USA > Indiana > Pioneer history of Indiana : including stories, incidents, and customs of the early settlers > Part 38
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PANTHERS, BEARS AND A DEER IN BATTLE.
In the fall of 1823 David Johnson shot a large deer with a heavy pair of many pointed horns and had followed on its trail for some distance, hoping to get another shot. The deer was not dangerously wounded, but just enough to put it in good fighting humor.
He had followed the deer for some time over the hills in Washington township, Gibson County. The deer had left many signs of its anger by tearing small bushes and saplings to pieces with its horns in the route that he had traveled. Coming to the top of a hill, Johnson heard a loud noise down in the hollow at the foot of the hill that sounded as if many angry animals were in a terrible combat.
Slipping up so he could see what was making such a racket, when within about eighty yards he could see several animals in a regular free-for-all fight. Two black bears (one of them a very large one), two panthers, and a little to one side, his wounded buck. The two bears were standing on their hind feet, dealing blows with their arms, right and left, when the panthers would get in reach of them. The panthers were much more active than the bears, but were careful to keep out of reach of the bears' arms. Every little while they would jump clear over the bears, as if trying to attack them at their back, but Mr. Bruin would turn around as if on a pivot. The deer was standing some little distance away looking at the combatants as if he would like to take. part in the fray, but there was so much of it he did not know how to commence. In one of the rushes made by the panthers, in jumping over the bear, one of them attempted to land on the buck's back, but the deer was too quick for it and it fell on the sharp points of the deer's horns, and was evidently injured in the tussle which followed. After the panther got off the horns it ran up a tree which stood near.
Mr. Johnson said the fight was so furious and the noise so terrible that he never was so thoroughly scared in his life before, and did not know what to do. There were so many animals that he could not kill all of them. He was at a loss as to what was the best plan to pursue, but as soon as the
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panther run up the tree he determined to shoot it. It fell to the ground, not dead, but so disabled that it could not stand on its feet, but tore the ground and growled and snarled. The other animals did not seem to hear the shot. If they did, they paid no attention to it, but kept up the fight. The other panther would every little while spring over the bears, high above their heads. The deer didn't seem to pay any attention to the bears, but followed the movements and kept his horns between his body and the panther. The panther, in avoiding a blow aimed at his head by the smaller bear, got in reach of the big one and received a blow that sent it ten feet away. It was more careful to keep out of reach after this and soon climbed up a tree for thirty feet and lay stretched out on a large limb. Johnson made up his mind that it was more dangerous than all three of the others and shot at it. Instead of falling, it jumped twenty or thirty feet into a thick clump of brush and ran off. The bear and deer stood their ground as if uncertain what to do, but before Johnson could load his gun again they all ran off down the hollow.
He found that the cause of the trouble was that the panthers had killed a small deer, and no doubt the bears com- ing up at this time determined to take it away from them.
After killing the wounded panther, he then went to where the other had alighted when it jumped out of the tree and found a little blood, but thought the animal was not seri- ously hurt. He said he could have killed the deer or either of the bears, but was afraid to leave the panthers, as they would have attacked him.
A WOUNDED DEER HORNING OXENS AND A HORSE.
Following is a little story showing the fury of a wounded buck: Major John Sprinkels, who settled Sprinklesburg (now Newburg), was out hunting and wounded a large five point buck and had been following it for some time. Finally the deer came to a cornfield, jumped the fence and was passing through it when it came to an ox team hitched to a wagon with an old North Carolina schooner bed on it. Three men were with the wagon gathering corn. The first they knew
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of the deer the oxen commenced to run. They found the deer was goring one of the oxen with its sharp horns. In running, the wagon became fast on a stump. The men ran to the oxen, thinking to scare the deer away, but it attacked them and seriously hurt one of the men, who saved his life by rolling under the wagon. The other two got up into the schooner bed. The deer, after trying to get at the man un- der the wagon, went around and attacked the other ox, goring it fearfully. Major Sprinkles, hearing the bellowing of the oxen and the halooing of the men, went to find out what was the matter and succeeded in killng the deer.
