BEASTS.
In the absence of native beasts, birds, and trees, a country is unfitted for the habitation of man. Nature had given to Ohio these supports to life and aids to civilization in great abundance.
The Indian was not inclined to improve his “talents,” still he was exceedingly kind, through instinct or wisdom, in preserving in nature’s superlative beauty things necessary for the coming man.
Of the various wild animals in Ohio, no one species has ever shown greater numerical strength than the gray squirrel. In the early settlements, he often annoyed his new neighbors with his mischievous habits and petty larcenies; nevertheless, the pioneer was generally pleased to see him, as at all seasons he was good for a savory meal.
At times these little animals became so numerous and destructive to crops they were more to be feared than is the rabbit in California or grasshopper in Kansas. For many years, settlers were obliged to guard their fields when planted with corn, or droves of foraging bands would dig up the hills and eat the growing grains; when the crops matured, they were still more destructive, and boys when quite young were taught to handle the rifle, and when employed as guards became expert marksmen. Most every one old enough to use a gun could put a ball through the head of a squirrel three times in five or better on the topmost boughs of the lofty hardwood timber which covered the face of the country.
The amount of forest was so extensive and undisturbed that the squirrel at times increased to a degree which made him disastrous to crops in spite of guards, guns, traps, and “deadfalls,” and caused him to become a subject for legislation, encouraging his destruction by obligations and rewards. When becoming too numerous, and subsistence scarce, they migrate to other parts, and often in numbers so great it would require many days for the marching column of several miles in width to pass any given point. The Ohio river was a favorable place to capture and kill them, as they arrived on shore weak and wet. Many were drowned in the attempt to swim. The inhabitants along the river at such times made it a business to kill them by wagon loads to feed and fatten hogs.
The country through which an army of this kind marched left nothing out doors in the way of subsistence. The first migration of this kind causing serious alarm occurred in 1807 directly after corn-planting; and in all the southern counties of the state, it became impossible to guard the fields, and continued so long that the corn crop was a failure over a large extent of country, and farmers were obliged to buy grain for bread.
The legislature was appealed to, and a statute enacted the same year, making it imperative for every person within the state, subject to the payment of tax, to furnish a specified number of squirrel scalps, to be determined by the trustees of the township, whose duty it was to give the lister the number required from each individual. This was intended as a tax in addition to other taxes, making the penalty for refusal or neglect the same as that of a delinquent tax-payer. And a non-tax-payer, and tax-payers furnishing scalps in excess of the required number, were entitled to two cents per scalp, to be paid from the funds of the county. But, with all the boys and guns and other devices for destruction to keep the number down to a minimum, the usual amount seemed but little changed, and squirrel raids continued, occasionally, all the same.
A good story is told by an old lumberman, who, in the early days of steamboating on the Ohio river, contracted to deliver on board of steamboat one hundred thousand shingles at a “wood-landing” of one of the river counties in Ohio. The shingles were stacked on the bank of the river ready for shipment. A few days after, the lumberman heard most of his “stuff” had been stolen, and that it was probable it had gone to Pittsburg. On receiving this unwelcome news, he drove down to the river to look after the condition of things. Before he reached the place he found the woods alive with squirrels marching toward the river.
On his return the workmen asked what discoveries were made. The reply was, “The shingles never went to Pittsburg;” “they all went down the river, and it is useless to look in Pittsburg or any other place for them.”... “I got to the river just in time to know all about it. You see, the squirrels are marching and crossing the river at that point; and the commanding general is not much on a swim, and he carried one of my shingles down to the water and rode over on it, and every colonel, captain, lieutenant and commissioned and non-commissioned officer did what they saw their general do, and finally the rank and file made a raid, and I got there just as an old squirrel came down to the water dragging a shingle, which he shoved into the river, jumped upon it, raised his brush for a sail and went over high and dry; and when near enough the other shore leaped off and let his boat float down the stream. As soon as these observations were taken in, I went up on the high bank where the shingles had been stored, and found there was not a shingle left—they are down the river, gentlemen—down the river, sure.”
This story receives a shadow of support from the learned and cautious Buffon, who observes: “Although the navigations of the grey squirrels seem almost incredible, they are attested by so many witnesses that we can not deny the fact.” And in a note on the subject says: “The grey squirrels frequently remove their place of residence, and it not unoften happens that not one can be seen one winter where they were in multitudes the year before; they go in large bodies, and when they want to cross a lake or river they seize a piece of the bark of a birch or lime, and drawing it to the edge of the water, get upon it, and trust themselves to the hazard of the wind and waves, erecting their tails to serve the purpose of sails; they sometimes form a fleet of three or four thousand, and if the wind proves too strong, a general shipwreck ensues ... but if the winds are favorable they are certain to make their desired port.”[18]
The squirrel is an industrious and sagacious animal. He lays up stores of provisions for future use, and conceals them where others of his kind are unable to find them. And his memory is so perfect, and location of place so unerring, that in dead of winter, and short of a meal, he will quit his warm nest in the hollow limb of some tree, plunge into deep snow and go direct a long distance to the exact spot where months before he had buried a walnut or an acorn, and dig down and get the treasure and return with it to his home.
