Upon another occasion Dr. Rae, who had passed much of his life in the Hudson Bay Territories and became known by his discovery of the relics of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, mentioned to me that he had frequently seen that when trees had been uprooted, raspberry bushes sprang up in their place thus showing that their seeds must have been in the ground. Dr. Joseph Norwood, Assistant Geologist, in his report of the survey of the region west of Lake Superior, undertaken in 1847, states that from facts which had come under his observation, he was led to believe that, “if after the clearing of the pine forests, the annual fires cease, a growth of oak springs up in some places and aspen in others.” (Owen’s Geological Survey, pp. 296). In British Columbia the ancient forest pines are often succeeded by cedars or alders.
The subject of the destruction of snakes is mentioned by Mr. Murray, in his “Travels in North America.”
When passing through a ravine in the territories of the Pawnees he observed, “I never should have believed it possible that so many rattlesnakes could have been assembled together as I saw in that ravine. I think there must have been nearly enough to fatten a drove of Missouri hogs,” and he adds in a note. “It is well known that in the Western States where rattlesnakes are still plentiful the hogs kill and eat them; nor is their bite formidable to their swinish enemy, on whom its venomous fangs seem to produce no effect. It is owing to this well-known fact that families resident in those districts conceive that hogs-lard must be a kind of antidote to their poison, and frequently use it (I believe successfully) as a remedy.” (Travels in North America, by Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, Vol. ii, pp. 42.)
An Englishman who had a large farm in West Virginia, told me that the hillsides were cleared of the snakes, which had previously infested them, by turning out pigs upon them.
A similar result took place in Minnesota and upon the prairies east of the Missouri.
“Etudes Philologiques sur quelques Langues Sauvages de L’Amérique,” Montreal, 1866.
In the Encyclopædia Americana (1886), the total Indian population is said to be (exclusive of Alaska) 264,369. The Dakotas are stated to number thirty-one thousand.