Determined not to miss the New Year as well as Christmas with his family after spending almost all of 1891 in the field, Hatcher hightailed it home to Long Pine on the thirty-first, finding Mrs. H. and the young bone hunter both well. He’d shipped twenty-nine crates (100–129) of both fossils and “mammal sand,” some to New Haven and the rest to Long Pine, before leaving A. L. Sullins in charge at Lusk to work until January 17, sifting more sand and sending it to New Haven. As Hatcher left, Utterback was heading north, apparently to collect for “curio dealers in Hot Springs, S. Dakota.” Burwell was to let Hatcher know if Utterback brought in any fossils to Lusk before February 1; Hatcher intended to confiscate them, since Marsh had paid Utterback through that date. But Hatcher suspected Utterback was trading in buffalo horns instead of fossils. Skull 29 had turned out well. The squamosals were more slender than in No. 3 but not as slender as in the Torosaurus specimens 19 and 19A, and the nasal horn seemed different. There was an opening on the upper side at the base of the frill about three inches long and two inches wide, and several unusual bones under the left squamosal that, during life, appeared to have been covered with a horny substance. In all, Hatcher felt well satisfied with the crew’s showing and hoped Marsh would, too, since he had “pushed the work ahead with all the little energy I have hoping to demonstrate . . . that I’m still as loyal to you & have as much interest in the work as ever.” He then offered several suggestions for better tools and closed by informing Marsh that he’d paid out $109.60 more than received, overdrawing his bank account considerably. He requested Marsh send $100 immediately, then he’d deduct it from next month’s vouchers, which would save him from paying 18 percent interest on it, which the bank would charge.1
The New Year got off to a slow start, with Hatcher writing Marsh on January 3 that he’d received a letter from Peterson saying he and Wortman would work in Mexico the coming season, but Hatcher didn’t believe it. Then Hatcher got very sick around the tenth and, as a result, had put in only one day picking through the quarry sand for mammals by the thirteenth. Yet he had found one nice jaw with two perfect teeth and several isolated teeth. Adding to his headache, though, was a letter he’d received from Osborn dated January 7, which Hatcher felt required a polite but firm response dated January 12:
Dear Mr. Hatcher:
Professor Marsh showed me the other day, a paper of your agreeing to stay with him until July 1st, 1891 (termination of 5 years agreement). You wrote me that your agreement with him terminated in the autumn of 1890, and I have had this understanding and acted upon it, until quite recently, when as I say, Prof. Marsh informed that your agreement had not expired by six months.
The matter can probably be explained. Will you kindly do so? I am
Yours truly,
(signed) Henry F. Osborn
Answer:
Prof. H. F. Osborn.
My dear Sir:
Yours of Jan. 7th received. I think you are mistaken in saying that I wrote you that my agreement with Prof. Marsh terminated in the Autumn of 1890. If I wrote you this it should appear in your copy of our correspondence. I have looked through carefully and find no such statement. In my first letter I state “I am ready to send in my resignation to Marsh at any time.” In my letters to you this is the only reference I find to anything relating to the subject. Your so-called correspondence between us; copies of which you caused to be made and circulated last spring I think are unfair to me, for several reasons, particularly the following: you are dishonest in your quotations. I believe you quote me correctly and entirely everything I wrote, but your own letters you have so changed that in some of them the originals would not be recognized from a reading of your copies and moreover you have left out entirely one very important letter of yours. I refer to the one in which you write me asking me to meet you in New York or Princeton Showing [sic] that you were not absolutely sure of having a position for me. Why did you omit this letter if you meant to be honest with me?
Yours very truly,
(signed) J. B. Hatcher 2
Regarding his former crew members, Hatcher related to Marsh on the eighteenth that Peterson indicated he’d be coming through on February 1 on his way to Mexico, but Hatcher thought this “only a blind.” He also suspected the AMNH had engaged Utterback, despite Utterback’s denials. Hatcher then submitted vouchers for January totaling $360 and informed Marsh he’d like to pay $50 on one loan and deduct the $100 already sent. Sullins had finished on the fifteenth, and Hatcher paid him through the rest of the month, because “. . . he has been at work faithfully since April 1st & never lost a day, not even Sundays.” Despite being ill and the outside temperature reaching fifty-six below, Hatcher had gleaned “quite a number of mammals” from the quarry sand and would send that first batch shortly. On the twenty-second, Hatcher proudly proclaimed to Marsh, “I write to tell you that we have another young bonehunter at our house. It came along the 20th. Mother and boy doing well.” The Hatchers named their new son Harold. In other business, mammals were coming more slowly, and Hatcher feared Marsh would think he wasn’t working enough. On the twenty-ninth, Hatcher offered another reason for the slow pace, reporting that Anna and his older son got very sick on the twenty-fourth and had lapsed into a “dangerous condition” until they improved on the twenty-ninth. “I have not been in bed for five days & nights & I feel the effects of it too. Have spent all the time . . . waiting on the sick & going for doctor & medicine and looking for mammals.” At this point, he had only found about twenty-five mammal teeth and did not specify which genera. He’d also collected “quite a number of other things” without identifying them.3
By February 1, Hatcher was getting fidgety and informed Marsh he’d like to start the 1892 season on March 1: “I like being at home well enough. But [Anna and the boy] are all getting along well now & I believe the field is the place for me. The time passes quicker there than anywhere else in the world.” As he continued to pick through the quarry sand, he also reported he’d bought a stallion and would have sixteen mares for breeding in the spring, so his monthly payments to Marsh for his loan would need to be reduced. In all, he now had twenty-four head of horses, colts, and right mares that would have colts in spring, along with the sixteen mares to breed. Regarding the previous season’s collection, he inquired about how the Triceratops Skulls 26 and 29 were coming along, and rather defensively declared, “You say . . . you find Had. Skel. 1 that Sullins found better than I represented; I certainly meant to say everything in praise of the specimen. I only said the front feet were gone . . . & a portion of the skull. I took greatest of pains taking it up.”4
The market for mammals had picked up once again by the twelfth, when Hatcher had almost finished another box of sand that had produced many good teeth and several pieces of jaw, but only one jaw fragment with teeth, along with some good foot bones. In other news, he knew that Peterson had gone west to New Mexico, instead of Mexico, and advised Marsh that there was no use worrying about interference the AMNH might instigate in the Laramie:
The Laramie is . . . very extensive . . . & almost all is fossiliferous. Of course, it is not pleasant to have other party . . . work in same locality in which we work & if they only knew it, it is not in their interest to work there. For as we have been working there the past three seasons with splendid results the chances of getting new things . . . are now small & I think they could do much better elsewhere. In fact I . . . recommend that we spend portion of coming season . . . in another locality farther north where I feel sure we would get much more new material. . . .