The Squirrel Hunter.
It was once said, “To number the Bison would be like counting the leaves of the forest”—so, too, the myriads of squirrels that inhabited the unbroken forests of Ohio evidently approached in number the incalculable hosts of buffalo that in the grandeur of their numerical strength swept over the western plains.
The rabbit multiplies six times as fast as the squirrel, yet he has never appeared in such multitudes as that of his bushy-tailed cousin. Happen what may he is, however, always on hand. He loves civilization and prefers the grassy fields, standing corn and sunny hillsides to the wilds of the forests, and is always as ready to care for the waste apples in the orchard as he is to bark around the young trees. He is an annoying tenant—timid by nature and easily captured. Millions are sold in the markets every year, but can not come up in numbers with the squirrel in his palmy days. The “one day’s rabbit shooting” at Lamar, Colo., by two hundred guns, December 31, 1894, resulted in the capture of five thousand one hundred and forty-two (5,142); but compared with a squirrel hunt in Franklin county, Ohio, August 20, 1822, it does not appear so large; when a less number of guns killed nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty; and evidently not a “very good day for squirrels to be out either.”
No part of the North-west, in a state of nature, was so well adapted to the propagation and preservation of game beasts and birds as that within the geographical limits of Ohio. To show the immense amount of large game which also existed long after settlements had been made, it is but necessary to give the results of a single day’s hunt, confined to one township of five miles square, in the county of Medina, December 24, 1818, and which is authentically described by Henry Howe in his “Historical Collections of Ohio,” Vol. II, pages 463 to 467, inclusive: “The accurate enumeration of the game killed at the center (of the drive) resulted as follows: Seventeen wolves, twenty-one bears, three hundred deer, besides turkeys, coons and foxes not counted.” The wolf-scalps were good for fifteen dollars each, making a draw on the treasury for two hundred and fifty-five dollars. Many counties in Ohio were not formed nor settled for nearly a quarter of a century after becoming part of the state, and a few much later, the last being that of Noble, in 1851, making in all eighty-eight counties.
Consequently, game of all kinds remained in abundance in Henry, Hancock, Hardin, Lucas, Marion, Noble, Williams, and some others. As late as 1845 two men in Williams county made an effort to see who could kill the greater number of deer, each confining his operations to a single township of his own election. One selected Superior and the other Center township; the hunt to last sixty days.
At the expiration of the time, one had killed ninety-nine and the other sixty-five. The success of neither caused remarks of admiration among the “squirrel hunters,” a few of whom boastingly declared they could show a much greater list in the given time if they were inclined to hunt for quantity.
When the “Reports, Explorations and Surveys” were made to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853 to 1856, the vast public domain was shown to be rich in herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and smaller game of both beasts and birds. It was at this time the bison swarmed over all the Western plains and hills, from the great rivers to the ocean and from Canada to the Gulf in numbers beyond the power of computation.
A Herd of Bison.
Of all the quadrupeds known to inhabit the earth, no one species ever marshaled such innumerable armies as that of the American bison. As late as 1871, it was estimated that south of the Union Pacific Railroad line there were between three and four million head. As soon as the road entered the territory the destruction began, and by the reports of the Smithsonian Institution, the miserable “pot-hunters” in 1872 killed over a million and a quarter; and during the first three years after the road was completed this band of thieves and murderers slaughtered over three millions of these valuable animals, taking the hides of some and tongues of others, but leaving untouched where they fell more than half of this immense number. As American game the bison exists no more. The only few remaining out of captivity are at Yellowstone Park.
It is to be regretted that the policy of the government in regard to the natural wealth of the “public domain” has ever shown such a lack of wisdom, forethought, and power as to permit the immediate exhaustion leaving nothing for the legitimate heirs. And it seems singular that such a well known and immense storehouse of national wealth, as that of the buffalo, the annuity of which supported more than thirty thousand natives of the country, should have been left unprotected against those who have destroyed the forests and killed the cattle on a thousand hills.
Governor Isaac I. Stevens, in his report of estimates of the Pacific Railroad in 1854 to Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, says: “The supplies of meat for all the laborers on this line east of the mountains ... will be furnished from the plains. The inexhaustible herds of buffalo will supply amply the whole force till the road is completed.”
