While counting the five or six hundred slain, and holding another council of war on the battle-field, a rattle was heard of one which in the death-struggle had escaped over a ledge instead of into its cave. With a forked stick a man approached that misguided reptile and held down its head, while another brave expert seized it by the neck so close to its head that it could not turn and bite him.
It was a very large snake, and young Catlin, inspired by the sudden thought, exclaimed, ‘Tie a powder-horn to its tail and fasten a slow fuse to it, and let it go back into its den.’
‘George, you are the best hunter in the Valley of Ocquago!’ cried the man who held the snake; and forthwith the plan was agreed upon.
The largest powder-horn in the party was filled to the brim from the other horns, and tied to the snake’s tail by a string of several feet long; and to the horn was fixed a slow fuse of about a yard in length, made of wetted, twisted tow, in which gunpowder was rolled. This accomplished while the reptile was still firmly held, it was then set free close to the mouth of its den, the whole party speedily escaping to a safe distance.
Listening, they heard the horn rattling over the rocky floor as the snake was carrying it home into the midst of its comrades, when, after the silence of a minute or so, an explosion like a clap of thunder shook the ground on which they stood, and blue streams issued forth between the crevices around the den, and a thick volume from its mouth.
Rattlesnake Den was thus cleared of its inhabitants for many long years.
Catlin affirms that the Valley of the Wyoming used to be more infested with these terrible pests than any other portion of the globe. Every summer the lives of persons as well as cattle were destroyed by them, and the ‘happy little valley’ would have been rendered uninhabitable but for the periodical battues.[81]
Howe in his Histories of Ohio and of Virginia relates many similar facts. A Mr. Stone, one of the first settlers of the ‘Western Reserve’ along the shore of Lake Erie, has immortalized himself as a slayer of rattlesnakes. They were ‘in great plenty along the track,’ and he being the first to ‘survey’ the land in 1796, had the honour of doing battle with them. In Trumbull County they abounded. One year, about the first of May 1799, a large party armed with cudgels proceeded to a sunny level of rock on which hosts of the reptiles had crept. Approaching cautiously, step by step, the enemy came upon them suddenly, and then began to cudgel with all their might. Hot and furious was the fight; the rattles were ringing as the snakes beat a retreat up the hill, and the ground was strewed with the slain: four hundred and eighty-six were that day collected, most of them over five feet in length.
In another of these spring campaigns eight hundred rattlesnakes were killed, including a few of their relatives the copper-head, and hundreds more of harmless snakes of which the slayers ‘took no account.’