A Skunk (mephitis mephitis) in defensive posture with erect and puffed tail, indicating that it may be about to spray, from Wikimedia, by Wallace Keck on April 8, 2011, HERE.
I
first read about “Skunk” Johnson when my Uncle George gave me a large box of
old magazines about trapping. One of
them, Trapper’s World, from April 2001, had an article in it called
“Skunk Johnson & His Handcarved Home”.
It
was such a good story that I thought I would do a little bit of digging and see
what else I could find out about Ole’ Skunk and how
he got his name.
The
best source, other than Mr. Moderow’s article, from which it differed in some ways,
was The Pratt Republican, a local newspaper, that in 1911 published two
articles about “Skunk” Johnson.
A map of Pratt County, in 1887, from the Kansas Historical Society, HERE, showing the general location of “Skunk” Johnson’s cave.
Little
is known about “Skunk” Johnson before the summer of 1874, which is when our
tale begins. In fact, we don’t even know
his full name1, since after 1874 everyone just called him
“Skunk”. What we do know is that he was
a trapper and a hunter, and in fact The Pratt Republican
states that he came to the area as a buffalo hunter. Also, we can assume that he would have had to
arrive at the headwaters of the Ninnescah River well before the summer of 1874,
to have had time to dig his two-room dugout out of the hard clay of the riverbank. Johnson’s dugout, or cave as it was later
called, was entered by a small hole in the riverbank, and was complete with a
spring, a “kitchen”, a “bedroom”, and a fireplace with a mantel that connected
to a seam in the bluff, which acted as a natural flue. It was recorded by The Pratt Republican,
that Johnson would make a trip to Wichita, Kansas, four times a year to sell
the hides of the creatures that he shot or trapped and to buy coffee, beans,
flour, bacon, and other supplies; it was in the summer of 1874 on his return trip
from Wichita that our tale begins.
A race to the cave...
By
the summer of 1874, the Native Americans of Kansas, were becoming frustrated with
the buffalo hunters, trappers, mass destruction of the buffalo and other game
and the ever-increasing number of settlers and they were on the warpath. Just as Johnson was nearing what is today
Kingsman, on his return from Wichita, he spotted 20 Native American warriors,
well mounted and well-armed – and worse yet, they spotted him! The race was on! So, throwing away all his newly purchased
supplies, Johnson rode for his life and the safety of his cave. Reaching the dugout just ahead of the
pursuing Native American warriors, he turned his pony loose, crawled through
the entrance, blocked it up and waited for them to arrive.
Johnson
shot down several of the warriors with his rifle as they approached his front
door, which only served to enrage them and make them more cautious at the same
time. So, they decided to smoke him out
of his hole, just like they would have smoked a skunk out of its burrow. First, they tried burning piles of dried
prairie grass at the entrance of the dugout, but the smoke just poured out
through the chimney hole in the top of the bluff. Noticing this, they tried stopping up his
chimney, but they still couldn’t get “Skunk” out of his hole.
So,
they settled down to wait him out, figuring he couldn’t have much food or water
in his cave and eventually he would have to come out and that then they would
have him. What they didn’t know was that
“Skunk” had a spring in his dugout and had plenty of water. So, after a siege of 15 days, they gave up
and “Skunk” crawled out of his cave and into legend.
 |
An excerpt from “Skunk Johnson & His Handcarved Home”, from Trapper’s World, April 2001, page 9, illustration, and article by William Moderow. |
Why was he called “Skunk”?
So,
just why was he called “Skunk” Johnson, anyways?
Apparently
at some point, maybe due to the rapidly decreasing number of buffalo2,
Skunk decide to specialize in the trapping of skunks. Skunk fur is warm and durable, and the back
fat is creamy and when rendered into “skunk oil”, was highly valued then, and could
be sold for its medicinal value. The
problem with trapping and skinning skunks is the trapper is going to smell like
a skunk3.
But
it wasn’t because of the summer breezes that would waft the smell of skunk from
his clothes and into the nostrils of all those around him, that he was called “Skunk”
though. He got the name “Skunk” because,
during the 15-day siege of his dugout, he in his own words, “was compelled
to eat the meat of skunks to stay alive”4. So, Ole’ “Skunk” was a skunk eatin’ man!
“Looking For His Father”, The Pratt Republican, March 30, 1911, from Newspapers by Ancestry.com, HERE.
But maybe he was a skunk?
And
now for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey always used to say. It is possible that Johnson wasn’t just called
“Skunk”, but that he might have been one.
Shortly after the first article about “Skunk” Johnson appeared in The
Pratt Republican on February 16, 1911, another appeared on March 30th
asking for information on how to contact “Skunk” Johnson because as a Mr. J. C.
