USA > Indiana > Pioneer history of Indiana : including stories, incidents, and customs of the early settlers > Part 34
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The flesh of the elk is dark and coarse, like that of the buffalo, but very nutritious. They are very shy animals, and when disturbed will run three and four miles without stop- ping. An old male elk, when wounded, will fight most des- perately, and anything that comes within range of his horns is sure to be badly hurt. The skin of these animals was used for many useful purposes. The elk is easily domesticated and has been known to pull a sled over frozen ground two hundred miles in one day.
THE DEER.
The red deer is one of the most beautiful creatures of all
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the animal kingdom. They were in such numbers in all sec- tions of Indiana up to 1840, that a hunter with any sort of skill could kill two or three each day. Many old hunters, after the Indians had gone away, which allowed them to. hunt in security, would kill eight and ten a day.
The deer undergoes three distinct colors during the year-red in the spring, blue in the fall, and grey in the win- ter. The skin is best when red or blue; when grey it is of little value. The meat is the most easily digested of any, and when cooked in the fat of the bear or in hog's lard, it. was the most delicious steak of any. Venison, cooked in its own fat, is not so good, as the fat makes tallow, and when so cooked, the meat is dry.
The deer lives on vegetable food and has one peculiar- ity-that of having no gall, as they did not require that agent to help in digesting their food. The skin, as well as the meat, was used for so many purposes by the first settlers in Indiana, that it was almost indispensable, and many of the scant comforts that the pioneers did have would have been materially lessened if there had been no deer. The does have their fawns in the middle of the spring, usually two. These little creatures were of a pale, red color, with white spots, and it is said that there was no odor about them which would. attract the wolf or the wildcat to the beds where they were hidden by their mothers. They would bleat much like a. young lamb, and when the mother heard them she would run to them. Many an old mother doe. has been killed by the hunters who could imitate the bleat of the fawn. When three months old they can follow their mother and run very fast. The male deer, or "bucks," as the hunters call them, shed their horns each year about the first of spring. At that. time they separate from the does and go into seclusion. Where they drop their old horns has been a very hard ques- tion for the hunters to decide, for but very few of them are ever found. As soon as the old horns are off, the new ones commence to grow; in fact, it is believed that the new ones crowd the old ones off. The new horn is covered all over with a thick coat which looks like velvet and it grows verv
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fast. In sixty to ninety days the new horns are fully formed. As soon as the horn has its growth, the velvety skin begins to break open and peel off. The deer help get it off by rub-' bing their horns against small saplings and brush. The one-year-old male fawn grows a short, sharp spike on each side of its forehead. When it is two years old it will grow a forked horn. and at three years old, three pointed horn, and so on up-one for each year to seven or eight year. Nine- points on the horn of the red deer species have been seen.
The deer are very fleet of foot and can run for a long dis- tance at a time when pursued by dogs or wolves. They are lightning-quick motioned. In their hind legs they seem to have the strength of a much larger animal, although a small hand can easily reach around their ankle, but the man who attempted such a thing was sure to come to grief. In the middle of the fall, when the mating season comes on, the deer are very fat. During this period the male deer run very much and have the most terrible combats, trying to gore each. other with their sharp horns, often interlocking them so tightly together that they cannot loosen the hold and remain. in this condition until they are starved to death. During this running period the bucks become very poor and their necks swell and their meat is not fit to be used, as it has a very disagreeable, musky odor. During the winter months, the deer go in droves like sheep, and unless there is a large mast of acorns or they are in the blue grass country where the grass is green, under that which has fallen down. they become very thin.
In the early spring droves of these deer would come into the wheat fields when the wheat first began to show and bite it down even with the ground. They were hard to keep out and were too thin in flesh to be of any use to the hunters, who resorted to the notched hickory rattle, which made a fearful noise, and would try to drive them away. They would run to the side of the field farthest from the rattle and com- mence again to nip the short wheat. A deer would kill any sort of a snake so quickly that you could hardly see their mo- tions until they had torn it all to pieces. On discovering a.
