00:00:00
Speaker 1: Within a few hours, nineteen men found one leopard. They all blasted away, but a state trooper who was using a submachine gun he got credit for the kill. At dawn the next morning, a local lumberjack stalked the other leopard with a little mongrel pup called Tony and a deerhound. Tony spotted the leopard and bravely charged it. He was instantly killed. Fair stunned the beast with three quick shots, then clubbed it to death with his rifle. By the week’s end, one black bear and one monkey had surrendered meekly, but the other animals were still at large, never to be seen again.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: This is a story about two graves in my hometown of Mina, Arkansas. One of these stories I’ve known about, the other I just learned about this year. The way death found both of these people was tragic, brutal, even bizarre, one induced by man and the other by animal. And you might ask why bring these stories to like now? And the answer is, I think there’s something to learn, and they’re telling. As I build these bear grease episodes, I really don’t ever purposefully build themes. I just kind of take the stories as they come. But I feel like stories of tragedy have become more and more common, and I think a significant part of our lives will be gauged by how we respond to tragedy ourselves. And I know that if these stories reside in my hometown, I know that you have stories like these in yours. The untold stories of rural America are fascinating, but mainly because they’re full of data for life today. And I really doubt that you’re gonna want to miss this one. And hey, bear, John and I have our twelve and twenty sixth film about our Southeast Alaska bear hunt that’s up now on the Meat Eater YouTube channel.
00:01:55
Speaker 3: Go check it out and let us know what you think.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knucom and this is the Beargrease Podcast, where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Brought to you by to Covi’s Boots. I’m a cowboy boot man and I’ve been wearing to Covis for years. They’re the most comfortable boot I’ve ever put on. Good boots for good times, So I’m in Mina, Arkansas, in my hometown, and I’m at the Mount Calvary Cemetery. I’m walking in between headstones here and I’m looking for one in particular, perhaps is the only one like it in all of America.
00:03:06
Speaker 4: I’m just kind of walking through.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Looking seeing some graves that go back to the eighteen fifties. There’s a lot of just like typical gravestones that stand up tall out of the ground, and then there’s the headstones that are embedded in the ground. It’s unseasonably warm for spring here. The air is hazy with smoke from controlled burns from the National Forest to the north and south of the city. I don’t live in Mina anymore, but the town represents to me a starting place in a place of safety. This is where I grew up, but it hasn’t been a safe place for everyone. Even though I grew up in this town, I had never heard about this grave until this year.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: I’m gonna have to go back to my on xpen.
00:04:05
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, I see it. There’s a fresh set of flowers on it.
00:04:15
Speaker 4: Right there.
00:04:15
Speaker 2: It is Maria de Caampa, killed by circus lion nineteen forty two to nineteen fifty one nine year old girl killed by circus lion. On the evening of October thirtieth, nineteen fifty one, nine year old Maria de Caampa was killed by a lion in Mina. The death was reported in the November twelfth, nineteen fifty one issue of Life magazine and again in the New York Times, along with countless other news outlets. It’s reported that this is the only headstone in America with this inscription. The headstone, it’s probably probably ten inches by eighteen inches. It’s just a single granite brick laid even with the ground, and there’s relatively new plastic flowers on the grave.
00:05:17
Speaker 4: And what’s so interesting about.
00:05:18
Speaker 2: This is that this girl was killed by This girl traveled with the circus. Her parents were tightrope walkers in the circus that came through Me to Arkansas, and a lion got loose and killed her out in the parking lot, and she was left and she was buried in a very short period of time. And it’s unclear if her parents even came to her funeral, because the next day, the very next day, they headed to Mount I to Arkansas for their next show, and tragedy struck the group. Once again when they had a car wreck. It is the wildest story, and I cannot believe that I have never heard about this. Mina had just over five thousand people in nineteen eighty four when Gary Believer, Nukom and Juju moved us here, and over forty years later today there’s around fifty four hundred people. My mom and dad were raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, just sixty five miles east, in this town of thirty thousand that’s known for horse racing, bath houses and being a haunt of al Capone in the nineteen twenties and thirties, and also the hometown of Bill Clinton. My dad was the son of a Baptist preacher, lew and Nukeomb, perhaps the bird hunter that I’ve talked so much about. And in nineteen sixty nine Dad would leave Hot Springs wearing green fatigues and had to Vietnam, where he’d see some of the worst of the world, and he vowed to protect his future family as much as he could. Mom and Dad loved Hot Springs, but they knew that they didn’t want to raise a family there, so they moved us to Mina, and as we’ll see in these stories, this hasn’t been a safe place for everyone. I’d like to introduce you to my former sixth grade geography teacher who would later become a history teacher and the principal of Mina High School, the beloved mister Todd Coogan.
