Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super guest producer, the Man the myth legend, mister Matt the Madman. Still o urrah orrah? Indeed? Uh, you are an old brown I am ben but.
I finally get the military exclamation right. Isn't it urah?
It is urah, but it's also hoorah depending upon which branch of the service. Uh, you are five soldier semplified. That would be marishings.
Yes, that would be the marine.
Yes, cool? Who's that? I ad some I have been bold first and foremost. Yeah, we stepped on that part. I am been bullet. We're joined with a special guest, uh, the returning Jonathan Strickland, who has uh functioned under a few monikers, a few aliases, a few personas Curly Joe. He wants the curly joke.
In a previous life you would transcribe police altercation reports.
Apparently he has heard some great tales.
Mike.
Our old former coworker, Candy May used to call me Jathan.
Yeah, I started baby j Baby Jay h Josh and Chuck coll me strick Yeah Yeah. I called you big strick.
Jonathan. You can have cookie Strickland, Yeah, I am Jonathan.
You can't have cookie I'm gonna get yeah yeah.
And you may have been the cookie in that story because we didn't find out the full the full extent of the annective.
That's okay though, because the listeners haven't even gotten part of the extent of the anecdote.
Exact imagination. Y'all. It's just like Loup. It is just likelu Looper. And speaking of Loops, we are on part two of a continuing exploration of the US camel core. So a quick recap previously odd, ridiculous history. We talked about a fascinating aspect of the United States, which is as it began to become the modern country we know it as today. They discovered there was a vast swath of desert, and the European forces there had no idea
how to address this. How do we move things to the West coast in hospitable land wherein pack animals like horses and mules will die and people and people. If you use people as pack animals, they're going to have a hard time.
Too, at the very least, there's going to be some serious trudging going on, you know, sinking into the sand dunes.
So then we had some smarty pants people in the military saying, well, if we're going to need to get supplies across, which clearly we are, we need to rely upon something that is well suited for desert environments. And yeah, this was way before Doune buggies. Yeah, way before Dune, yes exactly, although Dune itself, who knows when that actually happened.
Yeah, is a little loose with the timeframe.
There, thousands of years, honestly.
And so and so a couple of enthusiasts, based often on nostalgia, went to the powers that be in this emerging or emergent United States and they said, guys, anybody else indy camels? Yeah?
Yeah, And it took quite a bit of convincing. This was a conversation that takes place over decades, with multiple people suggesting the possibility of bringing camels into the United States for the purposes of addressing supply chain issues. And it could have just been one of those things that was a flight of fancy and never went any further. Sure, but for the determination of a couple of people, one of whom had the money and the other of whom had the humpy dream.
The Humpy Dream and our Tail left off with Major Wayne and David Dixon Porter having retrofitted a ship called the Supply Noah's Ark style to ferry these drama dairies to our lands spitting bars.
Spitting bars, Yeah, and they bring over. They buy thirty three camels. They end up with thirty.
Four, and the math is difficult.
It turns out one of the camels was smuggling another camel. No, it turned out one camel died on the way across. Six camels were born, but only two of those survived, leaving us with thirty four.
Which sounds like such a middle school math problem. You're on one side of a river, you have three camels. Train. What I always would always love about those, about those math problems, the word math problems in school, at least in the US, is that there is an implied, ridiculous scenario. Right. For some, there's nothing in the paragraph that tells you why Johnny a child has forty eight apples? What's going on with john? Right?
But you just have to accept that reality and continue forward.
Yes, and why are these people racing on trade?
Honestly, I think it's a really valuable lesson, Like eventually you learn that just accepting reality and moving forward sometimes is the only way you can get through life.
So we've got thirty four camels remaining and an additional and.
It turns out that the United States government at that point says, success, Wow, you actually brought camel's over and you got one more than you bought and under budget.
So why don't you go back and get more of those?
That's just more camels please, And so they ordered Porter to turn around. Immediately, he got his Ata boy to sail back to the Middle East and to buy yet more camels. Six months later, he has returned and he has forty one new camels. We made an interesting point in part one about how long it takes to travel across the Atlantic. During the previous months while Porter and Wigne, while they're fact finding mission, tensions in the United States
were rising, so camels became increasingly important. That's why it's not surprising that they sent them back immediately. And again months transpire on the on the ship on the new camel mission. During these six months. This is the official
part two folks. During the six months, our pal Major Wayne takes these, this first shipment of thirty four camels out to Camp Verde and Fort Wayne, Texas, and he has this is like the humorous act to part in the great you know, like the hero Ernie aspect or the what's that Disney rule that we always talked about in improv the Pixar rule for movies.
