USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 6
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
to haul their loads and provisions to last six weeks. They returned with eleven buffalo and seven elks. Only one buffalo and two elks lived, it was so late in the season when they started they had to ehase them so much they died from over-heat. So in the spring of 1845 the party started out earlier, and took more cows. They were gone seven weeks and eame back with a fine drove of young ealves, seven elks and four buffaloes lived. Clark kept the first one that was captured until it was three years old, but it got so eross he had to kill it. The others were sold to Asa Blood, Sr. He broke the elks to harness and drove them to a sleigh. They would go as far as you would like to hold the lines on a eold day but could not be taught to back.
The pioneers' method of capturing the ealves of the buffalo and elks was quite a novel one. They would go out early in the spring when the calves were young and follow the herd until the ealves got tired and lagged behind and then capture them with a lasso. They always took cows along on which to suckle the calves until they were old enough to feed on grass. After a few days they would follow the cows wherever they went and in this way they would bring their captives home or else in pens on their wagons where they soon became as tame as their foster mothers.
Mr. Blood drove his herd to Milwaukee and there put them on exhibition. While in Milwaukee they were fed upon malt from a still house and this, al- though somewhat nutritious contained more or less aleohol which intoxicated them if they ate too mneh of it. One of the buffalo cows leaped upon a platform where there were several open barrels of this food and ate so much that she became furious, broke into the pen where the elks were kept and actually killed . three of them before she could be gotten away.
From Milwaukee, they were taken to Racine and exhibited there four weeks. The proceeds from these exhibitions defrayed all expenses and the animals were afterwards sold for $1,100.00 to a Mr. Offieer, who took them East. Arriving at Chicago at the time of some great political meeting, he killed one of the fat buffalo eows and gave a public dinner at which buffalo meat fried, stewed, and roasted was the principal attraetion. It was said that the sale of tickets to this enter- faimment amounted to more than enough to pay for the entire herd.
Deer, at first, were so numerous and so bold that they would occasionally come into the settlement. One was killed by Asa Blood, Jr., on the spot where the Independence Flour Mill now stands. It had swam across the river and landed near the saw-mill that stood near where the flour mill now is. He used to kill from ten to twenty-five every year withont going out of the county, but after a while they began to grow scaree and they had to go further north and west to hunt them. Mr. Ingalls, T. I. Marinus and A. Barnes took a hunting trip in the early winter of 1864, went forty-five miles up the Wapsie and brought back six deer, four or five dozen partridges. Venison was often on the market and it was not an unusual sight to see deer hanging in front of the stores on Main Street in those days. And they had all disappeared about the year 1871. Asa Blood, Ir .. and his brother, Amos R., killed the last that were ever seen in this county, in December, 1871. There were three of them, two does and a fawn, which were first seen about two miles southeast of Independence. They went after them with rifles but no dogs and killed the two does, but the fawn escaped Vol. 1-3
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Tor that day, but was killed the next day on a farm about two miles from the place where the does were killed.
Bears were never numerous in this county, on account of the lack of native forests, and there have only been two killed, at least, that got honorable mention. Doctor Brewer, one of the oldest settlers, said that he personally knew of but one bear being killed in the county after he came and that one was killed in 1843 or 1844, by Rufus B. Clark, in the woods of the Wapsie, in Newton Township. There was another killed in the fall of 1859 by Joel Allen, father of the authoress, in JJefferson Township, near the old John Bowder place. Joel Allen with Well- ington Town and E. S. Wilson were on their way to help a neighbor thresh when they espied the big black bear. Town kept watch of bruin while Allen went to one of the neighbors for a gun. He returned with the gun and finally killed the bear. A detailed description of this bear story was given by Mr. James E. Jewel, now a resident of Fort Morgan, Colorado, who, though but a youngster at the time, joined in the chase and was there at the finish of the monster.