Hatcher especially wanted to know when Marsh wanted them to start the season, since he’d need to alert Sullins and Louis Cook, who were home in Montana and Iowa, respectively. He also wanted Osborn’s letters returned and asked Marsh if Baur had started at Worcester yet, because he wanted him to repay an old loan or Hatcher would send a lawyer to collect it. Always acquisitive when it came to his property, Hatcher then revealed to Marsh, in the excitable, almost breathless tone of a son asking his father to buy him a toy, the reason for needing Baur to pay up—a 160-acre parcel of land with a house and good fencing adjacent to his own spread. If Marsh would purchase it for $800, Hatcher would pay him $900 over the next year.5
Marsh apparently didn’t respond immediately to that request but did direct Hatcher to start the season March 1, so on the seventeenth, Hatcher obediently indicated he’d write his crew to be at Long Pine then to begin work. Meanwhile, he continued to pick through sand for mammals, despite another bout with “rheumatism,” but fossils were few, except for a “nice little jaw with two posterior molars” from Beecher’s Quarry. Yet he was glad to hear that work on the skulls from the ’91 season was going well. In closing he parried an apparent poke from Marsh about not communicating often enough: “From the tone of your message today you seem . . . somewhat put out with me. You must remember that I am seven miles from the post office & telegraph & to go there every day would mean I could do little else.”6
The matrix from Beecher’s Quarry was not particularly productive, and Hatcher told Marsh on the twenty-sixth that he had gotten almost nothing further out of it except a dozen isolated teeth, half a femur, and “a very peculiar thing, which is either a dental plate of a fish or a portion of dermal armor from a small reptile. I have never seen anything like it before.” He planned to leave for Lusk the twenty-ninth; unless directed otherwise, he would first finish securing all the sand at the Peterson Quarry, then move farther north. But his “rheumatism” once again floored him, so on March 2 he remained in Long Pine while his crew, consisting of A. L. Sullins, A. E. Burrell, and Louis Cook, set out for Lusk. But Hatcher had had to scramble to staff the crew, since Anna’s youngest brother, who was expected to go, quit at the last minute:
He agreed faithfully last fall to stay right along. I guess he thought he had me in a pinch & I would give him more wages. But I didn’t & he is out of a job. I am glad he is gone & this ends all my relations with my relatives. I have never asked any favors of them & I shall never favor them again.7
The season had started in earnest by March 5, but Hatcher was still harrumphing about Utterback, who had already started collecting for the AMNH and expected the rest of their crew to join him soon. Utterback promised Hatcher that he’d not come within twenty-five miles of where Hatcher was working. On the home front, Marsh had apparently declined to loan Hatcher the money for the acreage adjacent to his farm, and it had sold for more than Hatcher could afford—$840, which Hatcher would have had to borrow at 18 percent interest. Nonetheless, he still had his eye on another adjoining property. He ran into Utterback in Lusk on the eighth and was no doubt happy to hear that he’d found nothing. During their chat, Hatcher told Utterback where he intended to work and emphatically warned, Utterback that “. . . if he or any party intruded [Hatcher] should not recognize their finds.” Hatcher was working for the government on government lands, and he didn’t want “to have the efficiency of [his] work impaired by the interference of other parties.” Utterback agreed not to work on Hatcher’s territory, although Hatcher warily told Marsh, “This remains to be seen.” Although formal permits are now required to collect on land owned by the US government, such was not the case in Hatcher’s day. Rules regarding who could collect where were more nebulous, and as we’ve seen with Marsh and Cope, disputes between competing crews from different institutions collecting in the same area commonly arose. After requesting a tent and a quart of Le Page’s liquid glue, Hatcher informed Marsh that Wortman and Peterson were collecting at Farmington, New Mexico. Finally on the fourteenth, Hatcher sent Marsh the first fruits of their season’s efforts—the results of their search for mammals, including two humeri, one ulna, and several jaws without teeth. He somewhat defensively claimed the cache to be “of more real value than any one lot yet sent.” Marsh was preparing another paper on the mammals that included over two hundred illustrations, but Hatcher couldn’t tell him at the moment which localities all the teeth had come from. Nonetheless, he expressed satisfaction that Hadrosaur Skeleton No. 1 (USNM 2414), in which all the ossified tendons in the tail were preserved, was preparing out nicely, as was Skull 29. Ossified tendons, which serve to stiffen the tail so it can be used as a more effective counterbalance to the torso as the duckbill moves, are occasionally preserved, since they are hardened by calcification in contrast to regular tendons.8
Hatcher announced the first sensational news of the season on April 1—his discovery of another hadrosaur skeleton, which he thought would fill in the missing parts of Skeleton 1.
