Thursday, February 13, 2020

Liars, Infantry and Cavalry - Deconstructing a Novel Insult



At a campaign stop in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire on February 9, 2020, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden responded to a 21-year old voter who had the temerity to say she had once been to a caucus by calling her an “a lying, dog-faced pony-soldier.” 

It’s a curious and novel expression.  But all of the separate elements of the expression have their own, unique history. 

“Pony Soldier” and “Dog-face” are both United States military slang for members of the cavalry and infantry, respectively, which means that stringing them together an oxymoron.  Although neither one of those terms necessarily relates to lying, an occasional variant of “bald-faced liar” may explain how “lying” and “dog-faced” were put together.  “Dog-faced liar” appears in print very infrequently, but regularly over a period spanning three centuries, suggesting that it is more common than its frequency in print might indicate.   

Joe Biden claims that he took the expression from a John Wayne movie.  He may be mistaken, or he may have conflated different lines from different films.  And examining the rich history of each separate element of the expression may shed more light on the various influences on Joe Biden’s choice of words.


Joe’s Story

New Hampshire 2020 was not was not the first former-Vice President Biden called someone a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.”  In 2018, at a rally in support of Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, he called her Republican challenger a liar, using the more colorful expression he claimed to have borrowed from his brother, who in turn borrowed it from a John Wayne movie.

As my brother who loves to use lines from movies, a John Wayne movie, here’s what – a line from a movie, a John Wayne movie, where the Indian Chief turns to John Wayne and says, ‘This is a lying, dog-faced pony-soldier. [i]

The John Wayne explanation may be close to the mark, even if mistaken or incomplete.    As reported by Matthew Dessem at Slate.com,[ii]  he may have conflated lines from two different Westerns, Tyrone Powers’ 1952 film, Pony Soldier, and John Wayne’s 1949 film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

In Pony Soldier, an Indian chief says of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, “The pony soldier speaks with a tongue of the snake that rattles.”  The line appears to be a close match to the meaning of Biden’s “lying  . . . pony soldier” insult, and may have been a source of confusion in his formulating the expression.

In She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the narrator says, “Here they are: the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the 50-cents-a-day professionals.”  This line might explain how the word “dog-faced” got into the expression, but it does not explain how “lying” relates to either “dog-faced” or “pony soldier.”

Dog-Faced Liar

Apparently variants of the more familiar, bald-faced liar and bald-faced lie, the expressions “dog-faced liar” and “dog-faced lie” have appeared in print occasionally since the 1890s.

An early example in a political context sounds like something Joe Biden might say today.

If any man, woman or child ever heard me “whooping it up for republicans” either before or since the last campaign or ever heard it intimated that I gave aid, encouragement or comfort to republicans or exhibited the slightest republican tendencies in any manner, shape or form, for heaven’s sake let them come immediately to the rescue of this dog faced liar.

The Alva Pioneer (Alva, Oklahoma), February 4, 1898, page 4.

Another example highlighted an unforeseen danger of a new technology – the telephone.

A certain Marshfield man has been nursing a lame hand for several days the result of a bad temper.  It happened while he was talking across a telephone.  It was a heated conversation he and another man were having, in the course of which the fellow at the other end called him a dog-faced liar.  Without thinking he hauled off and struck at him.  The distance between them was three-quarters of a mile and instead of landing on the fellow’s nose as he intended he hit an oak panel.

The Marshfield News (Marshfield, Wisconsin), February 1, 1906, page 1.

As late as 2005, a newspaper vocabulary quiz (Greg Wilkinson’s “VocabPower”) used “dog-faced liar” as an example of a dog idiom.[iii]

It is possible that Joe Biden transposed the expression “dog-faced liar” when formulating “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”  It wouldn’t be the first time a Democratic legislator and one-time candidate for the Presidential nomination used a variant of “dog-faced liar.”  James Traficant represented the 17th District of Ohio in the United States House of Representatives for seventeen years, all while Joe Biden was serving in the Senate.  They both had Presidential aspirations in 1988; Traficant entered the race a month or so after Joe Biden dropped out in the wake of multiple accusations of plagiarism.  

