Where is it from?

Walter L Sprague
Arts and Culture Reporter
 
Today we start a new column for the NLJ. We have many different phrases, or words, even common objects in pop culture, but do we know from where we got them? About every month or so I’ll be tracking down some of these everyday items, words, and phrases. I’ll look into the history of it, and as accurately as I can, report on where we got them. This column is one that you never know what will creep in. Some of our everyday sayings are somewhat obscure, even though we may know exactly what the saying means. Some of the objects we use are so familiar to us that everyone will have no confusion about what its use is. But in many instances, the reasons are elusive. But don’t fret! I’m on it! And I’ll cut through the myths and get right down to the history of where we got our modern cultural mainstays. And while I may not always be the most thorough, giving you every detail, I do promise to try and cut through to the most exciting parts of history. I hope you enjoy it.
This month we are going to look at the game “Pin The Tail On The Donkey.” This idea came from Siri during one of our weekly meetings at the paper. And I was surprised to find out how accurate her information is.
The object is simple and is more for entertainment than for competitiveness. A child is blindfolded and handed a paper tail with a push pin in it. After he/she is disoriented, the goal is to pin the tail onto a picture of a donkey without a tail. The one who pins the tail closest to the rear end wins! Well, least he/she gets laughed at less than all the other participants. And that’s about it! See--I told you it would be interesting!
Oh…you want more? Alright, then--you asked for it. 
The game appears to have possible origins in Spain, but there’s a lot of vagueness about that, which I’ll get into in a bit. It is during the colonial period in America and especially during the early expansion of our nation westward on which I want to focus. It became popular in the central part of the U.S. and appeared to have become a huge fad in the North Central region of the country, especially in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was here, during the 19th century that so-called “Donkey Parties” were being played. News reports were covering the craze as early as 1868. Then, an industrious inventor, Charles Zimmerling, created the first mass-produced version of the game in 1888 or 1889, and it soon became a children’s party game. But far from starting as an innocent pastime, the idea grew out of a darker history. 
First of all, there is a peculiar problem with donkeys. There are genetic defects in almost all animals. But one of the most commonly known is the number of donkeys that can be born without tails. That defect became a joke in the Whig Party as a blatantly pointed jab at the Democrats. The Democrat party has had two animals that represented it during the life of our nation. The first was the rooster, for the cockiness of the average Democrat, at least according to the Whigs. The second one was the donkey, which is what has stuck around even today.
The Whig party, later becoming the Republican Party, would tease them with the idea that the average Democrat was as useless as a donkey without a tail. You see, part of the problem with the birth defect is that such donkeys typically had many other issues as well, and didn’t live long enough even to pull a cart. Most of the time, they were put down as a colt, so you didn’t waste valuable food on a useless animal. It was also done so the animal wouldn’t suffer, which I won’t go into how bad this was for the donkey. But it was during these Donkey Parties the idea spread. It was us who had to suffer because of the Democrats. This insult is where the older version of the game got its hold in Milwaukee. These Donkey Parties were a means by which the Republicans poked fun and ridiculed Democrats going as far as to start calling them “Asses without tails.” There was even a political cartoon as late as 1907 bringing this idea forward at the expense of the Democrat Party. All would all be politically incorrect today, but back then it was considered good harmless adult fun, at least if you were a Republican. I doubt the Democrats had a similar opinion. 
But the reason they first brought this idea forward in the 1800s comes from even a darker place, although I doubt many of the practitioners knew about this creepy and offensive side of the game. However, I also confess the following information is sketchy at best. So I’ll be short.
As far back as the Middle Ages, the Spanish practiced what  I consider to be horrific. It came from Tibet or Mongolia and possibly was brought over to Eastern Europe during the Mongol Invasions. When a donkey was born without a tail, it became the standard practice to split the animal from rear to head while still alive and roast it for consumption. How it made it from Eastern Europe to Spain is a mystery I couldn’t track down, and it is there that my trail went cold. 
I was only able to find one report about this horrible practice, and it’s too graphic to go into here, but there is one possible connection with bullfighting as well. “How?” you may ask. I’ll tell you--I don’t know. It is so hard to verify this aspect of the story I’ll be content to rest with the Milwaukee origins of the game. I might be able to acquire the information on the dark web because it sounds like the type of chatter you would find there. But I don’t want to go anywhere near that place.
As we move forward into the 20th century, we encounter a tamer, watered-down version. Politics is no longer even considered with this donkey. In fact, it has become the cute and fun donkey we now associate with Eeyore, from the Winnie the Pooh stories. I even have an Eeyore coffee mug that was given to me about 20 years ago, and it is cute. He is the most famous donkey that rather consistently needed to have someone, usually Christopher Robin, pin his tail on for him. I just hope it didn’t hurt too much. Eeyore always seems to have enough problems just being who he is.