Oh gosh, I don't know that rule. Okay, we'll fight it.
It does feel a bit like a second act of a heist movie that also introduces some slapstick elements.
Right right, this is a part of the heist movie. This is really so hero's journey. Here. You got a little humor, some levity after the tragic death of these juvenile camels. Major Wayne out in Texas. He's got his humans, he's got his animals. He has to figure out when he has to figure out the following Can we use these as transport which we always assumed. Then the military and Congress wants to know this. Can we use this in war? Bad news? First, Campbell's are terrible at war.
Like they have great affection, they're just it's not there.
Well, for one thing, they can't hold the cards, right, So.
Yeah, they don't have thumbs.
So you play a camel at war, I mean, you're always gonna win.
So I guess there's that, Jonathan, you're being silly. I'm a little silly the card game war. Yeah you so. Fish on the other hand, they're excellently Yeah, but they are good at poker because of their poker face, they look like they're always smirking. That's true.
But they also they are very good for transport like that is that is beyond question. They know for a fact they could use them for supply chains. But they do experiment with the concept of perhaps a camel cavalry.
A camelvvery war camels, Yeah, on tour with camel core. Yeah, camelvry. That's I'm just going to keep that portmanteau. Yeah, because if you look back through ancient history, there are there are several reports I'm not going to say a lot, but there are several reports reports of camels being used in warfare and.
The being fitted with armor and stuff.
For one of the common descriptions you would see in from some Greco Roman and North African historians would be the idea that you would have two people mounted on a camel one guy driving essentially and the other guy on the back shooting the arrow in retreat or leaning forward and shooting that.
Way, very similar to the idea of like war rhinocerosis and more elephents we do know happen, But that was almost more of a flex than it was a functional maneuver.
That was a little more shocking. All now, we do know that camels in the past could be used as a cavalry to drive a wedge and break a line of opposing forces. But all they were at that point there were a V shaped agent of chaos.
Yeah, they might spit up on them, you know, I could see how they could be useful in a psychological warfare way because.
If you see it freaky looking, if you see.
A force approaching you on camelback. First of all, they're not going to be in a uniform kind of unit. You're just gonna look and think, well, I have no idea what these mother flippers are going to be doing to us.
These people are insane right exactly.
Next, it's like the guy who right before a bar fight, breaks the bottle over his own head man that says, let's go.
You know what, I mean or like puts a cigarette out on his own tongue or yeah, and then.
It's gonna be like Tuco from Breaking.
Back, Yes, exactly, like Tucco or.
Also Looper, yeah, or my friend Darren from Chili's Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Chili's the restaurant, or Chile of the country, Chili's the restaurant. Got yeah, Darren still works there.
Did you know that I did not?
Yeah. I think it's a parole thing. Anyway. There's also this aspect that camels are surprisingly fast for the way they look. They can exceed forty to forty five miles an hour.
Once again, just a reminder for people who didn't listen to part one, in which case, shame on you. You're going to be completely lost. Please go back and do that. We are coming to you from Doha Guitar, where camel racing is big the GCC.
And we also we know that we know that camels weren't very good at warfare because once you get okay so you can run, you can cause chaos once you get into the fray. Your faithful camel, no matter how much they love you, they're kind of gangly. Like we talked about in part one, they're not super nimble like an Arabian horse for instance, and they're mounted so high that when you want, you know, calvalry wants the height advantage, but there's a goldilock zone, so if.
You're too within sword reaches.
So then can you imagine the bloody slapstick when some guys, the guys trying to be camel cavalry for the first leaning over too far off the side.
Yeah, I love the move where the whole saddle flips upside down and then they're just mounted underneath the camel with their like camel balls hitting them in the face.
Also, it turns out camels are not the bravest of mounts, so I.
Can see not sorry about the camel balls comment. Guys doesn't mean to put that image carry I.
Was trying to move on. It's I was really trying.
