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The Greenville Argus (Greenville, PA); No. 565; April 13, 1872; Column F.
THE KANSAS JAYHAWK
By J. J. Ingalls
The Audubon of the twentieth century, as he compiles the history of the birds of Kansas, will vainly search the "Ornithological Biographies" of his illustrious predecessor for any allusion to the "jayhawk." Investigation will disclose the jay (cyanurus cristatus). and the hawk (accipiter fuscus): the former a mischievous, quarrelsome egg-sucker, a blue-coated cousin of the crow and an epicure of carrion; the latter a cloud-haunting pirate, the assassin of the atmosphere, whose flattened skull, rapacious beak and insatiable appetite for blood impel it to an agency of destruction, and place it among the repulsive ranks of the living ministers of death. Were it not that nature forbids the adulterous confusion of her types, he might surmise that the jayhawk was a mule among birds, the illicit offspring of some sudden liaison or aerial intrigue, endowed with the most malign attributes of its progenitors. But as this conclusion would be unerringly rejected by the deductions of his science, he would be compelled to look elsewhere for the origin of this obscure tenant of the air, whose notable exploits caused it to be accepted as the symbol of the infant State, giving to a famous regiment its title, and to the inhabitants their novel appellation of "Jayhawkers," by that happy nomenclature which would induce the unsophisticated chronicler to suppose that the population of Illinois was composed entirely of infants at the breast, and that the chief vegetable productions of Missouri were ipecac and lobelia.
The jayhawk is a creation of mythology. Every nation has its myths, human and animal some of which disappear as the State matures, while others continue to stand out upon its early horizon in conspicuous proportions enlarged rather than diminished by the distance that intervenes. The infancy and childhood of communities, as well as that of individuals, abound in legends and traditions which become crystallized by time into a mythology in which qualities become personified, and the forces and operations of nature are symbolized as living beings, so that history, like the nursery, has its Mother Goose s Melodies whose idle rhymes were sung at the cradle of the race.
In the twilight of time the domain of fact insensibly yields to the shadowy realm of fable; the true and the false are confounded; the real is indistinguishable from the imaginary- and out of the confusion is born a brood of phantoms and chimeras, centaurs, demigods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, phoenixes and jayhawks, that under different names have peopled the early times of every nation since the world began. In this strange procreation, beauty becomes Venus; strength, Hercules; appetite, Bacchus; manhood, in its glory, Apollo; and the elements themselves are endowed with sentiment life.
The process is not, as we are apt to imagine, peculiar lo the races of antiquity, but is witnessed in the history of every community, great or small, which attempts the experiment of an independent existence. The realism of later days sometimes strips these phantasms of their insubstantial vestments and reveals their native deformity, as the traveler, with his lens detects upon the distant summit which seems but a deeper stain upon the forehead of the morning sky, its ragged garb of forest and its gray scalp of rock; but generally they become more respectable with age. They are accepted as facts. Poetry decorates them with its varnish. Orators cover them with a rhetorical veneer, and they are incorporated into the general literature of the country.
Had an irreverent Athenian ventured to doubt Silenus or denounce Priapus, he would probably have been received with a stormy outcry like that which greeted Bancroft when he ventured to disclose the truth about some of the paragons of early American history. And yet it cannot be denied that the popular notion of the founders of the government are as purely mythological as the Grecian dream of Jupiter and Minerva. With what awe in our boyhood do we contemplate the majestic name of Washington! That benign and tranquil, though somewhat stolid visage, looks down upon us from a serene atmosphere unstained with earthly passion. That venerable fame bears no taint of mortal frailty save in the juvenile episode of the hatchet, in which the venial error is expiated by the immortal candor of its confession. To our revering fancy, the massive form wrapped in military cloak stands forever at midnight upon the frozen bunks of the Delaware, watching the patriotic troops cross the icy current in the darkness before the grand morning of Trenton; or else arrayed in black velvet small clothes resigning his commission to the Continental Congress at Annapolis. We learn in riper years, with grief not unmingled with incredulity, that this great man was subject to ungovernable outbreaks of rage, that he swore like a mule-driver, and that he was not only the Father of his Country, but also of Governor Posey of Indiana.
With such disheartening examples before us it is not unreasonable to believe that the student of Kansas history a hundred years hence; as he reverts from the men and manners of that degenerate time to the first splendid lustra of his native Slate, will turn to Genesis, vi., 4, for consolation, and say with a sigh: "There were giants in those days.” The colossal characters nurtured in the primeval convulsions of our politics will have passed into mythology. Tradition will have lent its pensive charm to the eloquence of Carney, the unquenchable fire of Crawford, Lane's impregnable virtue, Lowe's aggressive vigor, the sensitive honor of Clarke,—that "tall young oak of the Kaw" whose acorns fattened the swine in Caldwell's sty — Caldwell, who proudly rose in his seat in the United States Senate in '72 and hurled back with indignation the charge that he bought his Senatorial toga at a political slop-shop—ah, who could forbear to admit that there were indeed giants in the earth in those days!
This was the close of the epoch when the jayhawk flew in the troubled atmosphere. It was an early bird, and it caught many a Missouri worm. The worms did not object to the innocent amusement of the bird, but insisted that public opinion must and should be respected.
But the bird had n mission. It could not be caught with chaff, nor would it allow salt to be put on its tail. It pursued its ministry of retribution, protection and vengeance through many bloody years, till the worms were fain to concede the superiority of their feathered antagonist and adopt the sentiment of the popular melody, "O, birdie, I am tired now."
—Kansas Magazine.