In 1827 Andrew McFaddin, of Posey County, went hunt- ing on horseback. There was a heavy wet snow on the ground and he found that his horse balled so badly he had to leave it, and after securely tying it, he went on hunting.
He shot a large buck, severely wounding it, but it ran away. McFaddin followed it for several miles. The deer commenced to circle around and come back to the neighbor- hood where it had been wounded. After nearing the place where he had hitched his horse, he heard the horse making a terrible noise as if in distress. Thinking that a panther had attacked his horse, he ran in that direction and found the deer goring it with its sharp horns. McFaddin killed the deer, but found that his horse wes ruined.
PANTHERS KILLING INDIANS.
While three young men from Kentucky, southwest of Louisville, were traveling over the old trace from Clarkesville to Vincennes in 1800, where they intended to enlist in the army, they reached a place in the neighborhood of where French Lick Springs is now located and were ambushed and attacked by seven Indians, two of the young men being killed at the first fire. The other one, named George Davis, was grazed by a ball along his temple and fell to the ground. He was up quickly and attempted to run to cover, but ran into the hands of the Indians and was captured. They took him with them, going in the direction of the head waters of the White river, and reached a country where there were many Indians and Indian towns.
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One night as they were lying in camp asleep, young Davis managed to slip his arms out of the buckskin thongs with which they were tied. Waiting until he felt sure they were all asleep, he selected his own gun which was standing with others against a tree near the fire and slipped away.
He started east, feeling sure that the Indians would go southwest on their back trail to hunt for him. The moon was very bright and he made good use of his time before daylight.
About daylight he found a leaning tree lodged against another very large tree which had a hole in it just above where the leaning tree lodged. Going up the leaning one, he found the hole large enough for him to hide in. It no doubt was the winter home of a bear.
Resting and sleeping all that day, as soon as night came on he was down. Shaping his course so as to have the North star at his back, he traveled all night. Being very hungry, he fortunately found a large fat opossum, killed it and carried it with him.
Just before day he found a cliff which had a shallow cave running back twenty feet from the entrance. Securing wood, he went into the cavern. He was at his wits' ends how to get any fire, as he had only the one charge of powder, which was in his gun. He was a backwoodsman and knew a good deal of their craft. Securing two sound, dry sticks, he com- menced to rub them together until he brought fire from one of them. Preparing his opossum, he baked it to a nicety and ate it with a relish without salt or condiments.
As soon as night had come again he started and had been traveling two or three hours, when he heard a slight noise behind him as of some small animal running. Stepping out of his course a short distance and into a clump of bushes, he stopped to see the cause of this. He had been in his place only a few moments when he discovered three Indians follow- ing his trail. They passed, missing his track, and were run- ning around trying to find it, when a most terrible scream was heard from one of them.
Two panthers were in a tree, and the Indians getting un-
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der them, the animals pounced onto them, knocking two of them down and terribly lacerating them. The third Indian killed one of the panthers, when a shot from the other side killed the Indian, and in a short time another shot from the same direction killed the other panther.
In a short time a man with long white hair and beard and dressed in skins came to where the combat had taken place, calling to Davis, whom he had seen slipping into hid- ing, to come out.
The combat had taken place near a large deer-lick and the panthers had been in the tree waiting for some unfortun- ate deer. The old man was there for the same purpose and did not know that the panthers were in the tree. He had seen Davis when he stopped and saw him slip into the clump of bushes and saw the Indians coming on his trail. By this he felt sure that he was a white man.
The Indians' guns and other things of value were taken. Young Davis was supplied with ammunition, hunting knife and tomahawk. The Indians lacerated by the panthers soon bled to death. They were dragged to a deep place in a nearby hollow or branch and put into it. Brush was piled over them.
The old man told Davis to follow him and he would have something prepared for him to eat, and after they had gone for about a mile the old man told him to sit down and rest, as they were in no further danger from the Indians. In an hour he returned with plenty of dried venison and fresh bear's meat, which was broiled. After eating all they wanted, they prepared a camp and stayed there for two days. During this period the old man was gone several times for an hour at a time. He would not talk of himself or of what he was doing there. Their camp was near a very large spring of gushing water not far from the Blue river (no doubt the large spring a few miles west of Corydon, Ind.)