Camp Red River Hunters.
There were at that time twenty-seven known tribes of Indians west of the Missouri river, of which the greater part subsisted by hunting the buffalo; and he says of the hunters from Mouse river valley to the Red river of the North: “They make two hunts each year, leaving a portion of their numbers at home to take care of their houses and farms: One from the middle of June to the middle of August, when they make ‘pemican’ and dry meat, and prepare the skins of buffalo for lodges and moccasins; and again from the middle of September to the middle of November, when, besides the pemican and dried meat, the skin is dried into robes.
“I estimate that four months each year two thousand hunters, three thousand women and children, and eighteen hundred carts are on the plains; and estimating the load of a cart at eight hundred pounds, and allowing three hundred carts for luggage, that twelve hundred tons of meat, skins, and furs is their product of the chase.[19]
“These people are simple-hearted, honest, and industrious, and would make good citizens. Each year they carry off to the settlements at Pembina at least two million five hundred thousand pounds of buffalo meat, dried, or in the shape of pemican.” Large tribes, as the Gros Ventres, Bloods, Piegans, and others, had hunted and feasted for ages without diminishing the number or strength of “the inexhaustible herds of buffalo,” described by Governor Stevens in 1854.
This source of subsistence to a numerous and poor people, and immense wealth to the nation, was wantonly destroyed by the “pot-hunter,” who is in no way related to the “squirrel hunter,” but stands in about the same relation to the sportsman as does the “missing link” to the species he disgraces. He is a destructive animal, and it is as useless to hope any species of game, beast or bird, will ever exist in numbers too great for this wily loafer to destroy, as it is to expect legal enactments and penalties will ever prevent him doing evil.
The selfishness that exterminated the buffalo—“might makes right”—runs through the veins of the white man. In the same report to the Secretary of War in which Mr. Stevens calls attention of settlers to “many pleasant valleys” that are occupied by “friendly Indians—in some instances described with log houses, cultivated fields, barns, flocks and herds, mills and churches, with good morals and observance of the Sabbath day—that many tribes live in a rich and inviting country, and are wealthy in horses, cattle, and hogs.” He closes by saying: “Laws should be passed for the extinguishment of the Indian title. Posts are recommended with half regiments of mounted men, with a battery of horse artillery, and one of mountain howitzers; that all the Indians west of the mountains ‘should be placed in reservation,’ and the country opened to settlement.”
It is stated that with a small distribution of presents and “prudence, judgment, and display of a small military force, no difficulty will be experienced in accomplishing these arrangements so essential to the construction of the road.” And it does not appear that the government protected the rights of those in possession of the “fertile valleys” any more than it did the game it knew gave support to the people inhabiting the country. If the same careless indifference and love of greed that wantonly destroyed the game beasts which existed upon the vast unoccupied domain west of the Mississippi had in like manner forestalled the settlement of the “North-west Territory” by killing all the game, population and civilization would have been suspended if not made improbable within the past century.
The area of Ohio was well supplied with a variety of the most attractive game, fed and marked by Nature as her own, free for all—which made the early settlements contented, independent, and observing. No means of education gives the mind so much satisfaction and confidence in truth and reality as the study of the object lessons received while living in a garden of Nature, an invited guest.
“All self-educated persons,” says Doctor Newman, “are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, than those who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination—who have too much on their hands to indulge in thinking or investigation.... Much better is it for the active and thoughtful intellect ... to eschew the college and university altogether than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious.
“How much more profitable for the independent mind after the rudiments of education to pursue the train of thought which his mother-wit suggests! How much healthier to wander in the fields, and there with the exiled prince to find
‘Tongues in trees, books in running brooks.’
How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem—
‘As the village school and books a few supplied,’
contrived from the beach, and the quay, and fisher’s boat, and the inn’s fireside, and the tradesman’s shop, and shepherd’s walk, and smuggler’s hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and poetry of his own.” Sir Walter Scott long ago declared: “The best part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.”
This was the nature of the school system in Ohio. The young population grew up among the beasts and birds and trees; each of which in turn served as teacher. Not only the burley bear and nimble deer, but even the pestiferous vermin, were aiders and abettors in education and the rise of the new civilization. The coons, the foxes, the beavers, the otters, minks, muskrats, and skunk, carried legal tenders with them and furnished the chief circulating medium known to the country for many years.
With the trained dog, the boys in the wilderness were enabled to secure pelts to send to Boston for books, which erected the superstructure of more great men than can be found as the production of any other state or country in a single century. And to-day the intelligent squirrel hunter makes a respectful bow to the little animals for the honorable part they so successfully performed in creating the new species and placing Ohio permanently in the lead of a nation of the best informed people in the world.