. . . the tail and back portion . . . stuck out & the front runs [into] the bank. Most of bones are in position. We have both hind feet & one front foot uncovered & portion of other front leg in sight. The front foot we have uncovered has not the phalanges in position, but the metacarpals are. They are shaped as I shall try to illustrate [illustration included in letter] . . . there are four toes . . . the two outside ones being much shorter. The one slightly out of place may possibly not be a metacarpal but I think it is. It is slightly shorter than the other short one & appears stouter.
They hadn’t gotten to the skull yet, but there was no reason to think it was not there and in excellent condition, as were all the bones except those that had been exposed. This specimen is now mounted in the Great Hall at the Peabody Museum (YPM VP 2182) and is especially noteworthy for being not only the first relatively complete dinosaur to be mounted in an American museum but also the first dinosaur to be mounted in what is now considered to be the proper bipedal posture with the head and backbone held horizontally so that the tail is raised up and not dragging along the ground. In essence, this posture for the mount, which was constructed by Beecher and Hugh Gibb in 1901, basically records the position of the bones as they were found in the ground, a fact that Beecher was able to observe, since he was part of Hatcher’s crew when he collected it. The crew also brought in four more boxes and was doing very well despite enduring the most severe blizzard of the season. Since the storm would prevent work for several days, Hatcher shifted his plans and went home that night, expecting to be gone until the tenth. He supposed Wortman and Peterson would be there soon and wanted to be around when they arrived.9
But Hatcher was still waylaid in Long Pine on the fourteenth by a blizzard he’d “never seen the like of.” It had taken him four days to get home, where he’d been cooped up inside ever since in fear of exacerbating his “rheumatism.” He promised to send the hadrosaur forefoot and skull, if it was preserved, as soon as he returned, which he hoped would be on the nineteenth. Back in Lusk on the twenty-third, Hatcher was still waiting for his team and crew to come in, so he couldn’t submit the monthly vouchers in time to pay them on May 1. As an aside, he informed Marsh, “The excitement over the war is dying down a little,” apparently referring to the Johnson County War in northern Wyoming between powerful cattle barons, whose herds numbered in the thousands, and small operators running just enough cattle to support their families. About thirty barons and another twenty hired gunmen rode out of Casper intending to hang or gun down about seventy of the small operators. Only one small operator was murdered by the barons and their gang before several hundred Johnson County locals surrounded the “invaders” at a nearby ranch to take revenge. But before they could, Governor Amos Barber, an ally of the barons, alerted President Benjamin Harrison about the impending bloodshed, and the government sent troops from Fort McKinney to restore order.10
By early May, Wyoming had turned into a mass of muck as the result of the melting snow, and although Hatcher made it in to Lusk on the ninth, he had to leave the all-important hadrosaur skull (YPM VP 2184) on the road in his wagon, which was stuck in the mud, a circumstance that must have alarmed Marsh. Hatcher had been on the road for four days facing down one snowstorm after another. Nonetheless, he was shipping crates 1–8 for the season, which, according to his list, contained mammal sand from various quarries, a turtle, and a lower jaw of a hadrosaur. He’d express the hadrosaur foreleg, then ship the rest of the skeleton soon as private freight. The skull and lower jaws were still in two large blocks and not exposed enough to assess for sure how good they were, although he had high hopes and would encase them in hard jackets for protection before digging them out, carefully packing them and shipping them to the Peabody, where they could be prepared and evaluated more fully. He made it back to camp the next day and hoped to send Sullins and Burwell in with Hadrosaur Skeleton No. 2 on the eleventh, along with the vouchers for May and a request to credit him $50 on his loan.11
Hatcher supposed Marsh had received the forefoot of the hadrosaur when he wrote on the twenty-first, saying he was sorry that some of the finger bones were gone, which he suspected was due to these lighter bones being transported downstream by currents in the ancient stream before the rest of the skeleton was buried by sediment and later fossilized. As is widely recognized today but not back then, he seemed surprised that the hind limbs were so much longer than the forelimbs. The crew was planning to ship nine more crates on the twenty-second and move camp about fifteen miles southwest on Doegie Creek. They had now gathered another three hundred mammal teeth, which Hatcher hoped would reveal some new forms. Wortman and Peterson were using Douglas, Wyoming, as a base, but Hatcher had no idea if they were having any luck. He’d received two or three letters from Osborn, who had hired another of Hatcher’s brothers-in-law, but he didn’t think they intended to work near Lusk. In addition, the still-open wounds between Hatcher and Osborn over the aborted hiring of Hatcher at the AMNH continued to fester. In a March 14 response to a letter Osborn had written Hatcher on January 18, Hatcher replied that he would be glad to “withdraw any statements in the least discourteous” to Osborn as soon as Osborn could satisfy Hatcher that he was not trying to harm him by what Hatcher alleged was Osborn’s alteration of their earlier corresponence regarding the position. Hatcher also maintained that he was not “bound” to Marsh at the time negotiations for the position began because Marsh “was free to discharge me at any time.” On April 25, Hatcher again wrote Osborn to rehash essentially the same argument and offer, “Whenever it appears to me that you meant me no injustice I shall be glad to withdraw any discourteous statements.” Osborn fired the last salvo in this skirmish of their ongoing feud on April 29, asserting that he’d given Hatcher “a fair opportunity” to recant his repulsive language and, since Hatcher failed to do so, Hatcher had, in Osborn’s eyes, “removed all the respect I had entertained for you.” Apparently unphased, Hatcher focused on his fieldwork. Feeling that their present field area had been picked pretty clean, Hatcher reiterated his desire to Marsh to strike out in search of new badlands to prospect. He thought it best to reconnoiter the region to the west of where they’d been working. But he nonetheless suggested leaving Sullins and another man behind to look for something new for a few months. Only if they found a locality far to the north did Hatcher suspect that they would find numerous new forms. Using that opportunity as bait, Hatcher tried to entice Marsh to grab Charles Beecher and come out prospecting with him. But Marsh would not be manipulated and telegraphed on the thirty-first that Hatcher should proceed “with present work” and keep expenses as low as possible, preferring to delay a decision about searching for a new locality until later.12