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snake they would go near it, when it would coil up in a bunch ready for battle. The deer would bound into the air and come down with all of its feet on that coil and with lightning- like stamps and strokes, tear it into shreds. After deer be- came less plentiful in Indiana, they were much harder to find and the hunters resorted to many ways of killing them. The saline licks that Nature distributed at convenient places for all wild animals to secure the needed salt for their health, were often watched, and as the deer in the night, would come to these licks, the hunter from a screen would shoot them. These "licks," as they were called, were provided by the Great Giver of all things for the bovine creation, and as the need of them has passed, it is doubtful if any exist now in Indiana that have any saline taste about them. The deer was an inquisitive animal and the hunter would shine their eyes with a torch and slip upon them. Both these modes of killing deer were considered by the real hunters as taking unfair advantage of these harmless animals.
The black tailed deer, sometimes called the mule deer (this term I suppose comes from the fact that they are a spe- cies between the elk and the red deer in appearance, and par- take of some of the peculiarities of both) has meat in taste and color between that of the red deer and the elk, but there is no doubt that they propagate their own species. The black tailed deer are found only west of 105 west longitude and goes north to about 54 north latitude. In all the vast belt south and west of these lines it is and has been in vast numbers, to the Pacific Ocean.
THE BLACK BEAR.
The bear stood at the head of all the game animals for general use by the pioneers in Indiana. They were not so plentiful as the deer, but were in such numbers that all could be supplied with their meat and grease for more than twenty-five years after Indiana began to be settled. From 1800 up to 1815 or 1820 they were so plentiful that it was im- possible to raise pigs, as the bears would carry them off in the daytime.
The bear is a peculiar species and there is no other
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animal that in any way resembles them in habit or appear- ance. When full-grown and fat, the usual weight is from 350 to 400 pounds. Their flesh, when properly cooked, is the most delicious, as well as nutritious, of any animal that was found in this country. Their meat when killed, after taking off the hide, was formerly cut up much as we do that of the hog now, salted and bacon made out of it. The lard or grease was used as hog's lard is, for all purposes in preparing the food. The bear is not a vicious animal, only when wounded or in defending their young; then they will fight to the last, and are very dangerous. They have great skill in using their fore arms and used to parry the blow of a toma- hawk by this means.
In an article about a bear recently, the writer claimed that the hugging so much talked of was never brought into use only when the bear had a pig too heavy to carry away in its mouth, as it would then rear on its hind legs and carry it off in its arms. This writer, possibly, had never had a battle with a bear. In 1819 a young man named John Deputy, from Kentucky, was in the neighborhood of the place where Hazelton, Indiana, now is, visiting some friends. One day while out hunting he caught a young bear cub; before he could get away, the old mother was on him. In fighting her with his tomahawk he broke her under jaw. She caught him in her arms and hugged him to death, breaking his ribs as if they had been pipe-stems. This incident was given to the author by Mrs. Nancy Gullick.
There could be fifty instances given where the bear, in fighting both Indians and white men, came near squeezing the life out of them with their strong arms. It used to be a common saying with old hunters, that they had no fear of a bear so long as they could keep from being pounded to death with its strong arms or squeezed, to death. There are but very few instances on record where the bear has been known to attack a man unless wounded or their cubs disturbed, and this continued to be the case in most sections of the country. After Braddock's defeat at Fort Duquesne in 1755, where so many men were killed and left for the animals and vultures
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to feast on, the bears in that section became so used to eating human flesh that afterward they were ferocious and would. attack a man at sight. The same was true in 1791 at St. Clair's defeat and in the everglades of Florida where Major Dade's army was murdered and slaughtered by the Seminole Indians. The bears in that section for many years afterward. would attack every human being they saw.
