The Mule-Handling Tactics of 1877
A dialect poem from the Seattle Daily Intelligencer offers a glimpse into the frontier humor and casual racism prevalent in the territorial era's agricultural life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Nebuchadnezzar, what are you tryin' to go, sah? I'd have you for to know, sah, a-holdin' on to the line—you better stop that prancin', you look powerful full o' dander, but I'll fix your sides advancin', I'll cure you o' your shinin'. Look, heah, mule! Better move out; first thing you know, you'll find out how quick I'll draw the line out on your ugly back. You needn't try to steal up an' lift that precious heel up; you've got to plow this field up, you has, sah, for a fact. Dar, that's the way to do it! He's comin' right down to it; just watch him plowin' through it; this [worker] ain't no fool. Some folks they would be beatin' him; now, that would only heat him—I know jes' how to treat him. You must reason with a mule. He minds just like a [person]. If he was only bigger, he'd fetch a rare figure, he would, I tell you! Yes, sah! See how he keeps a-clickin'. He's as gentle as a chicken, an' never thinks o' kickin'—I'd hit him lah, you hear me, sah! What is that bore me, or is it the devil got me? Was that a cannon shot met me? Have I laid here more than a week? That mule do kick amazin'—the beast was spoiled in raisin'; by now I 'spect he's grazin' on the other side of the creek.
“You must reason with a mule. He minds just like a [person]. If he was only bigger, he'd fetch a rare figure.”
This piece, while framed as lighthearted frontier humor, exposes the deeply ingrained racial hierarchy of 19th-century Washington. The contrast between the 'reasonable' human and the 'stubborn' beast serves as a stark artifact of the era's vernacular, rhyming with the ways labor and identity were coded in the public press during the state’s infancy.
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