Keeping his eyes peeled for interlopers, Hatcher noted that Wortman and Peterson returned to Lusk with only a few mammal teeth and planned to strike out for Miocene exposures, presumably in Nebraska or South Dakota. They also revealed that Utterback was no longer employed by the AMNH. For his part, Hatcher shipped fifteen crates weighing 5,500 pounds on June 1, including Skull 30 and two turtles—one that was extremely large and the other with a complete foot. Apparently in response to a query from Marsh, he went on to describe in detail the positioning of the bones in the hadrosaur forefoot as it had been preserved in the ground. Then he once again passionately prodded Marsh about prospecting for a new locality, grumbling, “It is a great waste of time and money to remain here longer. We are repeating same mistake we made in Kansas and Dakota. This locality is worn threadbare & we are only duplicating material.” On a more personal note, he told Marsh he had a chance to trade his place in Nebraska for a new house in New Haven with fourteen rooms, bathroom, pantry and “all modern conveniences . . . stocked with choice shrubbery & fruits.” Then he played his hand:
Now what do you think? Is there a chance for me in New Haven? If you dont [sic] want me there say so frankly & I will work my time out, out here & keep my property here. If you think I can do good work there & would like me there I would like to go there & will do my best to work for our mutual interests & the interests of all concerned; I wish you’d write me frankly just what you think.
Are you willing I should work up the Laramie turtles with a view to describing them?
Marsh must have responded as soon as he received Hatcher’s proposal, writing on June 6:
In regard to the more important matters you mention, I will think them over and write you later when I hear definitely from Washington. You know very well that I should be glad to have you here in New Haven if you can be contented here, and in that case I should be delighted to have you take hold of the turtles and work them up. Until the uncertainty in Congress is entirely removed, I should think it would not be wise to exchange your present home for anything here, although I often feel myself that I should like to swap my ranch here for one in the West, where taxes and street committees are less oppressive.13
Marsh’s allusion to his problems in Washington revolved around the long-festering political disputes between Congress and the USGS, led by its director John Wesley Powell, who had appointed Marsh as the Survey’s vertebrate paleontologist in 1892, much to the chagrin of Cope, who lost all his leverage for government funding to support fieldwork and publications as a result. Although both Powell and Marsh had survived Cope’s attempted coup, hatched through his broadside and played out on the pages of the New York Herald in 1890, the Survey’s difficulties did not disappear. Although Powell retained the support of Iowa senator William B. Allison, who headed up the Senate’s Appropriation Committee, the annual appropriation for the Survey had long been under skeptical scrutiny by other members of Congress, especially Alabama congressman Hilary A. Herbert. Essentially, the government had for years rubber-stamped Powell’s blanket request for funding without any itemization required to indicate exactly how the funds were to be spent. Basically, Powell had argued that the funds would be expended to conduct a careful study in which all of the nation would be geologically mapped in order to identify tracts of arid lands, especially in the West, that could be reclaimed by irrigation through strategically located dams and their resulting reservoirs. In 1885–86, Powell claimed to a congressional committee investigating the Survey that the mapping project would take twenty years and cost $18 million, but critics responded that at the rate the project was proceeding, it could take a century and cost $100 million. A drought in 1890 exacerbated Congress’s zeal for immediate action to generate irrigation, and by 1892, the country was entering an economic downturn, which generated increased pressure on Congress to cut costs. The USGS became a prime target for cuts, and rather anecdotally, Marsh’s monograph on toothed birds became a rallying cry for those cuts, especially since Harvard’s influential zoologist Alexander Agassiz argued that such monographs could be published much cheaper through the private sector than through the government. Although Marsh had used his own personal money to fund the work on the lavish illustrations, Congressman Herbert dismissively held up a copy of the “sumptuous volume with morocco binding, gilt edges, wide margins [and] specially tinted paper” during one debate and proclaimed it “an excellent example of the way in which large amounts of government money were being wasted on the description of such worthless objects as ‘birds with teeth.’” Herbert’s amendment requiring the cessation of all paleontological work by the Survey by July 1, 1892, was passed by a vote in the House of ninety to sixty. In the Senate, Herbert’s amendment was scrapped, and salaries for paleontologists were reinserted in the Appropriations Committee’s Sundry Civil Bill. But further votes followed, and in mid-July, the Senate approved an amendment slashing the annual Survey appropriation to $335,000, including salaries for four geologists and two paleontologists. Powell, in assessing the carnage caused by his defeat, sent Marsh a telegram on July 20, in which he stated, “Appropriation cut off. Please send your resignation at once.” Although further attempts would be made to soften the blow to Marsh, at least to the extent of trying to help Marsh get his research projects published, the reality was that he no longer would wield power as the federal government’s chief vertebrate paleontologist or benefit from the $4,000 it had provided to his annual income. Beyond that, the effects of Marsh’s downfall would have enormous consequences for Hatcher, both as the rest of the 1892 field season played out and beyond.14
Upon receiving Marsh’s June 6 response on the seventeenth, Hatcher was “somewhat disappointed by its contents.” Adding to his frustration was the fact that “The ‘Great American Desert’ is a veritable quagmire,” due to torrential rain. He could not haul crates on the muddy roads, and even if he could, the railroad had been washed out. Regardless, he had nine crates (32–40) ready to ship, including Skull 31, which was small but with nearly complete horncores and a frill that reminded him of Skulls 19 and 19A belonging to Torosaurus. Apparently Wortman had seen it, and Hatcher wrote, “not wishing me any bad luck he wished they had found it instead of me.” Wortman and Peterson then left for regions to the north, having not succeeded in discovering any large skulls or skeletons, although they had found some mammal teeth. Hatcher still guessed they would head for Miocene exposures east of the Black Hills. Then Hatcher informed Marsh that he was making good progress on the stratigraphy of the region:
I’ve been making some observations, measurements & sketches of the Laramie. I find that the beds are not so discontinuous as I had supposed [and] have been able to make out several different horizons & on the whole I think I’ll be able to write a fairly creditable paper on the geology of this region.
