在GRS研讨会上：“南方山脉之战”中的蜱虫，枪战和炸药
在20世纪最初的几十年里，一场抵抗运动在南方农村地区酝酿着。 闷烧演变成大规模的公民不服从，许多地方还爆发了暴力事件。
David “Mac” Marquis says the conflict was bigger in both scale and duration than other sectional outbreaks such as the Black Patch Tobacco War, the Johnson County Range War and the Green Corn Rebellion. This struggle doesn’t even have a name, but it did have plenty of dynamite.
Marquis is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Lyon G. Tyler 历史系 at William & Mary. He received the William & Mary Interdisciplinary Award for Excellence in 研究 for his paper “Tick, Tick, Boom: Dynamite, Cattle Ticks, and the Closing of the Southern Range.”
马奎斯将就他的奖项发表讲话，这是与2019年3月15日和16日在威廉玛丽大学校园的萨德勒中心举行的第18届年度研究生研究研讨会相关的众多荣誉之一。 The 研讨会 is hosted by William & Mary's Graduate Student Association of 艺术与科学 and the 艺术与科学 Office of 研究生学习 and 研究.
His presentation concerns developments that brought together a number of issues, including resistance to what many considered government overreach, skirmishes over land use, conflicts between what we now call agribusiness and a group that Marquis calls “yeoman farmers.”
随着20世纪的开始，美国南部的木材工业迅速耗尽了可供砍伐的树木。 到1918年，南方有7600万英亩的砍伐地，砍伐殆尽的房地产资产变成了木材公司的税收负担。 木材公司热衷于把牧场变成有利可图的地方，但对于想把土地卖给大型牧场主的南方木材大亨来说，有几个相互关联的障碍。
Marquis explains that southern law — as well as the even more potent custom — stated that livestock could be run on open land. 牛群自由漫步； 是庄稼被围起来了。
“In short, this meant that a farmer could own virtually no land yet still have hundreds of cattle or hogs,” Marquis writes.
自由放养的概念对木材公司和任何其他想要大规模进入养牛行业的集团来说都是不利的。 马奎斯解释说，大型经营者计划在他们拥有的土地上经营高利润的纯种牛。 They didn’t want their pedigreed stock interbreeding with the “scrub cattle” of the small farmers on the open range.
另一个问题是一种叫做德克萨斯热的牛病。 德克萨斯热是由一种原生动物寄生虫引起的，这种寄生虫由在美国南部发现的一种蜱虫携带。 感染德州热的牛的死亡率可高达90%。
马奎斯说，1906年，联邦政府启动了一项根除牛蜱的计划。 该计划是基于隔离，以及一种浸泡法来杀死蜱虫。
“Dippers would build large vats, fill them with an arsenic-based solution and then walk the cattle through the vat,” Marquis writes.
Dipping was effective, but wasn’t a permanent solution for an individual animal. 染病的牛可能会再次感染。 马奎斯指出，在该计划的早期，浸金是在每个县的基础上制定的，有些县可以选择退出。
很明显，自愿控制蜱虫，特别是在开放的范围内，是一个打地鼠的例子。 强制游泳是强制性的。 马奎斯说，那些头不到几百头的小农户，每个月不得不两次把牲畜赶到浸缸里。
“This was a significant investment in time and money for the small farmer who 之前的ly only rounded up their cattle twice a year — once in the spring for branding and once in the fall for slaughter,” Marquis said.
木材公司支持将开放范围围起来，并实施浸林计划。 马奎斯说，他们经常在幕后促成这两项变革，因为他们担心遭到报复。
木材管理人员的担心是有根据的。 自耕农们抵制强制浸泡以及随之而来的一切，包括没收牲畜。 尤其令人恼火的是露天牧场的尽头。
许多农民开始通过强制参与低水平的破坏活动来解决他们的挫败感，比如剪篱笆。 Things soon escalated, and Marquis’ research is filled with acts of violence chronicled in period newspapers across the South.
One such narrative from 什里夫波特时报 of 1928 told how Walter Williams shot and killed Jewell Ball over dipping. 威廉姆斯被无罪释放，却被鲍尔农场的房客亚瑟·劳森枪杀。 1913年的一份纳齐兹报纸讲述了一个蜱虫检查员被一个女人枪杀的故事，她认为这个女人会没收她的牛。 马奎斯说，当时发生了很多枪战，其中很多都是试图炸毁浸渍场。
“This research has so far identified over 1,450 dynamitings and points to hundreds more, making the bombing of dipping vats one of the largest and paradoxically least known domestic bombing campaigns in U.S. history,” Marquis writes in his synopsis presented for the 研讨会.
他说，虽然许多爆炸显然是协调的大规模事件，但俯冲轰炸机经常单独行动。 One of his sources, Claire Strom’s 用政府官员做鲶鱼饵：与牛蜱的斗争和南方自耕农的转变, reports a single night in which 67 vats were sent sky-high.
在20世纪30年代末，浸在水中的游击队员之间的枪炮和枪战达到了顶峰，并零星地持续到1930年。 这是一场持续不断的反政府起义。 冲突结束后，大片地区被砷污染，自由放养的结束改变了该地区的景观和经济。 But the whole conflict, as Marquis says, “has been curiously overlooked by many historians.”
他认为，如此规模的冲突值得命名。 Marquis suggests “The War for the Southern Range.”
联邦政府和浸蜱者最终赢得了这场战斗，他们在监管下，逐个县强制推行浸蜱。 马奎斯说，政府在1944年宣布战胜牛蜱病。
但是牛蜱并没有灭绝。 马奎斯指出，目前还没有治愈德克萨斯热的方法。 德克萨斯州有一个永久隔离区，用于隔离从墨西哥进口的牛，马奎斯说隔离区会根据需要扩大。 2018年11月，又有80万英亩的土地被隔离。
他引用了德克萨斯农工大学的一个警告，上个世纪的浸渍/隔离计划的成功在很大程度上仍然是未知的，很少有人能理解21世纪德克萨斯热爆发可能造成的潜在破坏。
“This lack of memory and understanding could result in lax oversight on the borders of the quarantine region, leading to a new threat of cattle tick infestation,” Marquis writes. He added that it’s reasonable to expect the cattle tick, like other tick species, to expand its range northward.
Marquis is careful not to conflate the tick issue on the Mexican border with concerns about food security or, especially, with the debate about immigration, but rather to “lay bare the lie that we can control our environment and dictate nature.”