How many marksmen does it take to kill an elephant? The Cincinnati Zoo needed two firing squads to execute Old Chief in 1890.

Chief was a murderer, true, but that was part of his allure. The Zoo knew what it was getting when the John Robinson Circus convinced the Zoo to take the cantankerous pachyderm off their hands. Chief was a big draw for a solid year at the Zoo. A typical advertisement cajoled Cincinnatians to “Go Out to the ZOO To-Day and take in the new Baboon, the big bad Elephant “CHIEF” and the comical half-human chimpanzees ‘Mr. and Mrs. Rooney’.”

The Zoo knew that Chief had killed his keeper in 1881 when the Robinson Circus passed through Charlotte, North Carolina. They knew that Chief often made his escape from the Robinson stables on Poplar Street, rampaging through the West End. They knew that Chief was known to throw bricks and chunks of coal at his keepers. They knew that Gil Robinson had even floated the idea to publicly electrocute the “notoriously dangerous beast.” Instead, in April 1889, Chief marched from the West End to a new home at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens.

Chief was a big draw, indeed. But Chief was too much mischief for the zoo to contain. The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette described Chief’s escalating temper.

“On Monday he buried his tusks into the flooring of his quarters and ripped it up, throwing pieces around in every direction. Late in the afternoon, as his keeper passed by him, he cast a large plank at him and a few minutes after he grabbed a dog that happened to run through the quarters and hurled him up against the roof with great force.”

On the evening of Tuesday, 9 December 1890, Zoo president Adam E. Burkhardt gave permission to euthanize the big elephant. Adolph Drube, a military marksman, fired eleven shots from a Springfield rifle, at point blank range, into Chief’s head. By all reports, Chief’s temperament actually improved noticeably. He was otherwise unaffected by the gaping wound in his forehead and remained very much alive.

The next day, Wednesday 10 December 1890, the Zoo assembled a small firing squad of local marksmen to finish the job. Al Bandle, Hi Nieman and William Crosby, each armed with a .45 caliber Sharps military rifle, boarded an electric car with Zoo Superintendent Sol A. Stephan and raced to the elephant house. A crowd of estimated at a hundred or more gathered to watch. Stephan decided that it was too difficult to penetrate Chief’s cranium, so he painted a white circle behind the elephant’s left foreleg, indicating the general location of the heart.

The three riflemen lined up, took aim and fired one volley, to no effect. They fired again, and then a third time. A fourth volley sent only two bullets into Chief’s body because one of the rifles misfired. At this point Bandle stepped closer and aimed a shot behind Chief’s ear. He fired and Chief “uttered a terrible screech.” It was, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported,

“… his death yell. Those who heard it will never forget it. This shot settled him and the vicious beast fell on his left side, almost rolling onto his back, shaking the wooden building. There was a yell of triumph from the crowd.”

The Commercial Gazette was disgusted.

“It was a bungling piece of work all the way through and reflects no credit upon Supt. Stephan, or the Zoological Garden. The big beast was tortured unnecessarily. ”

Yet Chief faced further indignities. The crowd of people filling the elephant house had to be shooed off because several tried to carve souvenirs from Chief’s ears. A full dissection was undertaken the next day under the knife of Lawrence A. Anderson. Described by the newspapers as “a well known veterinary,” Doctor Anderson was the inspector for the Queen City Mutual Live Stock Insurance Company. Charles Dury, later president of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, took measurements as he prepared the remains for taxidermy by Ward’s Natural Science Establishment. Charles E. Mirguet of Ward’s arrived later in the day to begin preservation of the skin and bones.

Everyone wanted a piece of Chief. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that

“There was a great rush for steaks and tenderloins and there were thirty-five baskets in Herr Schmidt’s cellar belonging to persons who desired to eat elephant meat. W.K. Limbers secured a piece of the tusk, Dr. Anderson an eye, Mr. Spaeth a tenderloin. The tenderloin measured six feet. ”

On the evening of Friday, 12 December, a group of reporters from the Commercial Gazette and the Enquirer convened at S.A. Morrow’s Restaurant on Vine Street for a dinner of elephant steaks. The chef for the evening was Morrow’s manager, Colonel Jones Rockwell, noted for his experience dining on exotic animals such as rattlesnake and rat. Colonel Rockwell sliced up a five-pound steak, seasoned it well and broiled some of it before a slow fire while frying the rest. The Commercial Gazette reported:

“In the cooking, the little steaks shriveled up at an alarming rate. When it was ready for the table it resembled very much a piece of well-done liver. The guests ate sparingly of Old Chief at the banquet, for it was noticeable that not more than a nibble was taken from any one steak.”

The New York Times reported that the Palace Hotel also offered elephant that week:

“On the bill of fare of the Palace, Cincinnati, one day last week there appeared the rather unusual dainty, “loin of elephant.” It was, in fact, a part of Chief, the vicious elephant who was shot in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden and was not bad eating as some of the force of this office can testify. It was without exception the best roast elephant that any of us had ever tasted.”

Chief’s skeletal remains were reassembled and his stuffed skin prepared for display. The Cincinnati Zoological Gardens maintained the exhibit for at least a decade, a 1900 guidebook titled Studies in Zoology: Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, records that Chief was still at the zoo. Chief was later donated to the University of Cincinnati and later to the Cincinnati Museum Center.