Boni and Liveright, New York, in 1920
and 1921, respectively; (3) A serial, published in 1922 in Volume 23 of The American Boy magazine,
entitled "The Mammoth
Man," a condensed version of "Pic the Weapon Maker."(4)
A more ambitious children's novel, "Stories of
ther First American Animals," also published by Boni and
Liveright, New York, in 1923. and (5) "Senrac The
Lion Man," published by Liveright Publishing Corporation, New
York, in 1954. I also inherited from my grandfather the book, "Men of the Old
Stone Age," written and autographed
to
George, Sr. by Henry Fairfield Osborne with the date, December,
1918, its year of publication by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. George Langford, III, ed. May 22,
2010
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