THE EXTIRPATION OF THE LARGER INDIGENOUS W WHILE the progress the century has wrought in respect to the development of the resources of our country is justly receiving so much attention, it may not be unfitting to notice briefly other attendant changes that are less obvious, though no less real, than the transformation of hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into "fruitful fields," dotted with towns and cities, and intersected by a network of railways and telegraph lines. With the removal of the vast area of forest that has rendered possible the existence of millions of people where only a few thousand rude savages lived before, there has taken place a revolution in respect to the native animals and plants of this great region as great as has occurred in respect to the general aspect of the country. Not only has the indigenous vegetation given place largely to introduced species, but the larger native animals have been in like manner supplanted by exotic ones. While these changes do not pass unnoticed by the naturalist, they are less apparent to the general observer. A detailed account of them would be sufficient to fill volumes, but it would be mainly a repetition of the same story over and over again, the history of one species being essentially that of many others. While a few of the larger mammalia were speedily exterminated, others survived for a longer period, having in many instances a few representatives still left in the more unsettled mountainous portions of the States east of the Mississippi River. During the early part of the seventeenth century, the walrus swarmed along the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the bison ranged in considerable herds over nearly all of the country between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River. The moose was a common inhabitant of the greater part of both New England' and New York; the fisher and the marten ranged throughout the forests of large portions of the Eastern and Middle States; the elk, the gray wolf, the panther, the lynx, the black bear and the beaver were found in abundance over the whole eastern half of the United States, and the wolverine and the caribou lived far to the southward 1 There is abundant evidence of the former existence of the moose in New England as far south as Connecticut. of their present limits. While none of the smaller mamma's have become as yet wholly extirpated, nearly all have greatly decreased in numbers; this being especially the case with all the different species of squirrels, the hares, the muskrat, the raccoon, the opossum, the white-footed and jumping mice, the weasels, the mink, and even the skunk. This gradual though rapid decrease has been, in the main, the natural and inevitable result of the settlement and agricultural development of the country. Yet in many cases extermination has been needlessly rapid, through the insatiable desire inherent in man to kill something. In the case of the larger mammals, the record is too often one of wanton butchery, the game being destroyed whenever opportunity for it presented itself, regardless of whether it was needed as food, or whether is was within the destroyer's means to in any way utilize it. Hence the larger, the less sagacious, or the otherwise more easily-captured species, have always been the first to become extirpated. The walrus, being hunted for its ivory and its oil, soon became extinct in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; the bison wholly disappeared east of the Mississippi (south of Wisconsin) prior to the year 1800; the moose and the caribou were early pressed back into the remoter northern forests; and the elk everywhere quickly disappeared before the advancing settlements. Formerly abundant from the Great Lakes nearly to the Gulf Coast, its sole survivors east of the Mississippi river for the last few decades have been confined to the least frequented parts of the Alleghanies, where few, if any, still survive. Thirty years since it was abundant over nearly all of the prairies, plains and mountain valleys of the Great West, where it is now confined within comparatively narrow boundaries, and its present rapid rate of decrease portends its speedy total extirpation. south of the forty-ninth parallel. The Virginia deer, once a numerous denizen of the whole eastern half of the United States, now scarcely exists in New England south of the forests of Maine and Northern New Hampshire, or in New York south or west of the great Adirondack wilderness, or anywhere in the Middle States away from the mountains. It has also disappeared from a large part of the Atlantic coast region further southward, and from the greater part of the area between the Great Lakes and the Tennessee river. The bear, the panther, the gray wolf and the lynx have become similarly restricted. The fisher, the marten and the Canada porcupine, former inhabitants of the northern parts of the northern tier of States, as well as of the Appalachian highlands to or beyond Virginia, have only here and there a few lingering representatives in the least frequented parts of the mountains, and are much more rare than formerly in the forests of northern New England and the great unsettled region north of the St. Lawrence. The same is true of the beaver, except that it had a much more extended range to the southward, being a former inhabitant of Northern Florida and the middle and northern portions of the Gulf States, and of all the intervening region thence northward. Were not the former abundance of the larger species of mammals and birds over the immense areas from which they have wholly disappeared, to be seen there doubtless," no more forever,”so well attested by history as well as tradition, the fact of their former great abundance, or even existence, might well be doubted. History incontestably shows, however, that no country was probably ever better stocked with game than that portion of the United States east of the Mississippi River, where now almost nothing remains worthy of the sportsman's rifle. The early explorers speak of the