00:07:28
Speaker 3: He grew up in.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: Mina Maria de Kampa nineteen fifty one, killed by circus lion. Even as a kid.
00:07:35
Speaker 4: I’m like, what so you remember seeing Oh yeah, kid, oh yeah.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: The grave, Yeah, hanging around the cemetery. I guess as there was nothing else to do, we just ride our bikes up and down Eave Street and I see this gravestone headstone.
00:07:48
Speaker 2: A person that I know, like a month ago came to me and said, Clay, did you know that in your hometown that this little girl was killed by a lion?
00:07:57
Speaker 4: The circus line?
00:07:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said not, I actually said, I actually said that never had a boy, I said, I said, that is fake news, right, like somebody has made some sensational story and somehow it’s targeted.
00:08:13
Speaker 1: Well home, it is true, and it’s a horrific, horrific story. You know, my dad always every time we have family get together, as he always brings us old pictures and old newspaper clippings, and we were at a birthday party, my sister and brother in law. We’re at one of the local restaurants and dad walks in with a folder and I’m like, oh, this is five or six years ago. I’m like, oh, he’s going to show us more pictures, you know, whatever. And my sister reaches and looks sick, Oh my god, and pulls one of them. I said, what is it? And he had the autopsy photos from Maria to Kampa. Wow, which is okay, but you don’t bring up to a family birthday party and start showing them around. I didn’t even look at him. I didn’t want to see them. Is good because of what the lion did to her.
00:09:02
Speaker 2: Harold Coogan Todd’s father is a local legend. He’s well respected and considered the town historian. The death of Maria de Caampa was well documented, but I think we do well to learn something about circuses in rural America in the nineteen hundreds, and we’ve got just the person to teach us something about it.
00:09:23
Speaker 5: My name is Janet Davis and I am a historian. I have a PhD in History US history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I came to the circus in some respects by us Moses.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: Doctor Davis is the nation’s expert on circus history and has written a book about it.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: She is passionate.
00:09:47
Speaker 2: The Kamper Brothers Circus was out of Texas and the circuses impact in rural America was notable.
00:09:54
Speaker 5: You know, shows of all sizes were popular, and so especially in rural marketplaces that did not have a wide variety of live entertainment coming to town all the time. So circus has really performed a you know, really important function. And it’s interesting because you know, like what you have going on in Arkansas in nineteen fifty one, in a way it mirrors, you know, we can go back like one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty years to the early kind of frontier days of European settlement and expansion in America with the kind of hungry for entertainment starved communities that are settling all across the country. In its heyday, you had people and animals from all over the world. You had top flight talent from all over the world. The circus was the place that was this kind of immersive sensoria of experiencing in the world in an age before you know, extensive travel was possible, and so the you know, the circus brought the world to people’s doorsteps.
00:11:15
Speaker 2: She said something that I want to key in on right here. The circus brought the world to people’s doorsteps. And I think that’s interesting that in this isolated community, when the outside world showed up, it delivered terror, confirming the suspicions of.
00:11:33
Speaker 3: Most I think a lot of people moved to rural.
00:11:35
Speaker 2: America feeling like they’re somehow protected from the dangers of the big, scary world in a way. That’s why my dad moved us there. But in many cases this proves to be a false security. I’ve got somebody that’s going to now give us the details of what happened to Maria.
00:11:56
Speaker 6: My name is Melanie Wade. I am from Mina Arkansaw. I used to be a reporter for the Pope County Pulse, and as such I came across many unique stories for our area.
00:12:08
Speaker 7: The story of Maria.
00:12:09
Speaker 6: De Kampa is one of the most unique, if not the most unique, and definitely a tragic story that comes out of our history. So in late October of nineteen fifty one, a circus rolled into town. Back then, traveling circuses came through towns, especially small towns, quite often there was no entertainment to be had, so a circus was a big deal.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: You know.
00:12:33
Speaker 6: They came in and performed feats that definitely no one from our area, you know.
00:12:38
Speaker 7: Could perform.
00:12:39
Speaker 6: They were aerialists and obviously had these exotic animals, and it was just a unique thing for the circus to come to town.
00:12:46
Speaker 7: It was a moment of fun.