After preparing plenty of provisions for the trip, Davis bade his benefactor good-bye and started for the mouth of the Blue river, as directed by the old patriarch, and finally got back to Kentucky.
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DeLome, in his interesting narrative of his capture and his life among the Indians, relates the killing of the two men on the old trace and the capture of Davis. He says he was adopted into the family of an Indian, and that one of the men who went back for Davis was his adopted brother. He says the four Indians reached home, but that the three who went after Davis were never heard of afterward. He tells of the old patriarch having a home in a cave not far from the big spring; that no one knew who he was, where he came from or what became of him; but it was believed, from the little information obtained by Davis, that he was a po- litical exile from some foreign country and that he had gone into seclusion in the wilds of Harrison County, Indiana.
EARLY DAYS NEAR PETERSBURG, INDIANA.
In 1807 or '08, James Gurney left Jefferson County, Ken- tucky, and came to Indiana Territory. He had a wife and two children. They put all their possessions in a large bag made of hemp or flax and fastened it to the back of the horse. The mother and smaller child rode on its back -the father, with his gun, keeping a lookout for Indians. The older boy, twelve years old, led the horse.
Crossing the river at Louisville, they started west on the old Indian trace, which was a regular traveled way from Louisville to Vincennes, most of the way being a good road. When they had traveled some thirty miles they found the road was patroled by rangers under young John Tipton. He furnished an escort as far as his boundary reached, only a little west of the Blue river. They were compelled to remain at that point until the rangers on the western division should come on their regular trip, which was only a day or two. The men on the western division were commanded by Captain Wm. Hargrove. The Gurney family accompanied them on their return trip to White Oak Springs, where Woolsey Pride had a fort. They were instructed by W. H. Harrison to re- main in a blockhouse built inside the heavy stockade Pride had built around his fort, until late in the fall. He could then build a house after the Indian raids were over.
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Gurney was of a restless, roving disposition, and had but little regard for Governor Harrison's orders. He would not follow the advice of the old hunters at the fort, but left, say- ing that he was going back to the mud holes, which were near where Portersville, in Dubois County, was afterward lo- cated, and they heard nothing more of him for some time.
The winter had gone and warm weather had come again. One day a woman, carrying a small bundle and a little girl, were found by the two McDonalds-John and William-who were early settlers in the mud-hole region. They had been wandering around in the woods. They took them to their home. These two persons were Mrs. Gurney and her little daughter. She said that the fall before, with her husband and two children, she had left the White Oak Springs fort and had gone in a southeasterly direction ten or fifteen miles, when they came upon a place which suited their fancy. Here they built a little cabin and spent the winter in comfort. There was all sorts of game in abundance, and with hickory and beech nuts and white oak acorns, of which they made pones and baked, they managed to live in comfort and were in perfect health. With the coming of spring they com- menced to prepare a small patch for corn and vegetables and had a little field brushed off. The horse was kept at night in a pen covered over with bark and brush. During the day he ran out and fed as he could from the range. One morning, along the first of May, Mr. Gurney had started out with his rifle to kill a turkey, and had not gone more than a hundred yards when his wife heard him calling aloud. His wife ran in the direction he had gone, and when she got within sight of his body, which was lying in the edge of the clearing, she saw a large panther spring onto a limb of a tree which stood near him. She did not know what to do, and thinking that the horse would scare the animal away, they led the horse out of the stable and turned him loose, driving him toward the place where the body of Mr. Gurney lay. When the horse saw the body it became scared and ran near the tree the panther was in, whereupon the latter sprang from the tree to the horse's back and that was the last ever seen of the horse.
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They buried Mr. Gurney near the cabin and after this they had a very hard time. They could not do anything with the corn patch, as the horse was gone, but they could kill game, as the little boy and his mother could both use a gun.
The spring from which they obtained their water was seventy or eighty yards from the cabin. The boy was carry- ing water from it early one morning when he was killed by a panther. The mother, hearing his scream, took the gun and shot the animal as it was preparing to spring on her. She buried her boy and then determined to try to find her way back to the road and to Kentucky. She had been wandering around over the woods for more than a week when found by the two men who had killed a bear.