Bears look to be awkward and clumsy, but such is not the case. It can, with ease, climb the tallest tree, and when lean, can run very fast. They eat nearly every sort of food, but beechnuts, chestnuts and acorns are the food on which they fatten very fast. At times in early autumn, just before the nuts begin to fall, they will climb the oak and beech. trees and pull the limbs to secure the nuts. This the old hunters called "lopping." After becoming very fat in the late fall or early winter, they will seek for a suitable hollow tree and go into a long sleep, called hibernating, and do not wake up until spring, when the frost is gone. It was always thought that they sucked their paws during this long period of rest and subsisted on the oil they drew out of them. At. those times when they have been smoked out of their dens and killed during the winter months, in dressing them there was a large amount of pure oil found in the alimentary canal, sometimes as much as two gallons. There has been much speculation as to how the oil came there. The most accepted theory is that nature has provided the animal with absorbent. vessels which gather the oil from the fat of the body into the stomach for sustenance during the long sleep.
They raised cubs each year, usually two. At first these cubs are not larger than small kittens and are quite helpless for some time. When they commence to grow they are the most playful of all animals. They remain with their mother until about one year old, when they commence to care for themselves. There is something in the formation of the bones or muscles of the bear different from any other animal. They will let go all hold and fall from the top of a tall tree to the ground all in a bundle and bound up two or three feet without doing them the least harm. Like the hog, they had
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a wallow in the mud and water where they resorted during the hot days of summer and spent much of their time there. When the first cornfields were planted, the bears made them- selves at home when the roasting ears were ready-in many cases destroying the entire field. Their skins were dressed on the fleshy side, leaving the hair on, and were used by many a mother for a pallet for her young children, and in many cases they were all the doors or shutters that many families had for some time, after building their first cabin.
THE GREY AND FOX-SQUIRRELS.
These squirrels are both natives of this country and liave up to a few years past been very plentiful and filled a needed place in the bill of fare on every hunter's table. They be- came at times a very great pest in cornfields, and if not killed or the field guarded, would destroy a large amount of corn. In the early times the farmers organized hunting parties, with three or four on a side, and set a day to meet at a stated place and count the scalps of the squirrels which they had killed. The side having the most scalps was to en- joy a dinner or supper of good things prepared by the de- feated ones. In these round-ups they would have several hundred scalps each, representing a few days' hunting only. This may seem to have been cruel sport to the people of this date, but it had to be done or the cornfields would have been ruined. The squirrel is the most active and graceful of all the rodent family, and when in such numbers as they were in all parts of Indiana up to 1850. competent to do the corn crop more harm than all the other animals. The meat of these little animals. when properly prepared for food, is most de- licious. These little rodents at times would migrate from one section to another. What the cause of. this was, was hard to tell, but at such times the farmers would be very much alarmed for fear they would destroy their corn. When they started, nothing would change their course. They would climb over mountains and cross wide and deep rivers. When it was known that they were on the go, the hunters and farmers would kill thousands of them. The squirrel was
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a great tell-tale on other animals. The hunter has often lain in wait for the approaching bear or deer who he knew was coming toward him by the noise of the squirrels as they, up in the trees, could be heard chattering away back on the course the animal had come, and would begin to chatter as soon as it had passed the tree they were on.
RABBITS.
The rabbit is a domestic animal and hardly worthy of mention in the game list. They were very few in Indiana in an early day. Whether the animals which would eat them kept the numbers down or whether they increased more as the country became settled up, is not known, but there are twenty here now where there was one in 1840. They are very poor meat in comparison with the squirrel, and people would not eat them when game was plentiful.
ANTELOPE.
This is a very beautifully formed animal and probably the swiftest of all the deer family. They are very shy and constantly on the watch for an enemy. After the Americans came to Indiana, they were not often seen, as they inhabited the prairie sections around Terre Haute and in the north and : northwestern part of the state.
