Flying saucers and the old west

I have a couple of encyclopedia's of the old west and came across this entry;Authenticated instances of saucer and shield shaped objects that are on record as having been sighted in the skies west of the mississippi during the latter half of the ninteenth century.1873  Fort Riley, Kansas. Calvary horses bolted when a shining object roared over the parade ground.1873  Bonham, Texas. Shining object zooms and counter zooms over a party of field workers, one man killed in the panic.1897  Benton, Texas, Searchlight reported shining from this saucer.1897  Kansas city, Kansas and Missouri,  Disk shaped object bearing colored lights.1899  El paso Texas, An illuminating disk at a terrific hieght.1899  Prescott, Arizona, similer to the El Paso sighting.I am not really a believer in UFO's but at a time when people wernt influenced by science fiction and there were no planes or satilittes or space junk flowing around, I thought this was an interesting entry. He also included this footnote; " Hannibal and his elephants are reported to have done much the same thing when similer flying objects made Hannibal and his men turn pale more than two thousand years ago."This footnote was in referance to the incident at fort riley in 1873