It really a delicacy in some someplace, So I hear like the hump no anyway, Yeah, so so not the bravest amounts. So also not very useful if you're going to ride into an active war zone and you know they they don't smell so nice. So soldiers were not
very keen on spending a whole lot of time. They're fine with them carrying their stuff, right, Not so much with like riding on on the back of a camel where they present a tempting target, they can't reach their opponent, and the camel is like, I really don't want to be here. And and the horses also, and the mules, uh, these are American horses and mules. They've never seen a camel. It smells different. They are not on board. So that's the thing. The soldiers, No, you don't want to camel
blame here or be unfair to the soldiers. Camel right. The soldiers here also said the camels had a terrible attitude. We mentioned it part one. Camels are sassy. They got sass and they the guys who were trying to train with these camels, they did not have the you know, they didn't roll high on animal handling and D and D. These guys were not Steve Irwin. No like hurting cats more than training a you know, a horse. Yeah, yeah,
it would take to it as well. They were attempting to go heavy on the sticks rather than the carrots when they were trying to train camels, and camels didn't take that. Camels have the size of che Camels were spitting on people. Side to camel spit.
As nasty as the other thing they would do, not as nasty.
As the other thing they do, which the bite was. The bite was super serious because don't let the smirk fool you. That bite comes quickly. And then they also what sometimes kicks laughing because they would kick soldiers down to the ground and then they would they would excrete, urine or feces on them in a very purposeful move.
Indeed, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awful.
Yeah, So then you have soldiers on the runs.
Would you be furious if that happened to you. I would never trust a camel again, I think. I think once I got over the horror being horrified, can you imagine being spit on, bitten and then pooped and pede on? Well, I mean not for less than fifty bucks.
Yeah, yeah, it's like what's their discout? And so there's an app for it. So as far as the cavalry goes, the military quickly realizes, all right, cavalry, that's gonna be horses. But they did have good news. They had some great news. Actually, camels were fantastic pack animals. They could carry way more they didn't need uh they it needs near as much actual TLC.
They're good at walking in a line, you know, when you point them in the direction. Isn't it funny?
Though?
And so like the government to like Mission Creep their way from like the whole idea was these are going to be transport.
Why don't we try them out in common? Let's just get more bang for the buck.
I honestly think most of human history is someone looking at an animal and first asking I wonder if I can eat it? And they're thinking I wonder if I could write on it.
Well that's probably what they did with Neanderthals as well, you know. Yeah, but also I thought you were going to say something I very much agree with with the whole story of human history is mission creep. Yeah, you know that's also true. Guys like what I come down from the tree, you know what I mean? And now we have velcro and someone went to the moon. What if you didn't publish another episode per week? So yeah, exactly,
this is okay. So this is this is crazy because this is an emotional roller coaster for Wayne, it is for us too. Yeah he uh, he is finally getting good news out out to our producers here, Matt Max, we get like a good news sound cube back in the high life again, can we get the rights to that? I feel that maybe the warren zevn version, which I think is superior to the originals air looked so okay, So they have that moment. And these guys, the camels,
I mean, have a bunch higher tolerance for heat. They actually need less water and food.
And again we did bust the myth and the hump of the hump being you know, filled with water. I think I kind of wonder people are like, you know, are camels like animal versions of cacti, because we know cacti do retain a lot of water. But the camels, it's more that they have these fat reserves yea, and they are able to store a lot of caloric energy cereal, but not like water.
And this they also this is a point I don't know about you guys. I didn't think about this. Camels did not unlike horses and mules. You don't have to shoe a camel. You don't have to put horseshoes or mule shoes on them. They already have the clown feet that have evolved to go through the harsh cliche.
Well, exactly, you say clown shoes because they do have a lot of surface area, which is very important, so they don't sink into the dunes. Because a horse it's a much kind of pointier hoof, right, and the camel hoof is much broader and it creates like a padding almost so that it's Yeah.
So in our first episode we talked about how there have been multiple studies trying to justify the the great effort it would take in order to transport camels in the nineteenth century over to the United States. Now we actually have a situation where the camels have been active in the United States.
So what's the result, def conc we have active camels, we have camel.
Camel is, camel is out on field.
The camels have hit the fan.
Right, So are we going to do something worthwhile with this? Or we like are we like the Gary Larson cartoon of the dog who finally catches the car? Right? This is a reference that does not occur to Major Wayne because Gary Larson in the far side are not a thing yet, be super excited and he writes, you know, everybody, do check out part one. He's one of the guys who made a study study. It was a it was kind of a fan mail letter based in fact, a little.
Bit of fans fiction, you know, woven in there for got a little.
Erotic I'm little little slash fiction lit. Little shipping. Yeah, let's ship of the desert.
Let's let's not put in too much misinformation in this episode.
Okay, guys, all right, okay, but it is true that Major Wayne is excited. In October of eighteen fifty six, he wrote that the usefulness of the camels in the interior of the country is no longer a question here in Texas.
