WAMPUS CAT
BY ITS TALE
So, you wish to know what a wampus is? Well, my friend, the answer to that riddle is a bit more convoluted than one might bargain for. For the animal has been variously described with conflicting, albeit some, degree of consistency. In the oil fields of west Texas, it is reported that it is nocturnal in nature, and is especially infamous for its “raucous voice.”1 In the Olympic ranges of Washington state, bordering Puget Sound, the cat is rumored to shed its whiskers, white ones by day and black ones by night.2 Away down south in Ozark country, the beast is a great amphibious super-panther, black as dusk, that cries luring loggers to their demise.3 Regardless, those who are best able to judge hold that the wampus cat is an animal of unparalleled ferocity.
One early “authenticated” report of the creature is recorded in the outdoor periodical Field and Stream by a Mr. R. S. MacNeil, wherein he declares:
“It [the wampus cat] is usually encountered near the center of some dark, dismal swamp, frequently by hunters who have become mislaid on the way to camp. The trail of a wampus cat is invariably marked with torn and uprooted trees, mangled brush and tufts of bloody fur. Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the deadly nature of this animal; even after it had been shot and mounted, a stuffed wampus cat has been known to tear its owner to shreds! Only the entire resources of this magazine, plus the great personal courage of the author, has made the field work behind these notes possible.” —R. S. MacNeill, Field and Stream 4
MacNeil’s account, like many, is pretty straightforward. The wampus cat is related as something of a terrifying, semiaquatic panther, an interpretation corroborated by Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph in his book We Always Lie to Strangers.5 However, the very nature of the wampus cat is of a story passed by word of mouth. Accordingly, nothing is never really set in stone as with printed material. Every storyteller puts the tale into different words and adds some of their own imagination. Accordingly, this can often lead to some highly remarkable contradictions.
For example, a periodical out of Rotan, Texas, entitled Billy Goat Always Buttin’ In, describes the felid as, “a cross between a wild cat, a badger, and a lobo wolf, with fangs two inches long and claws that could peel the bark off a mesquite tree.”6 Conversely, Conway High School, in Arkansas, has it that their beloved mascot, the wampus cat, has six legs; four to run and two to fight.7 Stranger still are rumors circulating from the great white north, near the vicinity of Jasper National Park, Alberta. There, the wampus cat is granted with eight legs, four atop and four beneath, so as to always land feet first.8 Even still, both Sidney Jennings Legendre, in Land of the White Parasol and the Million Elephants,9 and Dr. Walker D. Wyman, in Mythical Creatures of the North Country,10 assert that the wampus cat is a beast legged for hillsides. That rather than eight legs, nature has provided this animal with legs on one side longer than the other. Thus, providing the critter perfect hold on hillsides.
However, the idea of two sets of legs to cushion falls was first related two decades earlier in William T. Cox’s Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. However, it was the Central American Whintosser not the wampus cat that possessed this ability.11 Moreover, in Henry H. Tryon’s Fearsome Critters, as well as in countless accounts, it is the side-hill gouger, akin the the European dahu, that exhibits this distinct legging for hillsides.12 Oddly enough, the wampus cat itself makes it into Tryon’s book, albeit the context borrowed from author, Hank Senger and Nick Villeneuve’s A Saga Of The Sawtooths.13 This re-imagined wampus cat was granted with extendable, panographic forelimbs used to pluck eagles out of the sky.14 So, it would seem, as with say a dragon, the wampus is one of basic form and innumerable in variation.
Nevertheless, the most unique episode of the wampus cat saga began in the city of Leesville, Louisiana in the summer of 1920. One August morning Belmont L. Shields, and a couple of his cohorts, resolved to form a new publishing company. Sensibly, they dubbed it, “Wampus Cat Publishing Co., Inc.”15 Their flagship zine, of the same name, was so called because it was “the only ‘varmint’ of its kind in captivity.”16
The Wampus Cat was a humor and opinion magazine poking fun at established conventions and social mores. In one advertisement, the magazine offered to pay money for submissions of what it termed as, “inconoclastic material.”17 The Wampus Cat owed much of its success to it sensationalist nature and took a hard jab at those Shields perceived to used the mask of piety to clothe their own transgressions.
A Couple Examples from the The Wampus Cat
| Teacher: "In what part of the Bible is it taught that a
man should have only one wife?" Little Boy: "I guess it's the part that says no man can serve more than one master."18 |
| Johnnie: "Mamma, our governess [live-in tutor] can see in the dark." Mamma: "How do you know that?" Johnnie: "Last night, out in the hall, I heard her tell Daddy that he hadn't shaved."19 |
Despite being a success, its risque humor and social satire soon landed the publication under fire. In July 1921, Shields was arrested by Federal officers, in the city of Shreveport, for, “forwarding obscene literature by express in the state of Texas.” However, Shields paid his bail set at $1,500 ($19,425.23 adjusted for inflation) and continued on with publication.20
But Shields troubles did not end there. The American Legion and other local activists petitioned the district attorney and city commissioners, at Monroe, to investigate the magazine for violating Act III of 1894 of the general assembly of the State of Louisiana.21 This statute barred persons from selling or distributing “indecent” or “obscene” material, ”tending to debauch the morals.“22
On December 15, 1921, Assistant United States District Attorney, of the western district of Louisiana, Phillip H. Mecom announced an indictment against Shields, by a federal grand jury at Lake Charles, charging him with “transporting obscene, vile and filthy reading matter in interstate traffic by express.” 23
Moreover, some cities passed their own local legislation banning the publication. The City of High Point, for instance, approved an ordinance wholly prohibiting the distribution, sale, or circulation of materials deemed as obscene by the mayor and city council. The measure was approved by a unanimous vote and referenced the Wampus Cat and similar publications by name. The fine for a violation was set at $25 ($363.05 adjusted for inflation) after the Rotary Club committee testified that such publications were “largely responsible for delinquency among children of school age.”24
Yet Shields pressed on, but it was not long before his detractors caught up with him. With a trial slated for December 1922, by federal grand jury, the future of The Wampus Cat looked bleak. On December 14, 1922, the federal district court for the Lake Charles division convened at Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana for “‘Wampus Cat’ case of the State vs. Belmont L. Shields.” His honor Judge George Whitfield Jack, Sr. presided over the case and awaited word from the jury.