Johnson of Franklin, Pennsylvania said, he thought that “Skunk” might be his long-lost
father, whom he had lost contact with 40 or so years before. Was “Skunk” a runaway, dead-beat Dad? It is possible, many people had trouble
readjusting to life after the American Civil War. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. We will never know, because unfortunately
this, and so much else has been lost to history and the sands of time.
I
hope that you have enjoyed this ramble in the past and learning about the
curious tale of “Skunk” Johnson.
“Skunk Johnson’s Cave, The Pratt Republican, February 16, 1911, from Newspapers by Ancestry.com, HERE.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Backyard Birding Flashcards©”,
where we will talk about mute, tundra, and trumpeter swans and why you want to have
a set of Sibley Backyard Birding Flash Cards, so you will know which swan you
saw on your walk.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 “Skunk”
Johnson apparently is not the same as A. J. Johnson, who was the first settler
in Pratt County, and “...who located in the southwestern corner of the
county, in the vicinity of Springvale, in the fall of 1873. Johnson was the first man in the county to
break sod and raise a crop”. This is
because Skunk Johnson had his dugout in the banks of the Ninnescah River, in
the northern part of Pratt County, about four miles west of the town of Pratt.
History of the State of
Kansas, William G. Cutler, 1883, Transcribed by Marvin
Woltje, Bonnie Bunce, and John Matthews
2
According to Beccy Tanner, in “Buffalo shaped the culture of Kansas”, published
on June 12, 2011 in the Wichita Eagle, the last buffalo (which is more
correctly known as American Bison or in Latin, bison bison) to be killed
in Kansas, was killed in April 1887 in Cheyenne County. By the 1890’s bison in Kansas had been
reduced from the tens of millions to less than a thousand.
Beccy Tanner, “Buffalo shaped the culture of
Kansas”, June 12, 2011, Wichita Eagle
3
When you kill them, they spray and if they don’t spray then, then they will
spray as you skin them. According to Eric
Space in “45 Years of Knowledge”, “A skunk shot in the head will spray every
time. A skunk that is shot in the body
will spray some of the time...When skinning a skunk, cut off the tailbone and
leave it in the tail. Remove it after
skinning the rest of the animal. That way
you are not putting undue pressure on the scent glands.”
Eric
Space, “45 Years of Knowledge”, The Trapper & Predator Caller,
January 2004, page 62
Sources
Blackmar, Frank W.,
Editor, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, Volume 2, [Standard
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1912], page 496, https://books.google.com/books?id=V6IUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA496&lpg=PA496&dq=%22skunk+johnson%22+pratt+kansas&source=bl&ots=Gq9aBFCGlO&sig=ACfU3U14bE1VWR-or1zeQ2jXQdWP_uGing&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEsfHMn9_rAhVxZTUKHe4VD4k4ChDoATAHegQIAxAB#v=onepage&q=%22skunk%20johnson%22%20pratt%20kansas&f=false,
accessed September 20, 2020
Cutler, William G.; History
of the State of Kansas, [A. T. Andreas, Chicago, IL., 1883], Transcribed by
Marvin Woltje, Bonnie Bunce, and John Matthews, https://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/pratt/pratt-co-p1.html,
accessed May 19, 2021
Kansas Historical
Society, [© 2021 The Kansas
Historical Society], https://www.kshs.org/p/pratt-county-schools-bibliography/13674, accessed May 19, 2021
Moderow,
William; “Skunk Johnson & His Handcarved Home”, Trapper's World,
April 2001, [Galloway, OH], page 9 to 12
O”Ceillaigh,
Setana; “A Homesteaders Guide To Tanning”, The Backwoodsman, May/June
2021, Vol. 42, No. 3, page 75
Tanner, Beccy; “Buffalo
shaped the culture of Kansas”, June 12, 2011, [Wichita Eagle], https://www.kansas.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-story-of-kansas/article1066397.html#:~:text=The%20last%20buffalo%20killed%20in,sell%20to%20parks%20and%20zoos,
accessed May 22, 2021
Space,
Eric; “45 Years of Knowledge”, The Trapper & Predator Caller,
January 2004, page 62
The
Pratt Republican (Pratt, Kansas), “Skunk Johnson’s
Cave”, Thursday, February 16, 1911, page 6, [Newspapers
by Ancestry.com], https://www.newspapers.com/image/379672329, accessed September 10, 2020
The
Pratt Republican (Pratt, Kansas), “Looking For His
Father”, Thursday, March 30, 1911, page 3, [Newspapers by Ancestry.com], https://www.newspapers.com/image/379672972,
accessed September 10, 2020
Wikimedia, “Skunk about to spray”, by Wallace
Keck, taken on April 18, 2011, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skunk_about_to_spray.jpg, accessed May 19, 2021
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