What happened
In late April 1897 the Yates Center Farmer's Advocate published a sworn statement from Alexander Hamilton, a farmer and former Kansas legislator. He said that on the previous Monday night his cattle started bawling, and he went out to find a huge cigar-shaped airship, perhaps 300 feet long, descending over his cow lot. Beneath it hung a glass-panelled carriage, brightly lit, holding six strange beings: two men, a woman and three children, jabbering in an unknown tongue. When Hamilton, his son and his tenant ran at it with axes, a great turbine wheel began to buzz and the ship rose. It hovered over a three-year-old heifer caught in the fence, with a cable looped round her neck. The men cut the fence wire and watched ship and cow sail away. The next day, he said, the heifer's hide, head and legs turned up in a neighbour's field miles away. Several local worthies signed an affidavit vouching for his honesty, and the story went national.
The original account
Alexander Hamilton, former member of Kansas Legislature from Woodson county, says that last Monday night he and his family were awakened by the bellowing of cattle. Going outdoors he saw a large object with brilliant lights hovering over his cowyard. He and his son and the hired man rushed towards the lot with axes, yelling. The object rose, dragging with it a three-year-old heifer attached to a rope. The next day Hamilton found the hide of the heifer ten miles from home.
'Airship a Cattle Thief', The Times (Richmond, Virginia), 28 April 1897, p. 6, Topeka dispatch (public domain; OCR corrected)
The official explanation
The story was a deliberate tall tale. In 1943 the Buffalo Enterprise, a Kansas weekly, quoted the editor of the paper that first ran the story as indicating he knew Hamilton had made it up. In 1977 researcher Jerome Clark gathered testimony from people who had lived in the area at the time confirming the invention, and concluded the yarn had been written to win a local liars' club, an informal contest for the most outrageous tall tale. The signers of the affidavit were vouching for his character, not for the airship. Contemporary papers such as the Kansas City Journal treated the tale with open sarcasm.
The anomalous case
Before the confession came to light, the case looked unusually strong. The witness was a respected former state legislator, his account was sworn, and prominent citizens, including the county sheriff, a banker and a state oil inspector, put their names to an affidavit attesting to his truthfulness. The physical detail of the heifer's remains found miles away was checkable, and the description of a lighted, windowed gondola under a long hull with a large rotor reads like an engineering sketch. Researchers later saw in it a prototype of both abduction stories and the cattle mutilation reports of the 1970s. Even after the admissions, the case remains instructive: it shows how a well-built story by credible people could enter the record, and the Woodson County Advocate's editor suggested Hamilton may have been inspired by seeing a real engine demonstration.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- The Times (Richmond, Va.), 28 April 1897, p. 6 ('Airship a Cattle Thief') newspaper, loc.gov
- Phillipsburg Herald (Kansas), 29 April 1897, p. 8 (Woodson County report) newspaper, loc.gov
- Kansas City Journal, 30 April 1897, p. 4 (editorial comment on the heifer story) newspaper, loc.gov
Sources
- The Times (Richmond, Va.), 28 April 1897, p. 6 Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Airship Alert! Kansas! Magazine (TravelKS)
- Mystery airship Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
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