Hatcher eventually penned that paper in 1893. Some financial details followed, including his request to be allowed to skip a couple of monthly payments on his loan, since his final mortgage installment was due on August 1.15
With that, Hatcher apparently fled the field temporarily to attend a geological conference in Chicago. He continued on to New Haven in an attempt to see Marsh, but upon his arrival, Marsh was in Washington, dealing with the brewing political storm over USGS funding. However, Marsh’s sister, Mary, entertained Hatcher with “a dish of strawberries and jersey cream. Quite a delicacy for an everyday ‘bonehunter.’”16
Hatcher wended his way back to Lusk by July 8, but unfortunately, the crew had found nothing fantastic during his absence. With Marsh under financial pressure at the Survey, Marsh apparently presed Hatcher, when they eventually met in New Haven, to jettison one of the crew, but Hatcher responded, “Burrell would like very much to continue work & it seems too bad to let him go.” On the fifteenth, from the Peabody, Marsh made his political and financial predicament clearer to Hatcher:
Dear Mr. Hatcher. –
Yours of July 8th duly received. Glad you found good weather there, even if men found little during your absence. I think you must be right that region is about exhausted, at least for big things. I still have great faith in “Quarry No. 1,” however, and I wish I had a dozen boxes of sand from it, if as good as what we are now working here. Tell Burrell that I may be able to give him some work later, but, as we agreed when you were here, we must stop work at the end of this month.
I do not like the look of things in Washington. The Senate appropriation committee, under Mr. Allison, put paleontology back, and this passed the committee of the whole. Just before the bill passed the Senate, a raid was made on the Geological Survey, and the whole appropriation for it was cut down about forty percent. This may be put back in the House, or in the conference and I am inclined to think it will be, but the result no man can tell until the bill is finally passed. I will telegraph you as soon as I have any definite information. Meanwhile, let me know just where a message will reach you if you get out of reach of Lusk to go home or elsewhere.
The weather has been terribly hot since you left, and I am about worn out with trouble, anxiety, and the heat.
Hermann has been cutting down the block containing the skull of Had. No. 2. We find the head was swung around to the left side and lies on the ribs, which are in place, at least the twelve posterior ones.
Yours truly,
(signed) O. C. Marsh17
Hatcher mailed the vouchers for July on the eighteenth in preparation for wrapping up business and closing down the field operation at the end of the month: $250 for himself, $60 for Sullins, $55 for Cook, and $55 for Burrell. After receiving a telegram from Marsh on the twentieth, Hatcher indicated he’d been watching the papers in regard to the Civil Services Bill in the Congressional Record and was very sorry to hear of the misfortune, expressing his willingness and readiness to come to New Haven or go north into Montana at any time. He’d also rented his farm in anticipation of having to work in portions of the country from which he could not easily get home. He planned to take his family to New Haven. Still concerned about losing all of his crew, he asked if Marsh could keep Sullins on the payroll out west, then bring him east for the winter. Hatcher recommended him very highly and intimated that Sulllins would only need $50 per month and would pay his own travel expenses. With the Cross article in his hands, Hatcher had carefully surveyed the sections showing the Triceratops beds and those underlying and overlying them. Regardless of the stratigraphic relationships around Denver, he reported:
I nowhere find such a section as he describes there in our region. Our Triceratops beds in Converse Co. Wyoming come entirely within the Laramie as described by King & Hayden. There is in no instance observed the slightest unconformity between the Triceratops beds & the underlying beds right down through to the Jura which is well represented in one locality to the southeast.18
Marsh wrote again on July 25 with more depressing news, but he also pledged to personally cover the expenses of a final prospecting trip north for the season and laid out his priorities for it:
I . . . answered your telegram of the 22d from Long Pine about work after August 1; namely, that you better go north, and I would write you more fully to Lusk.
I returned here Saturday, 23d, pretty well used up with heat and worry. I found the small can of mammal teeth, some of which were very good, and among them what I now take to be a bone of a pterodactyle sufficiently preserved to be described, although much smaller than I expected. Now we have one bone, I presume we will begin to find others, for that is the way luck usually runs.
The news from Washington is very discouraging. Two men that ought to have been friendly to the Survey, Wolcott of Colorado, and Carey of Wyoming, proved to be especially hostile, and are mainly responsible for the damage done, notwithstanding all I have done to make known the paleontology of their respective states. I have found out what the matter is with [Senator E. O.] Wolcott who is friendly to me, but cannot understand why [Senator J. M.] Carey should not be. I hope I have no enemies in Wyoming.