00:12:48
Speaker 6: It was a moment of strangeness, just because there will always be so many, you know, anomalies attached to a circus, you know, but it’s always a fun time and so there’s a lot of excitement surrounding when a circus comes to town, and so back then it was a pretty exciting ordeal. So, like I said, in late October of fifty one, the circus came into town. They set up, they had a performance the first night. I believe mister Harold Coogan, a local historian, he was about fourteen years old back then. He attended the first night, but was not there on night two, and that’s when the tragedy occurred.
00:13:25
Speaker 7: It’s sort of unclear.
00:13:28
Speaker 6: Whether her parents Maria’s parents were actually performing at the moment that this happened, or maybe they were waiting to perform, but they were definitely performers in the circus. They were from Mexico, I believe is where they originated from.
00:13:45
Speaker 1: Her parents were actually tightrope walkers in the circus, and it was called the Kampa Brothers Circus, so it was her family that ran the circus. Ironically, the lion’s name was Tame. They said it had just Mina Star reported that it had just done some kind of performance, and they didn’t put it back in a cage. They put it out in a parking area on a small chain. I’m quoting the old Mina Star, a small chain.
00:14:15
Speaker 2: The circus was held just outside of town, which is now a prominent place. It happened right where I went to school.
00:14:24
Speaker 6: It was actually held where our local school district is now. The high school, middle school, and an elementary school and football fields sit now where this circus was held. That’s sort of on the eastern edge of town. And so little Maria, I believe she was in the big Top and she comes out of the big Top and is walking across the grounds. This lion was laying in wait under a wagon, and as she came by, the lion swooped her in.
00:14:54
Speaker 7: There were.
00:14:57
Speaker 6: People on the scene that sort of tried to beat the law off of her, but it was.
00:15:01
Speaker 7: Just too late.
00:15:02
Speaker 6: Sort of from the beginning, I believe he grabbed her from the back of the neck.
00:15:07
Speaker 1: The lion jumps on Maria grabbed her by the throat. The screams. The county sheriff was actually in the crowd at the circus and he ran down there. They heard the screams, and when he got there, the circus workers were trying to reach under the truck with brooms and sticks and hit the line and you know how that turned out. They finally got the lion out. He would not let go of her. They pried the jaws open with the newspaper said with a large stick. Doctor Rogers, who was still a doctor here when I was a kid. He used to do our football physicals. Is that he always did the hernia check, you know, the one that at one station you always dread. I had no idea that he had, so he was there. They rushed her to the hospital with the old hospital up on Pine Street, and thirty minutes later they pronounced her dead. I don’t think they killed the lion. I believe, if I remember correctly, they put the lion back in a cage. Unfortunately, hearing looking at the you know, my read of the article shows that she it was not a quick it was not quick, and so you know that that’s disturbing that she had to suffer like that.
00:16:29
Speaker 6: As if that story is not tragic enough, the circus packed up and left town the next day because they were a traveling circus. Her family, It’s really unknown if her family was even able to attend services for her or properly grieve her they left town. Her little body was left at the local funeral home. I believe it was Guy or Quilling funeral Home back then, and she was left there. I believe the owner of the funeral home is the one that actually purchased her tombstone that was later placed. But her little body was laid to rest by the Catholic Church. We have a local Catholic church here as a historical church on its own, but they sort of took control of the situation and they gave her services, performed services for her, and entered her into their local cemetery, which is Mount Calvary. I’ve been to Maria’s place of rest multiple times, and every time you walk up to view her headstone, there is some sort of trinket or babble or flowers that someone has left there.
00:17:47
Speaker 7: Has always really touched me.
00:17:49
Speaker 6: No one here knew her, she didn’t have family here, her family didn’t stay here after she passed away here, but someone continues to homage to her, and I think that’s really touching and shows how much love exists in our community, even for people that we don’t truly know.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: The prosecuting attorney wanted to charge. They brought charges up for a negligent homicide against the circus. The charges they had the hearing within a day. I believe the charges were dropped because of there wasn’t lack of evidence of my death, but lack of evidence of negligence.
00:18:27
Speaker 2: And the obituary ran in the Meanes Star newspaper. It cites three pallbears, but doesn’t mention her parents, but they wouldn’t have been Pallbears, so we don’t know if they were there or not, and I hope they were. Maria was one of thirteen children in her obituary Red and the Meana star. Miss Kampa was born in Mexico City, Mexico, on September seventh, nineteen forty two. Most of her life had been spent traveling with their parents, who were in show business. The little girl received her schooling under the direction of a special tutor employed by the show to educate children of school age. Although the family was not acquainted in Mina, much interest was shown by local residents, who sent flowers and attended the funeral service. I think it’s interesting that it noted how the people of Mina responded. But the circus left the day after the attack, and it would later be reported that there was a cold rain that day, which ushers us into the second part of the story, which would almost be unbelievable if it hadn’t been reported by many major national news sources.