woods abounding everywhere with game of every description, so that they had but to choose the kinds they most preferred. From Father Simon LeMoine we learn that on his journey, in 1653-1654, to the country of the "Iroquois-Onondagoes," he found on the St. Lawrence, near Montreal, herds of elk and the common deer, which "seemed to follow them everywhere," and which were so tame that some were killed "for sake of amusement, by blows of an axe." He also speaks of meeting with herds of elk further up the St. Lawrence River, near Lake Ontario, numbering "five or six hundred "in a single drove. Fathers Marquette, Hennepin, Marest, Gravier and others found, prior to the beginning of the eighteenth century, not only the bison in great herds on the prairies of Illinois and Indiana, but also deer and other large game in "innumerable quantity." Vaudreuil, writing in 1718, says that whoever would reach the "Beautiful River" (Ohio) or the Sandusky "could travel without any danger of fasting, for all who have been there have repeatedly assured me that there is a vast quantity of buffalo and of all other animals along that Beautiful River; they were often obliged to discharge their guns to clear a passage." La Hontan, in a description of his visit to Lake Erie in 1687, says, "I cannot express what quantities of deer and turkeys are to be found in these woods, and in the vast meads that lye upon the south side of the Lake." The former abundance of the buffalo, the elk and the deer throughout the Ohio Valley, from the sources of its remotest eastern tributaries to the Mississippi, is attested by scores of writers, who speak of their occurrence in "herds innumerable." Boone and his associates found buffaloes more abundant in Kentucky and Tennessee, in 1769 to 1780, than they had "ever seen cattle in the settlements." They found them "browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes," says Boone, "we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing." It is also a matter of history that "buffaloes, bears and deer were so plenty," in this part of the country, "even long after it began to be generally settled, and ceased to be frequented as a huntingground by the Indians, that little or no bread was used, but that even the children were fed on game, the facility of gaining which prevented the progress of agriculture," which did not advance "until the poor innocent buffaloes were completely extirpated, and the other wild animals much thinned," the cultivation of the soil in Kentucky beginning about 1795. Charlevoix, writing in 1720 of the "Fur Trade in Canada," thus speaks of the great decrease of the game that had already occurred at that early date. "The trade," he says, "to which they [the French] confined themselves solely for a long time in Canada was that of skins or furs. It is impossible to relate the faults which they have here committed. The genius of our nation never, perhaps, was shown more than on this occasion. When we discovered this vast continent, it was full of deer and other beasts of chase. But a handful of Frenchmen have within a single age found means to make them almost entirely disappear, and there are some species of them entirely destroyed. They killed the originals, or elks [moose of Americans], for the sole pleasure of killing them, and to show they were good marksmen. Nobody thought of interposing the King's authority to put a stop to such an extravagant disorder. But the greatest evil proceeded from private persons, who applied themselves solely to this trade." Unfortunately, what Charlevoix deprecates as a characteristic fault of Frenchmen has equally characterized the emigrants of every nationality that have settled in America. It is but an instance of the reckless and wanton destruction of animal life that has everywhere marked the progress of the white race on this continent. Hundreds of similar instances might be cited where the larger game animals have been killed, either in mere wantonness or for a very trifling return. Less than a quarter of a century ago, the elk wandered in large herds over the prairies of Iowa, where it has since become wholly extinct. During the early settlement of the central and western parts of the state they were of great value to the settlers, furnishing them with an abundance of excellent food when there was a scarcity of meat-yielding domestic animals. During the severer weather of winter they were often driven to seek shelter and food in the vicinity of the settlements. At such times the settlers, not satisfied with killing enough for their present need, mercilessly engaged in an exterminating butchery. Rendered fearless by their extremity, the elks were easily dispatched with even such implements as axes and corn-knives. For a time they were so numerous that settlers could kill them whenever they desired; but indiscriminate slaughter soon greatly reduced their numbers, till in a few years only a few lingered where formerly were thousands. In later years the same exterminating slaughter has been carried westward over the plains and Rocky Mountains to the Pacific slope. Not only have casual hunting parties from the frontier settlements waged an exterminating warfare upon them, from Texas northward over the plains to Nebraska and Minnesota, and throughout the parks and mountain valleys further westward; but skilled hunters have engaged in their destruction as a profession, killing whole herds in a day at points quite distant from any large settlement or line of travel. Though hunting ostensibly for the market, many of their victims are left unutilized, while in other cases their hides are the only parts saved. No animal, however, has been so ruthlessly destroyed as the bison. From the time when the white settlers first invaded its haunts to the present, thousands have been killed annually in miscalled sport, while of many thousands more only the tongue or other choice morsel has been saved, the carcass being left entire as food for the wolves and other wild beasts, or to poison the air by putrefaction. At other times they have been slaughtered by hun |