The verdict?
The jury unable to come to an agreement resulted in Whitfield— dismissing the case.25 Shields went on to continue the publication for several years. He passed away a decade later of pneumonia.26
Interesting though all this is, there is something you should know. Before you go and procure yourself a copy of that infamous publication, permit me to save you some trouble.
Now, what I haven’t told you about Shields is that he is in fact, putting it mildly, an outspoken racist. To say nothing of a misogynist or nationalist. While it is generally known that prejudices, of all kinds, trickled into most popular American culture, throughout the better half of the twentieth century, it really comes down to exactly how intolerant was Shields’ publication?
Was every issue of The Wampus Cat steeped in prejudice?
Maybe not.
Do certain issues make these points of view painfully clear?
Yes. Very much so, indeed.
See, the take away is this. Shields detractors were often no less bigoted than he was. But it was not racism nor sexism nor xenophobia that was ever a point of contention. For all of Belmont L. Shields’ crusade against hypocrisy and all the work of those who toiled to suppress his publication, to uphold “morality,” each side was so preoccupied with the faults of the other they became blinded to their own. The real enemy to decency, the real adversary to the public good— being inherent in both. This willful blindness is not limited to Shields, nor to his detractors, to racism, to prejudice, nor yesterday. One may find it as often as one will find that everybody has a lot to say about everybody else.
[ RETURN TO DATABASE ]
1 A.I.M., “Zoological Note,” Landscape, 2, 1, Spring 1952, 36.
2 Lois Crisler, “The Wilderness Mountains,” The Pacific Coast Ranges, ed. Roderick Peattie, (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1946), 191.
3 Vance Randolph, ”Fabulous Monsters,“ We Always Lie to Strangers. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1974. 57-59. Print.
4 R. S. MacNeill, “Unnatural History,” Field and Stream, 44, 7, November 1939, 11.
5 Randolph, 57-59.
6 Seymour V. Connor & Don H. Biggers, A Biggers Chronicle: Consisting of a Reprint of the History that Will Never be Repeated, (Lubbock: Texas Technological College, 1961), 103.
7 “Traditions,” Conway High School, https://tinyurl.com/rz2yl54
8 H. B. Carmiehael, “In the Islands of Sunshine,” Canadian National Railways Magazine, 15, 8, November 1929, 8.
9 Sidney J. Legendre, Land of the White Parasol and the Million Elephants; a Journey Through the Jungles of Indo-China, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1936), 123.
10 Walker D. Wyman, Mythical Creatures of the U.S.A and Canada, (Park Falls, WI: F. A. Weber & Sons, Lithographers, 1978), 91-92.
11 William T. Cox, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, with a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts, (Washington, D.C.: Press of Judd & Detweiler, Inc., 1910), 41.
12 Henry H. Tryon, Fearsome Critters, (Cornwall, NY.: Idlewild Press, 1939), 39-41.
13 Hank Senger & Nick Villeneuve, A Saga Of The Sawtooths, (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers 1938), 39-41.
14 Tryon, 59-61.
15 “Local and Personal at Leesville,” Vernon Parish Democrat, August 5, 1920, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
16 Belmont L. Shields, Ed., The Wampus Cat, 2, 9, August 1922, cover.
17 J. Berg Esenwein, Ed., “Where to Sell,” The Writer’s Monthly 19, no. 3 (1921): 276.
18 Belmont L. Shields, Ed., The Wampus Cat, 2, 3, January 1922, 29.
19 Shields, January 1922, 23.
20 “Leesville Editor is Out on Bail,” Vernon Parish Democrat, July 14, 1921, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
21 “Wampus Cat Assailed by Monroe Veterans,” Vernon Parish Democrat, August 11, 1921, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
22 J.C. Ruppenthal, “Abstract of the Criminal Laws of the United States, the Several States Thereof, and Canada Relating to Birth Control,” Journal of American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 10, no. 1 (May 1919): 48.
23 “Editor of Wampus Cat Indicted,” Colfax Chronicle, December 17, 1921, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
24 “High Points Fathers Will Protect Morality,” Cheraw Chronicle, March 9, 1922, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
25 “Jury in ‘Wampus Cat’ Case at Lake Charles Dismissed,” The Galveston Daily News, March 9, 1922, 2.
26 Doug McBroom. “Obituary of Belmont L. Shields.“ USGenWeb Archives https://tinyurl.com/wa6kof3 (accessed January 2, 2020).