00:19:49
Speaker 1: So to add on to that story, did you hear what happened the next day with that circus? They’re heading to Mount Ada to do another show. Well, we’re just going to bear our kid here in this town we’ve never heard of, and we’re going to go on, which is Bothersome always wondered did her parents just go ahead and start doing their high wire act again? The next day, I don’t know. They’re on their way to Mount Ida and one of the trucks has a wreck around Pencil Bluff. The newspaper reports that two black bears, two leopards, a polar bear, one gorilla, and several monkeys escaped into the woods in Montgomery County. No way this two days after this event. Wow, So this circus made national headlines twice.
00:20:43
Speaker 6: So now you’re in between Pope County and Scott County and there’s exotic animals running loose. This little girl has been tragically killed the day before by this you know, lion, and so.
00:20:57
Speaker 7: Pope County’s finest.
00:21:00
Speaker 6: And their shotguns had it out on the prowl, and the hunt began to hunt down these exotic animals.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: They immediately started a man hunt for these animals. I’m going to read a quote from the Mina Star from nineteen fifty one. Within a few hours, nineteen men found one leopard. They all blasted away, but a state trooper who was using a submachine gun, probably a Thompson forty five, he got credit for the kill. At dawn the next morning, a local lumberjack, Rolston Fair, stalked the other leopard with a little mongrel pup called Tony and a deer hound. Tony spotted the first, spotted the leopard, and bravely charged it. He was instantly killed. Fair stunned the beast with three quick shots, then clubbed it to death with his rifle. Must have been a bad shot, That’s what I’m thinking. By the week’s in, one black bear and one monkey had surrendered meekly, but the other animals were still at large, never to be seen again. Now they made a point of this, Fair, who shot the leopard gets to keep the pelt. So wow, you know that made news that he got to keep the pelts.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: So according to this article, the gorilla and the two bears.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: Of course, the black bears would have done fine, you know, because that’s about the time the game official was starting to relocate black bears into the washitalls anyway.
00:22:30
Speaker 4: So but they now I.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: Heard the gorilla. I don’t know.
00:22:35
Speaker 2: Wow, you know that story is so crazy, because I’ve heard rumors of stories like that, I think are all across the country. So I’ve heard about I mean, when you talk about black panthers. Yeah, a lot of people I trace these stories back and they go, oh, well, there was a circus train that we’re out and all these all these whatever got loose.
00:23:00
Speaker 1: Here’s the thing. If they were all males, I mean, it’s not good. And it was just two, yeah, and one of them was killed.
00:23:10
Speaker 2: It’s just so stereotypical almost, it’s it’s hard. I mean, we know it’s true. I mean, there’s no debating whether it’s true or not, but it’s it’s almost hard to believe.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it was the gorilla and the polar bear, because they never mentioned them again. You think, is there some old farmer out in Montgomery County or maybe over in Norman or somewhere, or maybe up in the Nella community that it’s got a polar bear pelt that is great grandpa? Yeah, yeah, I don’t know.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: He’s got his story.
00:23:39
Speaker 2: He said, man, what’s I was deer hunting and got killed the polar bear.
00:23:43
Speaker 1: I’m on my tree stand and there’s two monkeys. Well, you know they would arrest him for They put him in the in the nervous hospital.
00:23:51
Speaker 3: Doing some further research. There was more.
00:23:55
Speaker 2: On November fifteenth, nineteen fifty one, an article ran in the state wide newspaper about one of the black bears being killed two weeks after the accident and five miles away from the crash. The author cited that it was an illegal killed because there was no bear season in Arkansas, and this was before the restocking of bears into the state, so there were virtually no wild bears in all of western Arkansas. But was it even the circus bear or a wild straggler that somebody killed. Somebody just showed up with the dead bear. We’ll never know, but to my knowledge, no charges were ever filed against the guy that killed it. And here’s the wildest part. The polar bear was actually killed three weeks after the wreck by cattleman named Math That’s right, m at math Singleton, near the community of Odin. Newspapers would later report that several men in the community ate the meat, and a man named Billy John Ballentine was quoted saying it was the sorriest meat ever put in my mouth. It’s not reporting what happened to the hide. I assume somebody over and Odin’s got it today. I don’t know, but that is wild. So it feels like this circus is just like a complete chaos.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: I think I’m more bothered by the fact that they just went on you know, they just buried their kid here and went on.
00:25:22
Speaker 4: Well, I’d heard that.