Among those who have seen them at work or examined them with a tension, which it's.
The only way you can examine them, they demand it.
They do. Oh yeah, okay, good ver. Somebody wrote to me earlier and they said, you know, I love you guys show, but I feel like sometimes Jonathan is dismissive of camels. And they said, no, he examines them with attention. I do. I do.
He's a member of the camel level, both the animal and the carrying.
So this idea is picking up steam.
Right.
If we go to the National Park Service, we'll see that they describe how this became slowly of interest to civilians as well. We see a lot of technology come from military applications and then later go to early adopters in the world or the civil world, and not the war, the Civil war world, right, and so civilians polite society. Yes, well we're still talking gold Rush, not that polite, okay, yeah, yeah.
So it's after the gold Rush. Citizens of the US are starting to say, hey, we need you to build a road west, and a few very clever guys are clocking the existence of this thing called the camel. In eighteen fifty seven, a i'll say it, legendarily bad president overall named James Buchanan almost said President James Buchanan again, as though his first name was president. Do you think anybody there's some there are billions of people someone has the real first name president, just.
Like major major, major major.
Yeah. Yeah, shout out to Heller, right, yeah yeah, catch twenty two. So all right, this guy, President James Buchanan appoints a guy named Edward Beale to build a road from Fort Smith, Arkansas to California. It's a long row, yes, yep.
And he's already got a good reputation for his uh involvement in the Mexican American War, as well as being the person who brought the very first golden nugget from California all the way to Washington, actual nugget, not the casino, but he had a whole.
Song about it. I got a golden.
Nugg is the one where you bite on it? Yeah?
Yeah, make sure there's a little ten noise that makes Yeah.
Oh, because gold is quite ductile. Indeed, that's my one fact I know about gold. That means you can pull it into like wire morgage. Yeah.
So so wait a minute, okay, let me let me ask you this question.
Then.
All right, So we've we've had this whole effort to bring the camels over. We've had success in the application of using camels to move supplies around. We've got the interest of civilians making use of camels. So where where to heck the camels? Then, guys? I mean, we brought horses over to the North America in the sixteenth century. They they flourished. Are they about to abandon the camels? Guys, That's what I'm asking. Oh, well, well, I hear it's really hard to give up camels.
I know you can it's hard to quit those camels. Yeah, you gotta have like a camel patch.
Yes, yes, horse camel got stop yeah, camel teen uh they call it. Yeah, that's a great question, Jonathan, because for a while it seemed like camels were going to be you know, horse two point oh to put it in corporate parla, camels arrive in Los Angeles. It's December eighteen fifty seven. You know, people are still very into
this westward expansionized camels are coming. They say, yes, they really do say the camels are coming, and they're like celebrities kind of people are gathering to witness the arrival of the camel like the Beatles, like the British invasion. Yes, yeah, and they could go over deep mountains and gullies. This speaks directly to the expansionist, pioneer spirit of American society at the time, and this is where we get the first,
the first real kind of US Camel Corps. In eighteen fifty nine, the group that is going to Los Angeles, they passed by essentially, let's see, okay, I'm going to curse because it's appropriate here. They pass by a big ass rock. It's I think gas isn't. It's not fully a curse anymore. Okay, Yeah, they passed by a rock that is large enough to have its own name, got it? And the rock's name is so Oh and that means
the Moro. Yes, yeah, and they're they're passing excuse me, they're passing by it on the for the second time. First they passed the rock and they're like, it's a big rock. And then some guy comes out and goes that's and they go, all right, they get to lay they go back.
Okay, I'm glad that you're they're going clarify because I wasn't sure if they just like went in a big circle and like, hey, I know we've been by here. There's no way there's two rocks that day.
And that guy comes back. That's also.
We do get to introduce a few side players that hung out with our buddy Edward Beale.
And this dude's name here, I just love. I gotta say it, pe Gilmour, Breckinridge. Yeah. Who else we got? We got e Penn Long and f Engle Junior.
These are all great names.
These are great names.
I mean, those names are so great you want to have them preserve for posterity.
If only there were a giant rock. There were some giant rock. Uh. The reason we know their names right now and not their full first names. The reason we can't tell you their full first names is because that's what they wrote on the rock. That's what they wrote on El Morrow. We're here. Yeah, yeah, uh. And I love the play of making jove where they possibly lost and just say, okay, okay, if we run into this rock again, if our names are on it, we know we've been here before.
And perhaps we can use this as a rallying point to restart civilization in the event of apocalypse.