Bears had previously entirely disappeared from this part of the country, but for some unaccountable reason returned in the fall of 1859. probably like the Indians, to revisit the graves of their ancestors and all of the counties around here were visited by some members of this classic race. No doubt Mr. Bruin had been haunted by dreams of his dear fatherland, visions of those enchanted and sacred spots which goaded him to undertake this last journey. It certainly could not have been for marauding or even just foraging purposes, else the farmers in the northwestern part of the county, where he probably entered along the Wapsipinicon, would have detected his presence. But he was a cau- tious old fellow and evaded all human habitation until we hear of him about two miles east of Brandon, on the prairie. When Joel Allen notified the neighbors, about forty men and boys, all without guns, but plenty of dogs, started in pur- suit. Bruin was so fat and heavy that a man could easily outrun him but neither men nor dogs ventured very near him. One dog with an unusual reputation for ferocity was set upon him but when the dog got about ten feet away, the huge beast rose upon his hind legs, standing six feet in height. and fiercely showed his teeth and claws, the canine gave one yelp of mingled fright and despair and tled precipitously with his tail between his legs.
Ilowever, the excited Prowd managed to keep the bear surrounded for about three hours, till JJoel Allen got back from J. Wilson's with a rifle and succeeded in killing the dangerous intruder, but not until he had fired three bullets into his huge eareass.
It was found he weighed over three hundred pounds and its paw measured 512 inches across the bottom. The meat was divided among all the neighbors. This is the last true Buchanan County bear story.
GAME BIRDS
The game birds found here by the first settlers were the wild turkey, prairie chieken, partridge, or pheasant, quail. wood-eock, snipe, wild goose, brant, swan, white crane, pelican, sand hill crane, and dueks of several species. Of these, the last seven are water-fowls and birds of passage and only made this place a migra-
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
tory eall on their flights north and south in the spring and fall. having their nesting place farther north.
Dueks and geese visit their native haunts here in more or less abundance and furnish good sport for the hunters for a short season both spring and fall.
Wild turkeys were in great abundance and were seen in flocks of as many as. a hundred, but they have entirely disappeared. The history of this magnificent bird is very remarkable; it was a native of this country and unknown to the eastern continent and being so well adapted to domestication and so excellent for food, it has been introduced into nearly every eivilized country in the world. The wild species are black or very dark, but their color has changed since they have become domesticated, but its size has not increased nor the quality of its meat improved.
The mallard ducks are about the same as the tame species, and can readily be distinguished from it, but the wild goose, though easily domesticated, is an entirely different species from our common tame goose. The quail, partridge. prairie chicken, snipe, and woodcock for a time after the settlement of this county became more plentiful but constant slaughtering by hunters. and a lack of safe hatching. has made all of these kinds scarce.
Early settlers tell of enormous flocks of wild pigeons that for several years visited this county and then for some strange unaccountable reason one year 'ailed to return and have never revisited these haunts since and never could be traced. Some said they went north and the winter was so severe, and food so scarce that cold and hunger destroyed the very species. In June, 1858, the sports- men of Independence were having rare sport shooting them, thousands having congregated in the fields about town. the Cobb pasture just west of Independence being literally alive with them.
An old settler told us about the sand hill eranes that used to visit this county every fall in their migratory flights south for the winter. They would come in small flocks and in their particular haunts, the sand hills. from which they de- rived their name, and perform the most peculiar and interesting dance, forming. a sort of cirele, then balancing back and forth alamand left and circling right resembling the figures of a cotillion, flapping their wings and seeming to thor- oughly enjoy the terpsichorean art quite as much as humans. Onee the pioneer, being curious as to whether sand hill cranes were fitted to edible purposes, killed one which happened to be an old bird. His wife undertook to prove that such was the case so she put the fowl into the washboiler, the only available utensil large enough to hold "his highness," and like the proverbial Mrs. Finney with the turnip, she boiled him, and boiled him and boiled him for several days, two or three days at least, but he still refused to yield to the piercing of a fork and no tooth however sharp and wolfish could masticate or even make an impression on his tough old hide, and all the Fletcherizing (even though it were not in- vented, or rather, copyrighted. in those days) could not make the meat digestible, so he was summarily dismissed from their intended bill of fare. The next year, however, the pioneer determined to see if a young bird could not be tempered to man's use, so he killed a real young one and the same coaxing fire and patience were tried on him but to no avail. IIe seemed to stiffen and congeal with every hour, so he succumbed to the same fate as his paternal and maternal aneestor- and proved a tempting morsel for the pig family. In April, 1858, Mr. Beebe, of
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
Quasqueton, shot a swan near that place measuring eight feet between the tips of the wings, five feet seven inches in length and weighing twenty-nine pounds.
