4: Black Diamond the Elephant
Circus Elephant
Born: c.1898, Southeast Asia
Died:16 October 1929, Just Outside Kenedy, Texas, United States of America
Also Known As: Tusko or Congo
Black Diamond was a male Indian elephant owned by the AI G Barnes Circus. He reportedly weighed somewhere between six and nine tons and was called the largest elephant in captivity for his time. Like most circus elephants, Black Diamond had spent the majority of his life in perpetual chains. Whenever he wasn’t chained, Black Diamond was being forced to learn tricks or perform for crowds of people.
Before we get anything further, I would like to preface that most of the information about Black Diamond varies wildly depending on which source you read. I have tried to piece together the story based on which facts were mentioned most often, but in reality, we may never know what really happened in that small Texas town.
On October 12th, 1929, Black Diamond was being led at the front of the circus’s parade by his old handler, who had worked with him for a number of years previously but hadn’t worked with Black Diamond for over a year at the time of the parade.
Black Diamond was already responsible for the death of three people at the time of the incident, but not everyone was aware of that fact. His handlers had taken measures to prevent Black Diamond from harming anyone else by shaving his tusks short, attaching an iron bar across the tusks (both of which can be seen in photographs), and also shackling female elephants on either side of him to prevent him from getting out of control (although some sources say that he wasn’t shackled to other elephants on that day, but that he had been at other times in the past).
Nobody is sure what set Black Diamond off on this particular day, but whatever it was, Black Diamond panicked. He threw his handler off of his back with his trunk and then began to attack another woman by dragging her between parked cars and crushing her. Black Diamond’s handler got away with a broken wrist, but the other woman was later pronounced dead. Unfortunately for Black Diamond, his latest victim was a well-known member of the community and a wealthy landowner, which meant the community was even more upset over her death.
The only way the circus hands were able to regain control of Black Diamond was by tightening his chains that held him to the other elephants. Today, some historians and zoologists have theorized that Black Diamond was in a period of “must” –a hormonal change seen in male animals that make them more aggressive. Attaching an already aggressive male elephant to two females, while also in a state of must, was like lighting a match in a dynamite factory.
Black Diamond was quickly hurried back into his cage, which was one of the cars on the railway that his circus traveled with. Two circus hands were assigned to be guards over the elephant, and angry townspeople began to call for Black Diamond’s death.
The circus moved on to neighboring cities, hoping to leave the incident behind them, but the angry people of Corsicana followed the circus, continuing to demand Black Diamond be put down.
Also, unfortunately for Black Diamond, his circus had recently been bought out by John Ringling, of Ringling Brothers fame. Because John Ringling wanted to prevent a PR disaster from engulfing his newest venture, he began to try and come up with various methods of killing Black Diamond. He turned down an offer from the city of Corpus Christie, who offered to tie Black Diamond’s feet to tugboats and lead, drowning him in the harbor. Mr. Ringling then rejected the idea of having other elephants rip Black Diamond to pieces by tying chains to them and having them walk in different directions away from Black Diamond, who would have had the other end of the chains around his neck.
At first, the circus tried to poison the elephant by having him eat a crate of oranges and peanuts (reportedly his favorite food) that had been heavily laced with cyanide. Elephants are not stupid by any means however, and so it should be no surprise that Black Diamond refused to touch the food.
Finally, the circus decided they would kill Black Diamond via firing squad. Accounts differ as to how many rounds it took to kill the elephant—some sources say fifty while others say upwards of one hundred and seventy bullets were used to kill him.
According to the Texas Observer (article linked below):
“Onlookers rushed to collect relics from the massive body. A taxidermist and the Houston zookeeper arranged for the head to be transferred to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The local undertaker, a member of the firing squad, made a foot into a stool that’s now displayed in the Karnes County Museum near Kenedy. A butcher sold strips of the hide for a dime apiece. A local who watched the execution ended up with some of the elephant’s bones.”
As of 2012, Black Diamond’s taxidermized head and skull are on display in “The Trophy Room”—a sort-of museum owned by a Texas oil baron who likes to display his trophies from big game hunts. He did not have a role in killing Black Diamond, but he did think it would be fitting to have Black Diamond’s head displayed with his other prizes.
Yes, I threw up in my mouth a little bit typing that.
(Luckily, I found a more updated source that says the exhibit was closed to the public as of 2015).
According to the research done on Black Diamond’s skull, visitors can clearly see where his tusks were sawed down, where the iron bar dug into the remaining tusk, and how one side of the right tusk is also more worn down because of how Black Diamond was forced to sleep on his side in his small railcar.
Black Diamond’s story is one of pain and heartbreak. How he was captured from the wild and brought to the United States has been lost to history, but it had to have been traumatic to say the least. Forced to perform for the vast majority of his life, maybe Black Diamond had finally had enough. Whatever set him off that day, I doubt he knew it would lead to his horrific death four days later. Today, there is no grave for Black Diamond. Instead, he was pieced apart and sold as souvenirs to small-town-Texas folk, and his story remains to remind us why wild animals are called that, wild.
Sources:
https://www.texasobserver.org/corsicanas-killer-elephant/
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/7832
https://txnavarr.genealogyvillage.com/biographies/b/black_diamond.htm