Yes, interestingly enough, they did not write the names of the camels. We don't even lost to history the names of the camel. I'm sure they had one. People always name animals.
Yeah, Simon Theodore Alvin, there.
Was probably, you know, because camels have such sleepy I bet they had. There were some that were like, yeah, there were some like danger ho. There's one who's just old Cairo, you know what I mean. And then there's poops, mister humpty hump, and I hope there's one with just a human name. There's one that's just named Richard yea steven. So this gets us to the question the experiments paid off. Camels might become an integral part of the US Army,
at least supply chain. They're doing a big pr push, it would seem, yes.
And we're still like we're inching toward the massive uh war that would break out within the United States, the Civil War, and.
Which is a terrible name between the United States and the United States.
It was. It was very not civil it's very much not a civil war.
But but one of the big players in that war is our next little point.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's how he would want to be referred to as a data point at point a foot. Well, I don't want to.
I don't wanna, you know, stir things up again.
The barely known in ly obscure Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee in eighteen sixty he used camel on a long range patrol and he gave these great reviews. It was like, camels are awesome, this is great. You know, five stars. I wish I could give six. Yeah.
He did it on yelp, but back then you would just yelp yes.
Would recommend yes. And for some reason, his rave review did not get a lot of traction because he was Robert E. Lee.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It turns out that the people in charge, at least of the United States Treasury weren't too interested in what he had to say.
And ed I did not know this until beginning research and writing on this episode. Kid you not, there was a political or a corporal political corporal political a word made up, brought by ridiculous history. It was there was a genuine political conspiracy against the use of camels. A mule lobby, a powerful trade organization. The mule owned owned soul fules. They came in as smoky back.
We all know that asses carry a lot of power.
Powerful ass is there, boy, They got wind of this experiment, that's where they comes from a little bit late. So we were able to get that shipment of those two shipments of camels, and by this time camels are reproducing a bit in the US. But the mule lobby shuts down the proposition they were going to put a stop to this camel nonsense. Yeah, to them, this is not a he Haw situation. It's it's quite an existential threat to their own existing government contracts for mules right with the US Army.
It turns out that that lobbies are not a new thing. They're not recent. They have been a very much a part of the Great American experiment since the beginning.
And they know how to get their way. And then the war between the States does kick off in Ernest in eighteen sixty one, and very early on all of these camels, as we mentioned, were housed at this one camp, Camp ver Day, and it was very quickly captured.
Yes, by the Confederates, And the US Civil War started in eighteen sixty one in Earnest, like you said, and it goes into eighteen sixty five. It was a real bummer.
Yeah.
No, not a lot of jokes to make about the Civil War that aren't in incredibly poor taste.
Now, Robert E.
Lee must have been stoked about capturing camp Verde, because now he had all these camels to play with, yes.
Which would end up being like almost a non factor, because almost all the actual battles would take place far to the east.
And in the desert. The Union had possession of their own camel for so you could argue, for brief brief time amid all this chaos, there were two camel cores.
Yeah, there could have been camel on camel violence.
And coc is a real and present dangerous We don't. We don't at all. We want you to know if you were a camel involved in COC violence, there are resources available. Check your local dune. So they had these, they had, the Union had these camels from California. But just like the Confederates, nobody was sure what to do with these guys. So they transferred the groups of camels just back and forth to different places. You know what I mean, Like here you are major brown your camels, Oh,
Lieutenant Colonel Strickland to take these camels. Yeah, we don't know what you should do with them, but we just know that we have no use for them at the moment. So they instead of passing the buck, they kept passing the camels like a cigarette in a circle. And which makes sense, they kind of passing camels. Yeah, ye cigarettes, Yeah, sure, it makes sense. Yeah, I'm killing it with comparisons today.
Yeah.
But the issue here is that.
While you could just think of the camel's as being kind of superfluous, what they actually represented, if you want to get really cynical with it, is an expense, right, Like this is something that you still have to spend money on name. Yeah, you got to keep them alive, you know, even if you're just transporting them from one place to another, Like you're paying not just for the camels,
but for all the people involved in that too. And you eventually get people who are all those penny pinchers who are saying, why are we spending money on something that's not actually contributing to the efforts that are necessary for us to fight this war.
And everybody obviously knows who we're referring to. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. I'm sure we have all heard of.
The villain of the piece she encountered in the Civil War. He was unaware of the camel experiments. He simply saw them as a waste of.