The probabilities now are that I shall not have a single dollar from the Survey after August 1st, during the present fiscal year. The new appropriation will be passed before March 4, but will not be available before July 1st, 1893. There is barely a possibility that the present Congress may do something better before adjournment, which will probably be the last of this week, but possibly not. There is a strong reaction in Washington in favor of the Survey, but it may be too late to help us this year, but at all events, I think we will be all right for next year.
As I shall have to pay for your northern trip myself, I wish you would keep expenses as low as possible. The three things I need most, and hope you will get on the trip, are –
(1) The skull of Ceratops, and other remains of the small horned Dinosaurs, the smaller the better.
(2) The skull of carnivorous Laramie Dinosaur, with of course any other smaller remains.
(3) Mammals and other small things from the northern horizons.
Please send by registered mail the small things, as promptly as you can conveniently, and I enclose a lot more franks for that purpose.
Please also before you start send me your post office and telegraph address along the route, so that I can communicate with you promptly, if necessary.
I may possibly write you again before you start.
Yours very truly,19
Then on the twenty-eighth, Marsh wrote again from New Haven after receiving Hatcher’s letter of the twenty-second from Long Pine:
I wrote you yesterday a long letter, and received today your letter of the 22d inst. from Long Pine. I am much interested in what you say about the Ceratops beds in Converse county [sic], and those above and below, and I wish we had time and money to follow the question up. I urged Powell before I left Washington to let me do this, but he said he could not promise a dollar unless Congress relented and gave him more than now promised. If that comes, you still have a good chance, but the fossils I wrote you about yesterday are more important to me if I have to pay for everything after August 1, and this may possibly be the last chance at the Laramie.
In closing work at Lusk, you may send all the fossils collected during the month of August as Government freight, but after that date, as I wrote you, either by direct freight, express, or registered mail. If you have a chance to sell at fair prices any of the things you intended to store at Lusk you may do so. I mean the buckboard and similar large things, which you spoke of.
I am sorry that I cannot now promise to give Sullins work here this winter, as the prospects look very bleak at present. As [Adam] Hermann and Thomas [Bostwick] are both cut off, I cannot take anyone else until the Survey is willing to pay for the work, much as I would otherwise like to do so, especially to oblige you and Sullins whom you speak so well of.
I send by this mail copies of my last article, which I am sure will interest you. The Hadrosaurus restoration is nearly finished, and promises to be fine.
Yours very truly,20
In addition to the loss of income from his position at the USGS, Marsh now faced a fragile state in his other personal finances. For decades, most of his annual income had come from two funds that had been established for his family by Marsh’s uncle, George Peabody. At their zenith in the 1870s, these trusts had provided Marsh with as much as $50,000 per year; however, one trust had basically been liquidated in 1888, after Marsh received a settlement of $37,598, and the other smaller trust could only provide him with an income of about $3,000 per year. Although these amounts were extremely large in relation to the assets of most men, including Hatcher, they put a severe crimp in Marsh’s lifestyle. He was eventually forced to mortgage his house to Yale for $30,000 and, for the first time, be placed on the university’s payroll.21
From Long Pine on the twenty-eighth, Hatcher confirmed that he’d shipped seven crates of mammal-bearing sand when he left Lusk, and indicated that Wortman had written to say they’d been having very poor success. Hatcher closed with a postscript indicating he’d start north August 1 and do his best to make the trip a success. He was in Lusk on the third to meet Sullins and start north.22
From Lusk on the fifth, the pair headed west to Douglas, Wyoming, with Hatcher noticing on the way that the “Triceratops beds underlie the coal bearing Laramie of the Shawnee mining district.” By the tenth, they had reached Buffalo, Wyoming, and despite the desiccating heat that topped out at 104, the horses were bearing up well. But to date, they had found no fossils. They reached Junction City, Montana, on the fifteenth, where Hatcher learned from Marsh that Congress had failed to appropriate any funding for paleontology. Concerned, Hatcher wondered when Marsh wanted to close the operation, as well as whether he thought they’d be able to work next season if they found a good fossil locality, since he’d need to decide what to do with the horses. He estimated expenses for August would total about $275 including travel, and requested Marsh credit him with $50 on his loans and send the rest to Junction City.23
Near Willow Creek, Montana, Hatcher informed Marsh on the twenty-second that they’d found numerous hadrosaur bones, but because those weren’t one of Marsh’s priorities, he was moving on to Cow Island in the Judith River region. Upon receiving two of Marsh’s missives on the twenty-sixth, an annoyed Hatcher arched his back, retorting:
I cannot agree with you that we had “Such poor success at our old localities this season.” I am well pleased with my work done there. I shipped you over 15,000 pounds of good bones from there besides many hundred mammal teeth & other small things. A better collection of Mammal teeth than the Am. Museum party got. I consider Had. Skel. 2 & Skull 31 both good finds & we got many other good things besides. Ten years ago you would have considered our success phenomenal. I shall certainly do my best for the rest of the season elsewhere & hope to send you many good things yet this fall. I work early & late, Sunday & Monday & now that I have only one man who has to stay & watch camp I have it all to do myself which does not discourage me in the least. A collector in this country has some hardship to bear, but neither bad water, hot weather, cold, chilly rains or anything else affects me as it does to find that my efforts have not been appreciated by you. It was certainly a misfortune that the box containing Skull 31 came in broken up. But this I consider no fault of mine but of the R.R. employees, for it could have only been broken by being dumped off a platform or out of a car & I labeled it this side up. With care, etc.