The fur bearing animals of this county, when the settlers came were the otter, beaver, mink, raccoon, muskrat, wolf, fox. badger, skunks, occasionally a martin, lynx, or wild-eat and rarely a panther. Some of these have entirely disappeared, but skunks and muskrats are numerous and some minks, foxes and wolves and occasionally a raccoon are still found. In 1880 a large gray fox was killed by Mr. W. W. Gilbert near Greeler's Grove. This species had seldom or never been seen in this region before, and the presence of this one is quite a mystery, and as late as 1898 there was a sort of return of the furry animals-a large fox, a cross between the red and gray species, was caught on Otter Creek by Dan Clark -and numerous mink and otter had been caught along on the Wapsie, and in November, 1898, a large, full grown mink was caught in the dooryard of the Leytze home, Serond Street northeast. The family had been missing chickens. and by setting a trap this trouble was obviated. Beavers were quite numerous in this county, making their ponds by damming the small streams that emptied into the Wapsie. Mr. Blood, the hunter, gave an example of their wonderful industry that he had personally observed.
A short distance below Independence, near the mouth of a small stream emptying into the river, grew a thick grove of young ash trees averaging about six inches in diameter and covering an acre of ground. All these trees were cut down in about six weeks' time and most of the limbs were cut off and dragged into the beaver pond near by. The beavers were caught principally for their fur but some of the pioneers ate them. The muskrat too was trapped for its fur. Mr. Blood had gotten as many as three or four hundred muskrat in one season, while if he secured ten otters, an equal number of beavers and twenty or thirty minks in the same time he considered he had made a good catch. In 1863, large numbers of muskrats were killed in their lodges north of Independence. Prime skins were worth 20 cents then, For years different Indian tribes came here to hunt and trap. Often as many as a hundred of the Musquakie tribe eneamped north of Independence and trapped muskrats.
In 1880, both the county and the state were seeking to exterminate the wolf. wild cat. and lynx by offering a bounty for their destruction. The state had fixed the bounty at $1.00 but permitted the supervisors of any county to increase it to $5.00, and the Buchanan County supervisors were at that time paying $3.00 for each sealp, provided a sufficient proof was furnished that the animal was killed in the county and within a specified time before presenting the scalp. Besides the bounty the skins were very valuable. The lynx and the wild cat found here were so similar that it is doubtful if there were different species. At first there were three species of wolves found here (the yellow, prairie wolf: the gray, timber wolf; and the black wolf sometimes called the blue). The last two species were very numerous but soon disappeared. They were large and power- ful animals and quite disposed to be friendly with the settlers' dogs-sometimes coming right into the settlement to play with them. The prairie wolf, though not as numerous as at the beginning of settlement, yet as late as 1880, in spite of a bounty, had decreased but little in ten years. They were very trouble- some to the farmer's sheep fold. sometimes killing an entire flock in one night. As late as May, 1865, "a box of young wolf cubs was shipped from Buffalo
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
Township, where they were caught, into Wisconsin. This county and Buffalo Township particularly had been largely stocked with sheep from Wisconsin and this was a pleasant exchange, wolves for sheep."
In June, 1873, the supervisors paid the bounty on thirty-five wolves, in January, 1879, on twenty-three, and in June, 1880, on forty-eight. During the whole year of 1880, they paid bounty on sixty-eight lynxes, and in 1863, on eight wild cats.