The soldiers on Indian campaigns tell of seeing the an- telope in small herds, which were always on the run. In the northwestern portion of the state the antelope was killed as late as 1840, but since that date there is no account of any having been seen in Indiana. The plains of the great west were roamed by thousands of herds of these animals as late as the middle of the '80s. There are yet many herds of them seen on the plains of North Dakota.
GAME BIRDS.
THE TURKEY.
The turkey was the most important of the game birds, and furnished to many families the largest portions of their meat rations. When Indiana was first hunted over by the
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white man, turkeys were in such numbers that in one day's hunt there would be seen many flocks of these birds, number- ing from fifty to seventy-five in each flock. They were con- tinually roaming over the country for their food, and each day would travel many miles, usually in a circular form, at night returning to the same section for roosting in the tallest trees high up from the ground. They gathered all sorts of insects for their food, also the sassafras, dogwood and black- gum berries, which were their choicest foods.
They hid their nests in a secluded spot and laid from twelve to sixteen eggs and were four weeks setting before they hatched. During this period of incubation the old tur- key hen did not leave her nest but a very few times, hunting for food and water. When the young birds were hatched, the mother was very careful not to expose them to the wet until the downy stage had passed and they had feathers which would shed the water. This fine game bird was easily do- mesticated. The wild ones have almost been exterminated in this state.
There is a good story told of how the turkey fooled the eagle to keep from being carried off. The eagle catches its prey on the wing, and as it would swoop down to catch the turkey, it would squat down on the ground and spread out its wings and turn its long tail up perpendicularly. The eagle would hit the tail and fail to strike the body. A hunter re- lated the story of having watched a pair of eagles trying to catch turkeys one evening until they wore themselves out, without succeeding. When hunting for a national emblem, Dr. Franklin expressed a wish that the turkey rather than the eagle should be taken for it.
In hunting for turkeys at certain seasons of the year, they were easily fooled. The hunter, during the molting season, would locate where an old gobbler was gobbling and go as near without being seen as he thought safe, and then would commence to "cawk," using a bone taken from the tur- key's wing for that purpose, with which he could very closely imitate the calling noise made by the hen turkey. The old gobbler would go to the sound, continuing to gobble, and
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when the hunter had thus lured the bird near enough, he would kill it.
The turkey is a high-headed bird and formerly many of them were caught in pens. A trench was dug under the side of the pen and corn sprinkled in the trench. The turkeys would pick up the corn and thus enter the pen, and when he had eaten the corn would elevate its head and try to get out at the cracks between the logs, never thinking of stooping down and going out the way it came in.
THE RUFFLED GROUSE OR PARTRIDGE.
This bird, known to old people in Indiana as pheasant, is a beautiful bird sixteen or eighteen inches long, bulky and heavy to its looks. It is of a brownish color, very much re- sembling the dry leaves where it has its home. There is a small bunch of dark feathers on each side of its neck called the ruff and a dark band near the end of its broad tail. They are a very shy bird and can easily hide so as not to be distin- guished from the general appearance of the surroundings. When disturbed and not finding a suitable hiding place, they will take wing and fly very fast, making a peculiar whirring sound that is so noticeable, that any one ever hearing it would recognize it again.
This fine game bird has no superior when prepared for the table. Like all of its class of birds, one-third of it is breast or white meat. In the spring they make their nests very much the same as the common partridge or quail, as it is now called. When the young birds are hatched, in a very short time they follow the old birds wherever they go. In the springtime the male bird of this species drums on logs with his wings and makes a very loud noise that can be easily heard a mile away. They commence to drum very slowly at first, but soon drum so fast that it is hard to deter- mine if it is not a continuous sound. This noise has often been taken for thunder. There are several theories as to how this bird makes this noise. One is that the drumming noise is caused by the quick motion of the wings against the air. Another theory is that there is an accommodation of nature
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under its wings that it can inflate with wind at its pleasure and the drumming sound is caused by short and quick strokes with the wings against this inflated drum. To a "Hoosier" who, when a boy, has seen this fine bird on old logs, drum- ming and thumping with its wings, either of the above theo- ries is hard to accept.