Accentuating his stress, Hatcher had received a letter from Anna saying their oldest boy, Earl, fell and hurt his hip so he was unable to move his leg. The doctor came twice but was unable to locate the injury or do anything to relieve his severe and perpetual pain. Also, Hatcher was still unable to find anything other than hadrosaur bones, of which he’d packed a couple of crates. He informed Marsh that Burrell had undertaken collecting in the Miocene and wondered if Marsh wanted to purchase the collection. Hatcher also seemed pleased with the man to whom he’d rented his farm. He had a wife but no children, so he didn’t think they’d “tear up things and mar the house.” Anna was boarding with them until Hatcher returned to take her east. All in all, Hatcher seemed soured on fieldwork, confessing,
I do not know that I care whether I ever work in the field again after this year. Of course I want to do whatever suits you best . . . but if . . . you do not know as you will ever do any more field work after this year, it will work no misfortune to me. . . . For I had quite as soon be in New Haven with my family.24
Although rain held up Hatcher’s parade through the Judith region around the twenty-seventh, at least he received clarifying news from Anna regarding their eldest son’s injury. The doctor had finally diagnosed the problem; his leg was broken just above the knee and had finally been set. Unfortunately, he had had to suffer through four days and nights of excruciating pain before the doctor used chloroform to put him under and perform the procedure. Hatcher was also saddened to hear on the tenth that all paleontological work had halted at the Peabody, except for one preparator, Hugh Gibb, who was apparently on the university payroll rather than the USGS funds. Nonetheless, Hatcher got a chuckle out of Marsh’s news that Osborn had handed over his mammals to Cope, derisively declaring, “I presume he has learned ere this the difference between Stagodon [a small Cretaceous mammal] & Squalodon [a Cenozoic shark-toothed whale].” Hatcher and Sullins reached Judith by September 10, but they found “nothing of importance.” As with his earlier excursion to the region, he planned to work his way down the other side of the Missouri over the next two weeks. To conclude, Hatcher asked Marsh if he still wanted to sell or rent a small house he owned in New Haven, and if so, might he be willing to sell it to Hatcher, who offered to pay $500 down and the rest over the next two years. His source of funds would be the sale of his horses, which had brought in $780.25
Hatcher mailed a tin box containing the tooth of a large carnivorous dinosaur on the eighteenth, saying that the tooth came from freshwater beds overlying the marine beds. The only large carnivorous dinosaur tooth collected by Hatcher in 1892 is now housed at the Peabody Museum, where it is catalogued as belonging to Tyrannosaurus and listed as coming from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana (YPM VP 8228). He’d also found what he thought to be a hadrosaur sacrum (YPM VP 3224) with seven vertebrae attached, but bones were frustratingly sparse. Beyond that, Hatcher lamented that his once burgeoning band of bone hunters had depressingly disappeared:
Well I’m alone now and this is a pretty desolate country to be alone in too. Sullins left me day before yesterday. He let on to get mad because I worked so late & did not get in in time for my meals. But I think he quit to take an all winter’s job here at Judith. He told me that if he could find work up in this country he would like to stay here this winter. So the time I went to Judith I spoke to Mr. Norris the man who lives there & told him what a good man Sullins was & that I would be glad if he could give him work when I got through with him. He said he needed just such a man then & would like to have him any time & that he would keep a place for him. The day he quit me he had been to Judith for the mail & I suppose had a talk with the clerk there as Norris himself was gone. So that night when I came in he had supper ready & as I went to sit down to eat he spoke for the first time & said that if I could not come in before dark for my meals I could get another cook – he’d be d—d if he’d cook for me. He’d get me my breakfast in the morning & that would be the last d—d meal he’d get. I just told him that there were no strings on him & he need not stay to get breakfast for me but to “pull his freight” at once as I did not want a man who could not be civil. It was only seven o’clock then & not yet dark for I took out my watch to see the time of day & could see without a light. I do not know what to do exactly. There are no men here & I do not know where I could get a man. I will work alone until the first of Oct. or longer if you think best & especially if I can find anything. But it is rather up-hill business alone. I wish you would telegraph me when you receive this letter just what you wish me to do.
On the twenty-seventh, Marsh telegraphed and tersely told Hatcher to use his best judgment about continuing work. In short, it seems that Hatcher surrendered and simply headed home. In retrospect, that seems an unbelievably unceremonious way to end a nine-year-long odyssey of fossil collecting that would go down in paleontological history and lore as among the most successful ever.26
Continuing his string of successful seasons in the 68- to 66-million-year-old sediments of Wyoming’s Lance Creek badlands, Hatcher amassed another impressive suite of multituberculates (Allacodon, Cimolodon, Cimolomys, Meniscoessus, Mesodma, and “Oracodon,” which is now called Meniscoessus); marsupials (Alphadon, Didelphodon, Didelphops, and Pediomys); and placentals (Cimolestes and Gypsonictops). The collection also contained the sturgeon Acipenser. Among amphibians are found the salamanders Habrosaurus, Opisthotriton, Prodesmodon, and Scapherpeton. Among the reptiles, he also tallied turtles (Aspideretes, Axestemys, and Baena); lizards (Chamops, Contogenys, Odaxosaurus, Parasaniwa, Peltosaurus, Leptochamops, Meniscognathus, and “Prionosaurus,” which is now called Exostinus, as well as “Lanceosaurus,” which is now called Chamops); a snake (Coniophis); a crocodile (Brachychampsa); and dinosaurs (Edmontosaurus, Paronychodon, Aublysodon, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and Troodon), as well as birds such as a loon (Gavia).