In 1982, before serving in Congress, a defiant Traficant (then an Ohio Sherriff) called statements by FBI agents investigating whether he had ignored illegal activities in his jurisdiction as, “a damn, low-down, dog-faced lie.”  Traficant weathered the storm, and three years later was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat representing Ohio’s 17th District.  It’s not clear whether Traficant’s characterization of the accusations against him in 1982 were accurate or not, but accusations against him decades later were proven true.  Traficant left office only after Congress expelled him in the wake of convictions on ten counts of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion. 


Pony Soldiers

The name “Pony Soldier,” as applied to cavalry soldiers, is generally credited to Native Americans. 
As reported nearly a decade later, the name is said to have been used at least as early as 1868.  In 1877, General Lew Wallace proposed that in order to “conquer the Indians,” they should “simply Indianize a corps of white men, who will subsist as the red men do, move as they do, and fight as they do.”  The plan was said to be feasible, in part because of a similar plan followed by the 19th Kansas Cavalry in the fall of 1868.  The cavalry gave up their horses and pursued hostile Cheyenne and Arapahoe on foot, sometimes marching thirty miles in a day.

When the Indians were finally literally walked down, they were astonished at the mode of locomotion used by their pursuers, and designated them as “Walk-a-heap-pony-soldiers.”

Manhattan Enterprise (Manhattan, Kansas), September 12, 1877, page 1.

The expression, “walk-a-heap-pony-soldiers,” like “dog-faced pony soldier” more than a century later, would generally have been considered an oxymoron.  “Walk-a-heap” was a name generally used by Native Americans to refer to infantry, as opposed to the “pony soldiers” in the cavalry.  But in this case, since the soldiers were members of the cavalry who abandoned their horses, the expression was appropriate.

The name “walk-a-heap,” as applied to the infantry, first came to widespread attention 1867 when General Sherman (out West fighting Indians after the Civil War) was famously called “walk-a-heap,” among other things, by his Native American critics.

A Correspondent writes us that the Indians say that Sherman is a “heap big tall, but no good fight.”  They say the soldiers “walk a heap, but no good fight, squaw chase them with a stick.”  The Indians are not far from right.

Leavenworth Daily Commercial (Leavenworth, Kansas), August 17, 1867, page 4. 

“Walk-a-heap” and “Pony Soldier” appeared together a few years later in an account of a council of Native Americans. 



The white brother is strong, his number exceeds that of the buffalo . . . he has pony soldiers without number, and walk-a-heaps (infantry) till no Indian can count them!

 Harper’s Weekly, Volume 17, May 10, 1873, page 394.



Interestingly, although the construction “walk a heap” and “heap big tall” might presumably originate in a form of pidgin English spoken by non-native speakers of English, the construction appears to have been borrowed, in a more distant past, from English-speaking people in the southern United States, as illustrated in a letter written by a Northerner making a tour of the South and published in Pennsylvania in 1817.

In Georgia, any thing a little uncommon is said to be “too digging.”  Here they “walk a heap,” and “work a heap,” and “talk a heap.”  The people of the south always express themselves in the superlative degree.

 Lancaster Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), August 26, 1817, page 2.


In time, “Pony Soldier” would become a beloved nickname regularly used by American cavalry.

As late as 1933, cavalry soldiers in New Mexico were referred to as “pony soldiers.”


The Deming Headlight (Deming, New Mexico), March 17, 1933, page 1.


As late as the 1980s, an historical reenactment unit of the United States Army at Fort Hood referred to themselves as “Pony Soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division’s Cavalry Horse Platoon.”[iv]
“Walk-a-heap” did not catch on in the same way.  Decades later, however, a less literal and facially more negative nickname took on a positive connotation as a self-applied nickname for United States Army soldiers, generally infantry, although Navy sailors may have coined the name.


Dog-Face

Soldiers in the United States Army were frequently called “Dog-faces” as early as the mid-1930s.  In some cases, the name was said to refer to regular army as opposed to draftees, or infantry as opposed to those with technical training, like radio operators.  A few early explanations of the term suggested that Navy sailors coined the term, because the army wears dog tags, lives in pup-tents and are always growling about something.