PRAIRIE HEN.
The prairie hen was quite common up to forty years ago in the prairie sections of the state and in the timbered regions for many miles around the prairies, but now there are very few to be seen. They are a very fine bird, about two-thirds the size of the domestic hen, and are of the pheasant family.
THE QUAIL OR "BOB WHITE."
This bird, called in the central western states partridge, is the great game bird now in all sections of the middle west. While not easily domesticated, yet in most cases it makes its home in the grass and weeds on the farms. It supplies its own food from insects of all sorts and from the wild peas and from pulse. When the fields are harvested it raises its fam- ily in them by gleaning the scattered grains and heads left on the ground. In winter it lives on the wild seeds of grass and weeds; also on the berry of different sorts of trees and bushes and in the cornfields, gathering up the scattered grain. It can make its own living unless the winter is too severe and the snow is deep. Then the covey will hover to- gether in a round circle with their heads outward, and unless the farmer scatter grain within their reach at such times, many of them will starve.
These birds roost in a huddle under bunches of grass or under a log. They make their nests in grass and lay from ten to fifteen eggs. The young birds in a few minutes after they are out of the shell can run like the wind; in fact, when the nest has been disturbed in hatching, the little birds have been seen running with a part of the shell adhering to them.
THE PIGEON.
In an early day the wild pigeons were so plentiful in the
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fall of the year in all sections of this state as to be a menace to the safety of those traveling along the narrow road or hunting in the woods. They were after the bitter mast that grew on the red or ridge oak. These trees were mostly of a shrubby growth and the wood was very brittle. At night these birds by countless thousands would roost in these trees. They would settle on their roost in such numbers as to break off large limbs, and sometimes the tree itself would break down. Hunters at times would be after them with torches, and when they would fire at a cluster, the pigeons would rise to fly from the surrounding timber, and there would be a crash of limbs and falling tree-tops such as was never heard only in the most severe tornado. They were also found where there was beech timber, as they were very fond of the beechnut. They would remain in sections until most of the nuts and acorns were gathered and then fly away to other woods to gather food. In many places in Indiana there were what were known as "Pigeon Roosts." where the pigeons, by countless thousands, would gather year after year, covering several miles of territory for their roosts. Two of the largest of these roosts were in Scott and eastern part of Marion Counties. In the fall of the year, as these birds were making their flight from the cold north to the warmer climate of the southland, they were seen in such immense numbers and cov- ered such a large territory in their flight, that the sun would be darkened for an hour at a time. Their meat is not re- garded as of much value. It is very dark and has a strong pigeon odor about it that injured its value for food.
THE TURTLE DOVE.
This innocent bird has been regarded as an emblem of constant and faithful attachment, expressing its affection by billing and cooing in the gentlest and most soothing accents. Wilse, the great naturalist, said: "This is a favorite bird with all who love to wander among the woods and fields in the spring and listen to the varied harmony. They will hear many a sprightly performer but none so mournful as the dove. The hopeless woe of settled sorrow swelling the
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heart of the female. innocence itself could not assume- tones more sad. more tender and affecting." There is, however, nothing of real distress in all this. It is the voice of love for which the whole family of doves are celebrated. They are a very tame bird, found mostly near the farms or habitations of man. They have never been charged with doing any harm to the crops or anything else, but they do destroy many insects, and are so constantly about the farm, winter and summer, that they are regarded as real friends.
In making their nests, but little care is taken, as it is- quite common to find them on top of a stump or on the end of projecting fence rails. The young birds have but little pro- tection from the elements or security from the hawk or prowling mink. They raise from two to three sets of young birds during the spring and summer months. Some people class these harmless birds with game birds. This certainly is wrong. Anyone who can find pleasure in murdering the innocent doves must have a heart seared with avarice or meanness.
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