Fact Friday 443 - Chief the Elephant’s Fateful Visit to Charlotte

Happy Friday!

This week's Fact Friday comes to you from Medium.com's "Chief the Elephant’s Fateful Visit to Charlotte, 1880." It's part of their Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem series. Huge shout out to subscriber and long-time supporter of 704 Shop, Mindy Mikami, for sending this over! 

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The five-ton elephant that would become known to circus-goers as Chief was captured in Asia in 1872. Shipped to America, he was eventually purchased by the John Robinson Circus in Cincinnati. In the circus Chief fought back against his brutal trainers so often that in the spring of 1880 punished him by tying him to a tree to beat and spear him and then lighting a fire under his belly.

Just a few months later, in September 1880, the John Robinson Circus and Chief arrived in Charlotte with two shows planned. Crowds of spectators were camped out near the circus, anticipating the next day’s shows. Many of them witnessed the horrifying events of that evening.

Chief charged his keeper, John King, and smashed him into a railcar, killing him within minutes. The elephant then ran away from the scene, chased by circus workers who finally caught and lassoed him to an older female elephant named Mary. Mary appeared to grasp the enormity of the younger elephant’s deed and beat him with her trunk as they were returned to the circus grounds.

King’s hearse was followed to Elmwood Cemetery by Mary and another of the circus’ elephants who were said to have walked in time to the circus band’s music. His gravestone, an obelisk monument decorated with a delicately carved elephant, was purchased by the circus.

Chief remained, for a time, with the John Robinson Circus but never again performed. He was eventually exiled to the Cincinnati Zoo for flinging bricks and coal at circus employees with his trunk and for occasionally breaking out to terrorize the neighborhood. At the zoo Chief continued to harass his keepers until the zoo determined to put him to death in 1890. The botched execution by firing squad, for which a giant circle was painted on the elephant where his heart was thought to be, was not even the final humiliation for the beast. Chief “steaks” were apparently served at Cincinnati restaurants, and his taxidermied body was pulled around on a cart. Today his skeleton is in the collection of the Cincinnati Museum Center.

Chief’s taxidermied body was wheeled around on a cart. Photo from the University of Cincinnati Archives.

Sources:  

"Eminent Charlotteans: Twelve Historical Profiles from North Carolina's Queen City," by Scott Syfert, 2018.