00:25:25
Speaker 2: I mean, that’s one of the most peculiar things about the whole deal. And and I mean, I know you you would hope there would be some context that would make it make more sense. But like during that time, like thean, the nature of the schedule, and like these people had no connection to Mina. And that’s that’s an interesting part of this because I never heard about this, and it was so surprising as an adult to hear about it. And then but then in some ways it makes sense because this girl wouldn’t have had any family here. She would have been a little fleet stranger and from Mexico.
00:26:02
Speaker 6: Just the circus coming to town back then was a big deal, you know, Just that in itself is a big deal. Can you imagine, you know, the kids running around in the you know, nineteen fifty one, going the circus is coming to town, you know, and then then that, you know, the next night, oh my gosh, this little girl’s been killed. And then the day after that, oh my gosh, they’re exotic animals in our woods. I mean, I can imagine half the county gathered up, you know, and staid, well, we’ve got to stalk these exotic animals, you know, before they take the life of anyone else.
00:26:31
Speaker 7: You know, I think that was probably just it.
00:26:34
Speaker 6: It just really compounded the whole issue is that, you know, if some circus came through there and then they had a wreck and their animals got out, they were, oh, we hunted a leopard this weekend, you know. But the fact that this little girl had died, you know, at the jaws of this lion, and then the next day all of these exotic you know, big cats, leopards, you know, bear, polar bear, you know, escaped.
00:27:04
Speaker 7: I imagine that would have been really, really scary.
00:27:06
Speaker 6: So I imagine there were a lot of dads and grandpa’s and young men that said, you know, we’ve got.
00:27:12
Speaker 7: To stand for our own. So it was a big story.
00:27:15
Speaker 6: It wound up being a nation wide story for sure, between her death and you know, the death of Maria and the accident, the animals escaping, and the big hunt for them afterwards. It was a nationwide story. And in nineteen fifty one, for something to be a nationwide story, it was a big deal. You know, we didn’t have social media, and most people didn’t have telephones or televisions or you know, and so big places like Life magazine and the New York Times picked it up and it happened to be a nationwide story, but it all happened right here.
00:27:51
Speaker 2: Well, to me, part of the intrigue of a story like this is just how what stories lie inside of everybody’s hometown. Because the further that I’ve got away from Mina, Arkansas, the more i learn about it, the more I realize what a unique place this is. But also how this is just a sample. I mean, I don’t know that Mina is that unique. I think there’s stories like this everywhere. This story is just so bizarre, And what’s most shocking to me is that I never knew this story. I drove past this cemetery my whole life, and somehow didn’t know about Maria Dekampa and the circus.
00:28:36
Speaker 3: How could this happen?
00:28:39
Speaker 2: Her death happened in Mina, seemingly by chance, almost like it could have happened anywhere that the circus stopped, but it happened here. But her grave is not the only unusual grave in this cemetery. And I want to tell you another story that’s connected only to Maria through geography and the graves almost being within sight. If it wasn’t for a small hill, you could see the other grave we’re about to hear about. But this one I’ve known, and I’ve been to it before many times. I start walking due west of Maria to Campus Grave. And this story is not one that anybody is proud of, but paints an interesting picture of the times. We’re going to go back another fifty years to nineteen oh one. So I’m walking from the Mount Calvary Cemetery to the White Oak Cemetery. They’re connected, but they have different entrances. And Mount Calvary is the Catholic cemetery and White.
00:29:49
Speaker 4: Oak is the Protestant cemetery.
00:29:54
Speaker 2: And now this headstone I would have known about my whole life.
00:30:02
Speaker 4: I’m walking a long way.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: It’s from the main cemetery because it’s kind of off down the hill in the woods. And they’re one, two, three, four, five, six big white headstones that are set off way off. They probably seventy five yards off from the main cemetery. I believe these are Yankee soldiers, soldiers who fought for the North, and they are not in the main cemetery. Along with with Pete. There’s the headstone. There’s been a new headstone, Peter Berryman. Peter Berryman was buried in nineteen oh one away from the main cemetery for a very simple reason.
00:30:54
Speaker 3: He was a black man.
00:30:56
Speaker 2: It’s also very interesting that the Union sold are also buried out of the main cemetery, way back in the woods, but Pete’s grave is all the way back, along with several other unmarked headstones, which I assume are also black people.
00:31:15
Speaker 3: We’re going to talk to mister.