No further documents cover correspondence that ensued during the months of October, November, or nearly all of December. Yet it’s clear that the cogs of bureaucracy were churning. A draft document dated December 31, 1892, appears in the record that states Hatcher would release Marsh from their contract one year from that date if Marsh provided Hatcher with a satisfactory recommendation and allowed Hatcher to use that recommendation to help secure another position. If Hatcher secured a position before the end of 1892, then Hatcher would release Marsh from their contract at that time. The nature of the position that Hatcher sought was initially described as an assistant geologist or paleontologist on staff of a museum in charge of field or museum work and with the liberty to publish research. The salary sought was $1,500 per college year, and Hatcher agreed to teach if required.27
Marsh, no doubt with Hatcher’s input, then drafted by hand the required letter of recommendation on Yale University Museum letterhead, which was signed off as being satisfactory by Hatcher:
Jan 10th 1893
Mr. J. B. Hatcher, a graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University has for nearly nine years been in my employ as assistant in Paleontology engaged in collecting vertebrate fossils and in Museum work. During all this time, he has shown great ability and industry, and has given entire satisfaction. The discoveries he has made are known to all paleontologists.
I regret that for financial reasons, I cannot retain his services, and heartily recommend him to any institution needing such an assistant.
(signed) O. C. Marsh28
Next, Hatcher hand-drafted an advertisement for the job he wanted that would be placed in Yale’s American Journal of Science and other similar publications:
Wanted – By a graduate of the S. S. S. of Yale Univ. A position as assistant on geology and/or paleontology, especially vertebrate paleontology in any institution having a department of vertebrate paleontology or wishing to establish such. Has had nine years experience as assistant to Prof. O. C. Marsh. Will divide time between instruction, museum & field work if desired. Can furnish excellent references.
J. B. Hatcher
Yale Museum
New Haven, Ct.
Note at bottom of page:
Hatcher started collecting for Marsh June 25, 1884 and since Hatcher “had nine years experience as assistant to Prof. O. C. Marsh” the date of the note must be 1893. I know that Hatcher quarreled much with Marsh during that year. C. Schuchert.29
Participation by lawyers for Yale and perhaps a lawyer for Hatcher resulted in the final memorandum of agreement, which detailed the elements required for the eventual dissolution of the contract between Marsh and Hatcher. Signed and dated on January 10, 1893, it stipulated that Hatcher would remain in Marsh’s employ under the existing contractural conditions until he found a position that satisfied his stated requirements at another institution.30 (See appendix 1)
According to Daniel L. Brinkman, current museum assistant II at Yale’s Peabody Museum, there is reason to believe that Marsh did, indeed, continue to pay Hatcher for the two or so months that he spent at the Peabody Museum in late 1892 and early 1893, while writing his first two scientific publications (Hatcher 1893 a, b). In Hatcher’s 1891 contract with Marsh, the two agreed that Hatcher could publish on the geology of the Ceratops and Titanotherium beds under his own name (appendix 1). Hatcher returned to the Peabody by at least Dececember 5, 1892, when he submitted his Ceratops beds paper for publication, and it appears that he was there until at least January 16, 1893, the date on which he submitted his Titanotherium beds paper. Beyond that, the terms of his revised contract with Marsh dated January 10, 1893 stated that Marsh had to keep Hatcher employed until Hatcher got a decent job offer from somewhere else. These facts shed a somewhat different light on Marsh not only as an employer but a gentleman. By (1) covering the costs of Hatcher’s last few months of fieldwork out of his own pocket; (2) sticking to the terms of their 1891 and revised 1893 contracts by continuing to pay Hatcher until he found a new position while allowing him to publish on the geology of the Ceratops and Titanotherium beds; and (3) writing a supportive letter of recommendation that helped Hatcher get a new job at Princeton, Marsh appears to have been a much more loyal and supportive employer than usually portrayed. Perhaps Marsh actually took a few of his former assistants’ personal jabs that appeared in the New York Herald articles to heart, thereby transforming him into a better employer and a better man, at least as far as his working relationship with Hatcher was concerned. The appreciation that Hatcher felt toward Marsh’s treatment of him during these difficult days may also be latently reflected in a statement Hatcher made to his colleague, Charles Schuchert, who asked Hatcher, long after Hatcher had left Yale, which of the paleontologists for whom he had worked Hatcher preferred the most. “Hatcher replied, with feeling, ‘Marsh was the best of them all!’” And Hatcher would amplify that sentiment more formally in print on the first page of his Diplodocus monograph in 1901:
Where a generation ago the extinct vertebrate life of America was but poorly represented in our museums by imperfect series of teeth and isolated bones, we are now able to study many of these extinct animals from more or less complete skeletons. For these improved conditions we are mainly indebted to the late Professor Marsh, either directly by reason of the vast collections acquired by him, or indirectly through the improved laboratory and field methods developed by him and his assistants.31
In any event, the oft-tempestuous tandem of Hatcher and Marsh left an indelible mark that still mesmerizes paleontologists and the public. Few among us have never heard of their dinosaurian superstar, Triceratops, and Torosaurus is still the topic of impassioned scientific debate. The minuscule mammals that Hatcher discovered and Marsh described not only opened a new, 66-million-year-old window on the origins of our evolutionary cousins, with which we still share the earth; they also continue to underpin research regarding how mass extinction events, such as the one at the end of the Cretaceous, might affect our own future. These discoveries, paired with Hatcher’s acute geologic insights and innovative collecting techniques, such as the gridded quarry map for the Long Island rhino site, still reverberate across many aspects of modern paleontological research.