The latest aeeount that we have of a wild animal hunt being held in Buchanan County was in March, 1866, when a "Grand Wolf Hunt" was held by the citizens of Quasqueton. The boundaries were established and the laws and rules of the game made as follows: Eight captains were elected, no one was allowed to carry fire arms except the officers, the other hunters carried clubs, spears, and pitch-forks and numerous dogs were in the chase. A signal gun was fired at Quasqueton at 9 o'clock A. M., then one by each officer as a signal to start the fun. Two wolves were all that were routed out and these escaped, on account of lack of forces (there had been such heavy rains that many could not attend). But not to lose all the anticipated sport, the would-be hunters bought a captured wolf, and after setting about a hundred dogs upon it and they failed to kill it, the animal was tied up as a target and shot. (This was in the days before the existence of Immane societies. )
No bounty was ever offered here for the killing of bears, foxes, or panthers. Bears had practically disappeared before the county was organized, foxes were never sufficiently numerous to make their extermination a matter of importance and it is doubtful if a panther was ever seen in this county, at least after the advent of the first white settler. Mrs. Herman Morse, now dead, who was for- merly Mrs. Frederick Kessler, one of the earliest pioneers, told that soon after the settlement was begun at Quasqueton some of the men who had lived among the mountains of Pennsylvania and had heard that peculiar and unmistakable scream of the panther, declared that they had heard one in the timber near the Wapsie, but this is the only one ever mentioned.
Another predatory animal which the county authorities sought to exter- minate was that destructive little burrower, the "pocket gopher," by offer- ing a bounty of 10 cents for each scalp. It has afforded lots of amusement as , well as profitable employment for the boys, who in those early days sometimes brought in as many as a hundred thousand sealps a year. This bounty amount- ing to a thousand dollars a year was too great a tax, especially as there seemed to be no prospect of its diminishing, so the supervisors withdrew the bounty for a few years, but when they inereased to alarming extent they again offered a bonnty.
Another animal on which there is a bounty now is the ground hog. There has been a bounty on wolves and pocket gophers and on ground hogs for a good many years, and strange as it may seem, there is scarcely ever a year but that bounties are paid on wolves. The 1909 financial report shows $92.00 bonnty on wolves, $186.00 bounty on ground hogs and $233.00 on pocket gophers. The report of 1910 shows $25.00 bounty on wolves, $996.35 bounty on ground hogs, $292.70 on pocket gophers. Report of 1911 shows $124.00 on wolves, $755.35 on both ground hogs and pocket gophers. Report of 1912, $56.00 on wolves,
-
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IHISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
$211.00 on ground hogs, $186.00 on pocket gophers. Report of 1913 shows $71.00 on wolves. $250.50 on ground hogs, and $149.50 on pocket gophers.
FISH
Fishing has always been good in the Wapsie, being very abundant when the settlers first came, and continuing good ntil dams were built, then for some years before it became the prerogative of the Government to re-stock the streams it was somewhat depleted of game fish at least, but since the establishment of the Government Fish Hatcheries we receive a fresh supply of game fish whenever we deem it necessary to petition for it. Since the present game and fish law went into effeet a number of years ago, we have a very faithful and efficient deputy game warden in the person of W. C. Ballon. He is always on the job and is a conscientious and impartial dispenser of fines.
The principal kinds of fish found in the county streams in the early days were the black bass, striped bass, pike, pickerel, mullet, or redhorse, suckers, sun- fish, rock bass, pullpong, or bullhead, as it is now called, catfish and muska- longe. All of these are found here now in more or less abundance except the inskalonge. According to "fish" data in 1880. the catfish were so searce in the Wapsie that one had not been caught for three or four years, and the musk- alonge had disappeared ten or twelve years before, and has never been seen here since, but catfish weighing ten and twelve pounds and sometimes as mneh as fifteen pounds are often caught now and pickerel weighing from eight to twelve pounds are not infrequently caught.
Mr. W. M. Woodward, one of the hardware merchants of Independence, has made it a practice for about twenty years to give a valuable prize for the largest fish of certain species caught in a season-formerly he offered a prize for the largest bass, but for the past ten years pike and pickerel were included. This makes an incentive to the sport, as the prizes are always valuable and necessary to the joy and snecess of the "Isaac Waltons."
Some people think those muskalonge stories of the pioneers are like the pro- verbial "big fish" tales and that probably the muskie was only a pickerel grown to a large proportion, which may be the facts.