00:31:16
Speaker 2: Coogan about the life and death of Peter Berryman, and if you’re listening with children, be warned that this is pretty rough. But we’re gonna tell it because this is just the way it happened.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: I had first heard about him when I was a little kid. I was born and raised here, and I lived just right down the road from White Oak Cemetery and I ride my bike’s there all the time as a kid, and we’d go back down in the woods and I saw this little headstone. This is going to sound horrible, but I don’t mean it disrespectful. Little headstone. You’ve seen it. It’s a brick, It’s a granite brick, and it says Pete and as a kid, I thought, oh, somebody’s buried their dog down here. I mean I was nine and I saw that, and I thought, well, that’s pretty nice to put a headstone or you know, found out later it was a person, And I remember asking my dad about him. He kind of told me a little. He didn’t want to tell me too much, being that age, but then he did an article about him, and I think it was put in the Arkansas Times newspaper back there magazine back then. Yeah, the story of Pete is interesting because if you look at so Mina was incorporated as a city in eighteen ninety six. Of course there were people here. The county had been established in the mid eighteen forties, so eighteen ninety six. Mina had its first census in nineteen hundred, fourteen years later, and it showed one hundred and fifty two black people just in the city limits of Mina. County wide, there were a couple of hundred at that time. So I want to start out by saying in eighteen ninety in nineteen hundred were officially one hundred and fifty two black people living in the city limits of Mina, which was much smaller than it is now ten years later, the nineteen ten census, they were sixteen, So obviously something happened to motivate them or prompt them to maybe we should leave this area. And I think it had a lot to do with Pete. You know, I tell people, in fact, I started my term paper this way that most small towns have always had those certain citizens that others find peculiar just because of the way. They’re not necessarily bad people, they just their behavior. You know, We’ve always had those folks that others kind of look at like, well, that’s just not normal. And you know, they walk the streets, they sing out loud. We have a lady here at the courthouse that several times a month, early in the morning she’s out here singing the national anthem at the top of her lungs. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s just ninety nine point nine percent of the other people aren’t doing it. And you know, there’s just some of those people who are considered eccentric. So Peter Berryman this was he died in nineteen oh one, was killed in nineteen oh one. They estimated his age at forty five, and he was that citizen at the beginning of the city according to the now. Most of the information that I’m about to say came from the old Mina Star newspapers from back then. They often called him half witted, crazy. His nicknames crazy Pete, and then the other one with the N word, which I won’t say. It was the inn word Pete. And he had been in some trouble before. He was He couldn’t read or write, he was illiterate. I suppose he was a good man because people kind of tolerated him. He had gotten into some trouble before. One time he was found cooking in an alley way behind a saloon, in which the policeman showed up and told him to move on, and that would have been the end of it, but he tried to get in a fight with the police officer. The police officer arrested him, the judge gave him a fine the next morning, and then I read something about where he had almost The newspaper said a near fatal attack on an engineer with an axe. So I’m assuming it was a Kansas City Southern engineer, and he was probably I’m assuming he was probably warm roaming around the railroad tracks or the depot or something, and an engineer told him to. It sounds to me like he’s just one of those that kind of flew off the handle and didn’t like to be told what to do in one of those things.
00:35:58
Speaker 2: Telling one hundred twenty five year old story using only accounts from newspapers is about as good as we can hope for, But we also know that it’s going to take some reading in between the lines. Blacks during this time were massively disenfranchised, society was segregated, and by all accounts, Pete was also mentally unhealthy. All of these things would come into play into what would happen, And if you’re familiar with the book To Kill a Mockingbird, you might see what’s coming.
00:36:35
Speaker 1: So the incident occurred. I think this happened. You remember the old Sunshine House, the yellow house on the corner of Jansen and eight.
00:36:45
Speaker 4: I went to pre school there.