In 1944, a widely reported incident in which a military chaplain played the song, “The Dog-Faced Soldier,” to calm the nerves of soldiers preparing for an amphibious assault in Italy brought the name to widespread attention.

Soldiers in Italy were still singing the song in July.


Two of the verses are as follows:

“I wouldn’t give a bean to be a fancy pants Marine;
“I’d rather be a dogface soldier like I am.

“I wouldn’t trade my old O. D.’s for all the navy’s dungarees.
“For I’m the walking pride of Uncle Sam.

“I’m just a dogface soldier with a rifle on my shoulder,
“And I eat a kraut for breakfast every day.

“So feed me ammunition; keep me in the Third Division,
“Your dogface soldier boy’s O. K.”

Atlanta Constitution, July 18, 1944, page 15.

In 1945, the Third Infantry Division insulted Adolf Hitler by singing the song on his birthday in a place named for him.



[The Third infantry division] raised the American flag in the Smashed Adolf Hitler platz in the geographical center of Nuernberg, and the division’s band played “The Star Spangled Banner” and “The Dog Faced Soldier” in these precincts where “Deutschland Uber Alles” . . . and the Nazi “Horst Wessel Lied” have resounded in the past.

Daily Oklahoman (Ardmore, Oklahoma), April 21, 1945, page 2.



The nickname was still in use after the war.  The closest near-match to Joe Biden’s “lying dog-faced pony soldier” I could find appeared in an article about U. S. troops training to oppose Communist aggression in Europe during the early-Cold War.  In this instance, however, the expression was not an oxymoron.

They are not pretty, but they make the man who lives and overcomes nature at its worst seem a magnificent creature, rather than a sweat-stained, unwashed, “dog-faced” ground soldier.

The Baltimore Sun, September 9, 1951, Features, Section A, page 1.

The infantry nickname received attention again in 1953 when Major General William F. Dean, who had led a “valiant, last-ditch defense of Taejon – in which he battled personally with a bazooka,” returned home after three years of captivity during the Korean War.  His words upon his return were widely reported.




I want you to get it out of your heads that I’m a hero – I’m not.  I’m just a dog-faced soldier. 

Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania), September 23, 1953.

It was this well-known usage of “dog-face” that likely influenced the narration used in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, although in the context of a film which took place in 1876, it was an anachronism.


Other Senses of Dog-Faced

Long before the United States Army adopted “Dog-Face” as a self-deprecating nickname, it had a long history as an insult to one’s looks.  It was also used descriptively with a number of unrelated things and people.

Dog-Faced Baboon





George Shaw, Naturalists’s Miscellany,  Volume 6, 1813.


Jo Jo the Dog-Faced Boy

Perhaps the most famous “dog-faced” person was Jo Jo the Dog-faced boy, a Russian who had toured Europe with his father and came to the United States under the auspices of P. T. Barnum following his father’s death.






Years later, a family from Manadalay had a similar skin condition.


Photograph of a Hairy Family of Mandalay.  It is Possible That the “Dog-Faced” Men of the Chinese Wilderness Are the Ancestors of These People.

San Francisco Examiner, June 17, 1923, American Weekly Section, page 9.






This dog-faced potato weighing two pounds, two ounces was brought to the Daily Star offices from the farm of Frank Carlson near Atlas, Wis.  Carlson is a pioneer settler in his district and raises spuds and peas principally but this is the first dog-faced spud he has ever unearthed.

The Minneapolis Star, October 15, 1927, page 12.







[i] Joe Biden speaking at a rally in support of Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) in Fargo, North Dakota, posted November 1, 2018.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQFtkEN6Sds
[ii] “Joe Biden Just Called a Woman at One of His Events a ‘Lying, Dog-Faced Pony Soldier.’ What?,” Matthew Dessem, Slate.com, February 9, 2020. https://slate.com/culture/2020/02/joe-biden-dog-faced-pony-soldier-john-wayne-tyrone-power.html 
[iii] The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), July 10, 2005, page 36.
[iv] The Paris News (Paris, Texas), May 31, 1986, page 1.

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