Yeah, and he was cowboying in and you know, rightly with validity, he was saying, we need to save some cash here, so the camels. By the end of the war eighteen sixty five, the camels in California are sold the remaining parts for parts for clown feet long necks and smirk. I mean, honestly, I don't really want to think about what people did with those camels.
Well, I don't think it was a concern on the part of the selling not at all.
Yeah, there wasn't a check in. It wasn't like getting a pet, making sure they're getting a good home, right, And I'm sorry you don't want to think about it, because you are going to learn about So we know that the camels like when the Confederacy fell, right and capitulated. Alert, Yes, Titanic sinks. Abraham Lincoln has a bad time at the play the Confederates lost.
But apart from that, Missus Lincoln, so uh, brought to you by the Ford Theater.
So look the remaining camels that are part of the spoils of war when the Confederacy falls, they're sold in eighteen sixty six. And you know, again we made the point. It's because this was a mule and horse centric conflict. Camels are very well adapted, but very specifically adapted to the desert. So you don't if you have a railroad, if you have horses and you have mules and you're in the forest and you actually have roads now and
you have roads, then you don't need the camel. And even if you didn't need the camel, things may have worked out differently had that they would have had there not been a civil war or had the major supporters of the camel Corps been union because pretty much all of the major supporters we named. Yeah.
Yeah, So a lot of those military camels were sold off, all of them. As you mentioned, most of them ended up abandoned by their new owners and or set free, we'll call that charitably. Many did get put to use as pack animals, and some of these Nevada mining towns very sadly, a lot of the remaining ones that weren't so lucky were sold to meat markets uh and butchers, you know, to be consumed and again sold for parts.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is the point I'm really excited about, not just the myth parts.
There's a really, really cool legend that we're about to get into that was likely direct result of these freed camels.
Se really it is.
I've always wanted to say that.
Yeah, Jonathan and I respect that. What are we talking We.
Are talking about. Uh, this is the coolest chapter the story, one that we can't wait to end on the influence of feral camels because not all of them, not all of them ended up in the bottom mines, not all of them ended up being hopefully very well loved pets. Not all of them ended up being butchered. Some went feral, just like horses of yesteryear. Some got away, and this may have led to the creation of a thoroughly haunting American encryptid, the Tale of the Red Ghost. We have
to go to the Smithsonian. They set it up pretty We love the Smithsonian, Chris Heller writes in the eighteen eighties. We we've done work with the Smithsonian too. By the way, we got to get them back on and yeah, another crossover. We check out the Sonian podcast, check out the side Door podcast.
Indeed, Chris Heller writes in the eighteen eighties, a wild menace haunted the Arizona Territory. It was known as the Red Ghost, and its legend grew as it roamed the high country.
It trampled a woman to death in eighteen eighty three. It was rumored to stand thirty feet tall.
A cowboy once tried to rope the ghost, but it turned and charged his mouth, nearly killed them both rope a ghost. One man chased it, then cleaned it disappeared right before his eyes. Another swear devour the grizzly bear. All right, wow, so Camebl's are tall, but not thirty feet tall.
Also, I imagine stuff of legend though, right, I say, if you've got one of those video games where you can create units of different stuff and make them fight each other.
If I've made a camel versus a grizzly bear, I cannot imagine the camel coming out on time. Maybe if the maybe if it took place late in the game in the desert and the grizzly had been in the desert was really Yeah.
That's sort of like like a smaller dude tiring out a much larger boxer.
Right, I would still if it comes down to it, though, I would regretfully have to vote for even a starving bear over, especially a starving bear over.
Again, But these types of details we see all the time in reports of cryptids that we cover often on our other podcast, Stuff they Don't want you to know that are often these exact gerated tales that get repeated and sort of twisted, and and you know, everybody wants to tell a cool story, and everyone wants to put their own spin on, especially if they haven't seen the thing with their very eyes.
Yeah, and the stories just get more and more outlandish.
Right, you see this throughout throughout history. You know, the legend of the unicorn is some sort of horn to antelope seen from the side. And if you mermaids are are our manatees it was that's wild long time on the ocean of those guys. All is all I could think of. And yeah, this becomes a part of folklore.
But we are convinced. I think it's fair to say that there's a grain of truth to this because a group of you would have multiple sightings, and despite embellishment and second hand reporting, the first hand reporting does have a lot of commonalities. Right.
It lines up with Fort Verde first and Foremers, which was the location where these animals were held, and likely many of them may have been released from there in the first place.
