That "small effort of imagination" became McCutcheon's classic drawing "Injun Summer," which was first published on this date. It was accompanied by a lengthy discourse with the plain-spoken charm of Mark Twain. McCutcheon's astute folk poetry captured the sere, prickly, enigmatic mood of nature's most puzzling season. The cartoon proved so popular that it made an annual appearance in the Tribune beginning in 1912, and over the years ran in many other newspapers.McCutcheon's long career at the Tribune stretched from 1903, when he moved from the old Chicago Record, until 1946, when he retired. Over the years, his gentle brand of insight, satire and nostalgia resulted not only in "Injun Summer," but also his poignant expression of grief on the death of Pope Leo XIII, showing the world with a mourning ribbon tied around it, and "Mail Call," which depicts a lone soldier without mail in a crowd of happy recipients. A cartoon is worth at least a thousand words: One reader wrote 11,384 letters to men in service because of it. McCutcheon won a Pultizer Prize in 1932, the first Tribune staff member to receive journalism's coveted award. His death in 1949 earned a front-page obituary.
In tapping his youth to create a drawing with a sense of a shared, almost mythic past, McCutcheon provided an early and powerful illustration of cartoonists' crucial role in shaping the character of American newspapers and their ability to touch readers in personal, everyday ways. Through the years, Chicago's newspapers have been unusually rich in cartooning talent. At the Tribune, Carey Orr (whose career stretched from World War I to the Cold War), Richard Locher and Jeff MacNelly joined McCutcheon in the Pulitzer ring. Other Chicago newspaper artists to whom Pulitzers were awarded include Vaughn Shoemaker and John Fischetti of the Daily News; Jacob Burck of the Times; and Jack Higgins of the Sun-Times. The drawings of Bill Mauldin, a two-time winner for work done before his arrival in Chicago, enlivened the editorial pages of the Sun-Times from 1962 to 1991.
The "Injun Summer" era ended on Oct. 25, 1992, when it appeared for the last time. The drawings may be timeless, but the text had outlived its day. Complaints had been voiced for several years about its offensiveness to Native Americans. Wisps of smoke have continued to rise from those smoldering leaves, however. Every fall, some readers complain that they miss it.