00:36:47
Speaker 1: But I think what I’m about Tea happened on that street where it is now. There was a family there named the Osborns and had a fence. This is nineteen oh one. If hete had a habit, apparently there was an opening in their fence and Pete would walk the town and he had a habit of going through that opening in their fence and going and getting water, I’m assuming out of their well. They were used to seeing him, and the Osborns tolerated it. From my understanding is it got to a point where he would kind of harass their children. So they had a nine year old daughter named Elsie and she was had some lumber and why they sent her I don’t know. They sent her out to patch the hole in the fence to keep him out. So apparently he walked by while she was patching the fence an argument. Here’s a forty five year old man, black or white, it doesn’t matter, arguing with a nine year old girl. So that kind of shows his mental state maybe, and the argument led to him going through the fence. She raised her hammer as she was going rightfully, so probably and he allegedly probably did allegedly kicked the nine year old girl in the abdomen. The newspaper described it as very serious injuries, so the Osborne family reported it. He was arrested the next day. I think it was February twenty first of nineteen oh one. He was arrested and he was put in jail, and he was going to be in front of the judge the next morning. So what happened that evening? From all accounts, it was after midnight. There was a police officer kind of like the Andy Griffith Show. Apparently he would walk the town and check doors and check walk out, walk through alleys. I think his last name was Jones. And a group of masked men. It doesn’t say how many, but a group of masked men approached the officer while he was downtown. It was after midnight, I believe, and they didn’t assault him, but they took that gunpoint. They took his revolver. I want to say they tied him up, but I don’t know. I know that two of the mass men stayed with him. They took his revolver and his keys, the rest of him. Don’t know how many went to the jail, took Pete out, and they disappeared, and the police officer reported at about two am they all came back without Pete, gave the officer back his revolver, gave him back his keys, and they took off. The jailer goes back to the jail, sees that Pete’s not there, and they start a search overnight. They can’t find him at daylight. The next morning, citizens start rousing around, and I don’t know exactly. There’s different rumors about where the tree was. That really doesn’t matter. But they found his body at the base of the tree. He was not still hanging from the rope. In fact, there was no rope there for my understanding. But he had obviously been hung, and he had been shot, and he had been beaten.
00:40:16
Speaker 2: This was a straight up lynching common of the time period in the American South. It’s hard to listen to. It’s hard for me to reconcile that this happened in my hometown. Pete might have been mentally unstable, maybe he was crazy, but somebody loved him. He was somebody’s son. He was probably born around eighteen fifty five, so he was likely born to a mother and father who were enslaved. But that mother nursed her infant child with a hope that he’d live a better life than her, and he was lost that night in a tragic story that put another thread in the quilt of terror for blacks in a Marya, America.
00:41:01
Speaker 4: Here’s mister Coogan.
00:41:02
Speaker 1: I do have seen, in fact, my grandfather on the journal of a man who moved here. He had arrived on the Kansas City Southern that morning, and he had entered in his journal that said something like big ruckus in this new town today apparently a black man had been lynched, much to the chagrin of the people. So that’s an interesting thing I want to point out. It’s the general stereotypical view is that the people of Mina would have celebrated this.
00:41:34
Speaker 2: They didn’t.
00:41:35
Speaker 1: The people of Mina were outraged. They were highly upset. A lot of them got together and collected money three hundred and eighty dollars reward, which I don’t know what the equivalent of that would be today.
00:41:48
Speaker 4: It seems like a lot.
00:41:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some other people from other states. Once the word got up because this made national news and they wired. The governor demanded an investigation. Many of the white people in Mina were outraged by the crime. The men were never identified, but you know, in you said something about my personal opinion, I’m thinking how many wives sat there with their husbands after that and looked at their husbands like, you know, he’s been he’s made comments about the blacks around here. You know, I didn’t see him last night, could he? You know, just their the daughters and mothers wondering was my husband involved in that? But they never did find who they were.
00:42:33
Speaker 2: That seems stereotypical too, though, yes that you know, how hard would it be in this small community people knew who did it, wouldn’t you think.
00:42:43
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, they had to have. But they sure must have stayed tightly because this story I believe, made the New York Post or maybe the Times, and so the governor kind of got pressured to send some anto. He sent state police or federal marsh I don’t know who came, but they did look into it, tried to get with Nobody would talk well, I mean nobody. They may not have known. They just it was so late at night and on people back then there was no electricity. You know, back then people worked from daylight till sundown because they had no light, and you know, other than burning their barreil or their kerosene or whatever they had.
00:43:23
Speaker 2: It’s hard for me to believe that they couldn’t figure out who did this. But at the same time, I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon that all authority in the South at the time was corrupt. I just don’t think that’s true. I think there were good men, and I think there were very corrupt men back then, just like there is today. Stereotypes are never fully true.
00:43:46
Speaker 1: So yeah, I never heard anything else about it. It’s very limited after that. I just know it made national outrage. But it was kind of impressive, you know. I remember back in the early nineties. I know that because I was a young teacher when it was announced that the KKK touring Western Arkansas. You may remember, I don’t know, I don’t, and they were going to have a rally here at the Polk County Courthouse, and we were very proud because the people of Mina ran them off, you know, and we’re natty right now, naughty seven percent white. And the people of Mina were not supportive. And I believe they stopped again in Mansfield after they left here, and they were not supportive. And so that was that was good to know, you know.
00:44:30
Speaker 2: I’m I didn’t know where this story was going to go, Yeah, and I’m very glad to hear that.
00:44:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t know that.
