Origin of "Show Me" (Dalas Morning News, 1913, Omaha theory!)

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Interesting.
...
Only five institutions have the publication cited below, THE KINGS AND
QUEENS OF THE RANGE (1897-1902), and one of them is the University of
Texas-Austin. I'll take a plane from JFK and fly to Texas right now. Wait a  minute...
...
...
24 August 1913, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, part four, pg. 13:
...
_Origin of "Show Me."_
...
A little while ago a well-intentioned critic of St. Louis informed the
business men that their city had outgrown its stick-in-the-mud slogan, "You'll
have to show me," and that the first step in the direction of progress must be
the selection of a less slow slogan. A few of those who read the speech in the
daily papers protested that "show me" was never in any sense the property of
St.  Louis. They were not sure whence it had come, nor why. They could
remember only  vaguely the first time they heard it, but they were positive it
belonged to the  State of Missouri, and not to any one city, assuredly not the
metropolis on the  Mississippi.
...
A gentleman with a fondness for delving in the dust-laden records of the
historical society has now appeared with the information that the challenge,
"You'll have to show me," is a corruption of the name of a famous Indian chief
of the Sioux tribe, whose grave is in the western part of the State--old Yumus
Shome having led the tribe who crossed the lowlands below the mouth of the
Illinois, carrying their canoes on their heads from the Mississippi to the
Missouri, and thus giving the name in the historic old French town, Portage des
Sioux. Yumus Shome, it is averred, is buried at Westport, in Jackson County,
and  his name--carelessly pronounced "You mus' show me," has passed into the
vernacular of the State.
...
It is a pretty story, and one that we ought to permit ourselves the  pleasure
of believing. But, alas, it is a practical age and sooner or later some
stickler for the fact is sure to come forward with the proof that there never  was
any such chief as Yumus Shome. The man who wrote to one of the daily papers
concerning him must have had some authority for his statement. Indeed, he had
what looked like excellent authority. He found it in a scrapbook, and it was
in  very good hexameter. He was sure that poet must have known what he was
writing  about, or he would not have succeeded in getting his verses published.
The  material story of the chief appeared in a magazine called Kings and Queens
of  the Range, and devoted to the interests of the great Texas and Kansas
ranchers.  It was published while the exposition at Omaha was in the flower of
its first  year's success, and was the effect, not the cause, of "you must show
me."
...
It came about in this way: When Omaha first talked of holding a
trans-Mississippi Exposition the newspapers in Kansas City indulged in a  fusillade of
sarcastic gibes. The idea of Omaha, the dead one, bestirring itself  enough to
get up a world's fair was too preposterous to be accepted as serious.  And so,
when the fair became a fact and included among its days a Kansas City  day, a
huge delegation went up from the Kaw town, each wearing a button with the
legend, "I'm from Missouri and you've got to show me." The expression caught the
public fancy and in a little while Missouri was known the world over as the
"Show Me State." So it was Kansas City, not St. Louis, that started the
stick-in-the-mud slogan. -- St. Louis Democrat.
...
...
[The Kansas City Star seems to have been removed from
Newspaperarchive...Various articles seem to indicate that it was the Omaha Bee  (not the Omaha
World-Herald) that pushed the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. So we  have two
important newspapers (Kansas City Star and Omaha Bee) not  digitally available. I
found "show me" very late in 1894, and the  Trans-Mississippi Congress met in
November 1894 in St. Louis, if that  helps --ed.]

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