Yeah yeah, or escaped right right. Maybe somebody tried, because again, camels are fast. Maybe someone tried to ride away on a camel. Maybe they got shots in the chaos and the camel kept going. So one attack is described by a group of miners along the Verde River. They say they saw the red ghost. They fired at it, something shook loose and landed on the ground. When they approached the spot where it fell, they saw the skull of a recently deceased person, skin and hair still stuck to
the bone. That's our dead rider theory. The red ghost is a ginormous thing that seems to have death riding upon it, which I'm thinking could quite possibly podcast level true campfire story here. It could possibly be someone who tried to escape and then die, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have to say that at the end of my life, if I see the Grim Reaper astrided camel going to be greatly disappointed, I've just thought he also delighted to take any of it seriously, you know, yeah.
Be like, well, now I know that the most ridiculous is yet ahead.
For me, there was that's a positive attitude. And then you know what else we could say, like, hey, Grim Reaper, thanks for checking out our show man, Grim, Yeah, you're you're kind of zany.
Actually good to have him in our corner.
Man, I WoT, yes, let's say it's a hot pepper.
So a few years later, we got a rancher near Eagle Creek who spotted a faral red haired camel getting into his tomato patch. Old farmer McGregor.
Yeah, and this guy was a much better shot than those miners. Because when he shot the animal, he managed to bring it down and was verified that he had shot a camel. The Red Ghost reign of Terror had concluded a new spread back east uh the New York Sun. You can see you could see this in various archives. They published a report about the demise, and Jonathan A long time ago, you and I collaborated on a story that went viral for brain stuff about the Transatlantic accent.
So could you give us could you give us this quote? I think Transatlantic is appropriate for this.
When the rancher went out to examine the dead beast, he found strips of raw hide wound and twisted all over his back and shoulders, and even under his tail.
This supports the dead rider theory. Someone or something had been lashed onto this camel. No. Obviously, reporting at this time was not what we would call fact based, So it's possible this was to the earlier point made Nola's possible was widely wildly embellished to sell papers yellow journalism. But the question remains, could the Red Ghost have been a real animal. I'm gonna I'm gonna say yes, but I'm.
Not Probably not thirty feet tall.
Probably not thirty feet tall. I am not also the official state historian of Arizona in twenty fifteen. What that's unfortunate. You were robbed.
Let me just say, when I was reviewing mister Bowen's resume, it said otherwise.
Okay, it said no, it just had the word otherwise.
Yeah, that's exactly That's all it said. Otherwise. It was like kind of well, you're hired.
This guy's got camel balls, sure, which is what we call him. That's what they call it. If we are talking about the official state history of Arizona, we're talking about a guy named Marshall Tremble.
Marshall Tremble the official state History of Arizona as of twenty fifteen. He went through a lot of the clippings reports on this from the late eighteen hundreds to figure out what the actual truth was. Farah Campbells certainly could survive in the desert for some time, although there almost certainly weren't enough of them living in the wild to create.
A kind of new camel civilization. Right.
It couldn't be enough to have a sustainable population of camels. There's too few of them and possibly spread far too far apart. So uh, that would just mean we would have a very slow and sad story of camels living out their natural life spans in decline in decline, right, the population eventually diminishing to nothing.
The word for that is the last This wouldn't quite apply, but there there is a word for the last living example of a species. It's really sad. That's a final camel, Derek. It's called it's from Chili's. It's called it's called an endling. So sad.
Quick question, guys, we know that camels can survive, you know, unchecked in the desert for long periods of times.
But what what do they enjoy eating?
You know, when after a certain point they can no longer survive off of the fat reserves alone, Right, they need to have some sort of natural.
Deserts aren't completely devoid of plant life, it's just sparse and far apart. So they would eat greens of some kind of herbivorous for sure, rily bears occasionally, yeah, right, they eat a lot of stuff that would be maybe too dry or salty for other animals. So really for them, it's being around a source of water that they can just howse you know what I mean? Butause do eat cat cacti twigs, leaves, stems. They will also eat I
don't know, pretty much any part of a plant. You know, plants have evolved to fight off fight off large animals and certain birds and other things that would that would eat plants. Camels d g a f about those protections. Camels probably eat some hot peppers. I don't know. You know what I bet for a good treat for your camel. I bet there are some fruits that they would really.
Love, or a nice carrot.
And they are savvy about making sure not to consume poisonous greens, poisonous plants.