00:44:38
Speaker 2: I want to go back to I want to go back to the actual crime.
00:44:43
Speaker 1: Yes, So the newspaper called it alleged that he kicked her in the and I didn’t know if you were talking about the crime of the little girl. That’s right, he probably did, but it set alleged. Of course, they were still using legal terminology and it’s until proven guilty.
00:44:59
Speaker 4: Now.
00:44:59
Speaker 1: He gone in front of the judge the next day and admitted, yes, I did that, and they would have put him in jail for a few months. Yeah, but he would have survived.
00:45:07
Speaker 2: That’s that’s the part that I guess we’ll just never know, Yeah, because again, the stereotypical story would be that this black guy would have maybe done something that if anybody else would have done, wouldn’t have been that bad. Pete didn’t deserve to die for what he did, and I was glad to hear that many of the people of Mina were outraged, but they still never even pressed charges on anyone for the crime. And I find it very hard to believe that people didn’t know who did this and they couldn’t have figured it out if they just tried a little harder man.
00:45:49
Speaker 4: That’s that’s super interesting.
00:45:50
Speaker 2: You know, growing up, I would have known him, heard my whole life him be called N word.
00:45:59
Speaker 1: Yes, Pete, Yeah, that’s the first way I heard, well, the first time my dad told him when I was old enough, when he felt like I was old enough to hear the story. His first term was crazy beat because that was what he was also called me, and he said unfortunately. I remember him specifically saying unfortunately. They also called him the N word.
00:46:17
Speaker 4: People.
00:46:18
Speaker 2: Wow, that’s that’s admirable that your dad back in the eighties or whenever it was, would have Yeah, that’s that’s you.
00:46:25
Speaker 1: Know, my dad.
00:46:26
Speaker 4: I’m really glad to hear that.
00:46:27
Speaker 1: He’s eighty eight now, but and I think he still misses doing this. But you know, he’s a he’s a master historian, and he did a lot of He got all the old Mina Stars. In fact, after the two thousand and nine tornado, his first concern was because the Mina Star building had gotten hit. They gave him permission. He collected up every all the old Mina Stars, every one of them, and kept him at his house out in his shop in trash bags. Now, I don’t know if you knew this. You know, he retired from the community college, is a history professor. They have dedicated a room to him. It’s called the Harold Coogan Special Projects Room. Well deserved, not because he’s my father, just because of what he has done for this community as far as making people here some of these stories. The college hired a professional documentary STORER that came in and took everyone. I mean we’re talking about every meaning it’s a weekly paper and at a time it was daily. It used to be a daily paper for thirty or forty years. So they took all these papers and put them in some kind of huge deep freezer to kill all the bugs and all the mold and everything else. And then they’ve added the special room to the library and they had the dedication and now every single one of the Miana Stars are available for public view. I encourage your listeners, anybody find out the stories from your town, you know, whether it’s the old newspapers. I mean I saw an article from a nineteen ten Mina Star. What used to make the news back then. Mister miss so and so made the first anomobill trip from Mina to Hot Springs. It took them eight hours. They telegraphed and talked about they had made it, they’re safe and they’ll be back in two days. That was big news back then, while of course in nineteen ten it was what a model a maybe that they were driving it on a dirt road eighty five miles. That was big news. Wow, But it was in the mean Senior. Those stories like that are all across the country in these small towns. Yeah, and it’s just amazing what you’ll find. I have found police records of my Grandpau Coogan getting in a bar for getting arrested. I never knew that he was twenty two. He was an old logger, you know, toughest nails, and got arrested for getting in a fight with his bone brother at a bar. You might find out some things about your own relatives that you.
00:48:58
Speaker 4: Know won’t be Yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course they’re a deceased now, but still just like that. But it’s encouraged. It’s really an interesting thing. It’s time consuming, but it’s really interesting if you can find the old newspapers from your hometown.
00:49:15
Speaker 2: The reason we still know the story of Pete and Maria de Kampa is mainly because of Harold Coogan and his influence in Mina. I think knowing your local history can be powerful, and it makes me think about what’s going on today and that our grandkids and great grandkids will one day be talking about where you and I stood in the history that’s going on today, and they will have a lot of time to make judgments about the righteousness or unrighteousness of where we stood. That makes me want to walk circumspectfully and be humble, and to think about other people, because there’s some wild stuff going on today too. I can’t thank you enough for listening to Bear, Grease and Brins, this Country Life Podcast and Lakes Backwoods University. Please leave us a review and give our podcast a five star rating, and share this episode with a friend. Keep the wild places wild, because that’s where the bears live.
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