One of the largest fish tales of early days is that Charles Putney, in the winter of 1859, caught a muskalonge in the river near Independence which measured within two inches of four feet in length and weighed twenty-six pounds. In the same paragraph which contained the above announcement, it was stated that Messrs. Smith and Cannon, of Dubuque, had shipped 2,300 pounds of Wapsie pickerel, mostly caught in Buchanan County, a few days before to the St. Louis market. Probably the largest pickerel ever caught in the Wapsie was caught by W. C. Littlejolm when he was a lad of ten years of age. IFe was fishing from a rock near a riffle when the big fish got out of deep water and commeneed flounder- ing about in the shallow water near the shore-Will proceeded to give him a taste of battle and finally landed the monster fish, which. when weighed, tipped the scales at nineteen pounds and eleven ounces. In 1891 or '92, Will Wengert Janded one at the mill that weighed sixteen pounds and this fish has held the record ever since. The largest one caught since then was landed by Charles Hathaway, September. 1914, and weighed fourteen pounds, and that same fall
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IHISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
a big channel catfish, weighing twenty-one pounds, was caught in the Wapsic by Will Blondin, of Independence. A recounting of "big fish" stories brings to light many of unusual size. One that is personally vouched for by an eye witness (Mr. Jed Snow ), records that Ham Taylor, an old time fisherman, famil- iarly known as "Buck Hallam," speared a thirty-three-pound muskalonge, just below the dam, near the mill at Independence, and this last fish tale outweighs the Charles Putney "first record breaker" by 'seven pounds, and probably will have the distinction of being the largest fish for many years to come, unless the tales of the finny tribe grow weighty with age as do the human species. All of these different fish are in our river now with the exception of the muskalonge and the striped bass, which are substituted by the green or Oswego bass, and buffalo, carp, and crappies have been added.
We have many residents who devote themselves almost entirely to fishing and trapping, but more for pleasure than profit, although in some parts of the county the trapping is quite an industry.
A
CHAPTER III ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
THE MOUND BUILDERS-TIIE INDIANS
The race of men who first occupied the territory now embraced within the limits of Buchanan County, as well as that of this entire country, is one that can only be answered by conjecture.
The immediate predecessors of the present white inhabitants were the mod- ern Indians or red men. This is the name given to the aboriginal races of Ameriea by Columbus, who, searching for a west passage and an ocean route to India, discovered a new continent and a new people, but unaware of this fact, called it and the inhabitants the name of the land of which he was in search. But even prior to the Indians was a race of men whom archaeologists, for want of a more complete knowledge of their history, have named the Mound Builders, and this because of the earth mounds which have been found all over this portion of North America.
Evidences of the work of these prehistoric people are found in many of the eastern states and as far south as Tennessee in great abundance, and are par- ticularly numerous along the Mississippi valley in lowa, extending from Dubuque at intervals through Jackson, Clinton, Scott, Muscatine, Louisa and other coun- ties, and as far west as the Little Sioux River. The Des Moines Valley is espe- cially rich in evidences of occupation by the Mound Builders and a good many mounds have been found in this county, which those well qualified to judge on such matters do not hesitate to pronounce the work of that aneient people.
In an old history we find mention of a circular mound several feet high, which was leveled in preparing the foundation for the county jail in Independence, but no relies worthy of note, however, were found in it.
Two circular mounds connected together by a straight embankment were found on the farm known as the Forrester Place, just east of and joining Inde- pendence.
Even when that history was written, they were almost, if not quite, obliter- ated hy the constant cultivation of the field in which they were standing. Several earth works, mostly of a circular form, have been discovered along the banks of the Wapsipinieon, but none have ever been found of sufficient interest to attraet the notice of archaeologists, so we cannot as yet lay claim to any such historical distinction.
But that the soil of Buchanan County was once occupied by the Mound Builders does not depend for its solution upon the existence here of unmistak- able works of that ancient race, since all evidences go to prove it-the frequency and continuity of their earth works along the Mississippi and throughout the state, as elsewhere, must be regarded as settling that question in the affirmative.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
Undoubtedly this rich and fertile prairie land was used by them for some good purpose.
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