Yes, and as we're seeing now we're doing this live, they are. There's some pretty hardcore herbivores. There's some pretty hardcore ruminants. They can eat a lot of stuff. Actually, it looks like the salt is good for them. Oh to have the dietary abilities of a camel, you guys, indeed, Yeah, I'm on an anti camel diet. I'm on low sodium. Yeah, okay, that's true.
That's not even a joke.
You had to give up the old salt lick. Yeah. Yeah.
I was out there like six seven hours a day, and they said, you're not being a productive member of society.
This guy used to just always I remember it was in your contract, the salt lick breaks. Yeah yeah, your agent explained to me, that's like a smoke break for other people riding your camel rider. Yep, all right, there we have it. So this is this tells us, According to Marshall Tremble, this tells us these sightings that were reported throughout the region up until the early nineteen hundreds were likely based in fact. And so the legend of the red Ghost. Like you said, no, it fits perfectly
with some of our timelines. It also fits perfectly with some of our geography. The legend might be embellish, but a wild camel, possibly an army camel, that escaped from camp Verde, was spotted, someone did kill it. They found that it had scars across its back and body. It had those straps. We know that we owe a lot of this to a lot of the research to guys like Doug Baum, who was a zoo keeper and owners.
To be confused with our Doug Baum, who runs our.
Ballet podcast studio. Differently, well, we haven't asked them. We should ask him, Doug, where were you in the late to mid eighteen.
Hundreds while I was keeping a zoo in Texas. Oh my god, we talked about you on recent show.
So what did camel Doug have? So zookiber Doug, owner of the Texas Camel Corps. He hunted down just on his own steam, his own volition, the truth of the Red Ghost as well as the fate of all those other former military camels. And we know that a lot of them went through Mobile Galveston, San Francisco. And Baum gives us this note. He says, these commercially imported camels start to mix with the formerly army camels in the
eighteen seventies. This is what he's mad about. By the way, this is what Doug is, what really gets Doug's hump here. He says, they innerbred with the former military camels. So unfortunately it's really murky where the military camels end up and what their ultimate dispositions were. You know, their endings were because of these nebulous traveling menageries and circuses. So he's like, like literal circuses.
Literally some of these were taken on by you know, traveling.
Famous for how well they kept there.
Even in the modern day.
You know, there have been changes in absolutely more oversight, but back in the early days, zero over horrific conditions of these animals.
I propose, gentlemen, we end with a nice uh not even call back a book end with our friends here. Well we'll see the friends are get this. We know what happened to at least one camel, a white haired camel named Sayd. He was yeah, we got what because he was Beale's prized riding camel. When they were expediting out west, Sayid was killed by a younger, larger camel in his hers Camela Violence cooc and COCV, and a soldier who is also a veterinarian. He said, look, Bill,
mister Bill, I know this. I say meant a lot to you. So we're going to ship him across the country to Washington. He his body is preserved by the Smithsonian, and the boons of Sai are still in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History to this.
Very day, right next to mister Lincoln.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a weird aisle. Yeah, in the museum.
Yeah, it's just it's just misk is the title.
Yes, yes, it's it's misk. Because budget cuts, uh didn't give us enough from the right. You know, I mean that's a big signs. That's a big sign. It's a big it's a big sign and it's on whiteboard, which is just remarkable. Wow.
So the terrible joke one upsmanship has been amazing.
For the our collective. Parents.
Would dad would be proud, honestly you think so? Oh yeah, my dad? Yeah, he would be like, way to go, son.
Mine would be utterly ashamed. Oh right, well, uh, once again I let happens. He was a tough nut and a fantastic four villain that may be coming to a theater near you. No spoilers. Yeah, big, big thanks of course, as I was saying to you, fellow ridiculous historians for tuning in, huge thanks to Matt the Madman. Still O, Matt, how'd we do? There? We go ahead? Of course, we
can't thank you enough. Jonathan Strickland. This will probably be the most polite thank you we have given you in the credits, because you are here in making eye contact in human form.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I didn't turn it into my evil alter ego.
It was.
It was on the table, but we ended up running a little long, and we're a little pressed for time here today.
At this tech conference.
A huge thanks to Chris Frasciotis Naves, Jeff Cote here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Max Williams, super producer.
Max, thank you for the editing, all the crazy sound cues and for just being a mention.
And big big thanks of course to the rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime, our crew of research associates on this show. Big thanks too. Okay, yep, there they go. I didn't want to be shouted out in the credits. We are working live. We'll be back next week. We're going to talk about ancient civilizations. You have to wonder what that means. We'll see next time, folks.
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