Mrs. Gurney went back to her people in Kentucky. This experience was told to me more than fifty years ago by Elijah Malott, who lived in the same neighborhood as did Mrs. Gurney's people, and he often heard her tell of her awful experience. He said he had been preparing to come to southern Indiana to the neighborhood of White Oak Springs, but after hearing of the terrible experience above related, he had many misgivings. He said it was never known exactly where Mr. Gurney had made his cabin, but eight or ten years after he was killed some hunters found a small floorless cabin near where the White Sulphur Springs are now, near where Velpen, Pike County, Indiana, now stands.
Elijah Malott moved to the neighborhood of Petersburg, Indiana, in 1817. This same Mr. Malott in his younger days was very fond of playing pranks. One evening while hunt- ing he found a large buck which had been killed the day before and was frozen hard. He dragged it up to a sapling, raised it up to a standing position and tied it there. That night he went to see his nearest neighbor, Mr. Jesse Alexan- der, and invited him to go hunting with him the next morn- ing. They started out and the route Mr. Alexander took brought him in plain view of the dead buck with the large pair of horns. In a short time Mr. Malott heard Alexander commence shooting and he took seven shots in all at the
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deer. After this he concluded to investigate and found that he had put seven balls into the deer.
In 1850 one of Mr. Alexander's daughters was married. Before the wedding something was said about a charivari. Mr. Alexander said if they attempted it, his two big bulldogs would eat them up. The night of the wedding Hiram Malott, Resin Malott, Captain James E. Chappell and many others, carrying with them three dumb-bulls, as many hick- ory rattles and many noisy things, and beginning the most hideous noise ever heard, went three or four times around the house, when they were invited in. Mr. Alexander the next morning found his dogs a mile away, at Stanton Lamb's.
PANTHERS KILLING ONE MAN AND SERIOUSLY WOUNDING AN- ANOTHER OF A SURVEYING PARTY.
In 1805 the surveyors were doing some work in town one north, range nine west, in what is now Clay township, Pike County, Indiana, that had been left from the survey in the fall and winter of 1804 owing to water being in the way. The camp was located on section 18, town one north, range 9 west, a little way from Harvey creek and near a pond or bayou that is now owned by Hon. Jasper N. Davidson. They had been in that section for several weeks.
Two young men were camp-keepers, one of them keeping the camp supplied with game. Their names were George Tate and Thomas Shay and they had for. some years before this made their home in Clark's Grant, near Jeffersonville, Indiana. The surveying crew had come into camp at noon on Saturday so they could make their field notes and were not intending to go out again until the following Monday.
The two young camp-keepers availed themselves of this opportunity to go to a bluff bank not far away and to en- deavor to kill a bear, which, they thought, had its den in the bluff. Just before reaching the den they saw two young ani- mals that were gamboling around over logs and running up an old stump six or eight feet high and jumping off. They were having a lively play and did not see the hunters, who got up as close as they could, and hiding behind trees, they watched
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their antics for some time. Slipping up still closer, they in- tended to scare the animals, to see them run, and so rushed at them, making a great noise. The old mother panther was lying asleep only a little way from where the kittens were playing and she at once rushed at the hunters, striking Shay down before he could use his gun and almost severed his head with her terrible claws. Tate, not knowing Shay was dead, would not shoot for fear of hitting him, as the panther was biting and scratching him. He rushed upon the animal and felled it with his gun and then one of the very bloodiest fights ever recorded of this nature took place. The panther, regaining her feet, rushed at Tate, who was trying to shoot, but found that the priming had fallen out of the pan of his flint lock gun when he knocked the panther down. As she came at him he thrust the muzzle of the gun into her mouth and thus held her at bay for a little while. She tore the gun out of her mouth with her claws and again rushed at Tate. He clubbed his gun and broke one of her fore legs, but she caught one of his arms in her mouth and they both fell to the ground. The hunter as yet was but little hurt, and drawing his hunting knife, he plunged it in the panther's side time after time, but not before she had torn the flesh off his legs in a terrible manner with her hind claws. The men at the camp heard the noise that the panther made as she was rushing at the hunter, and three men, with two dogs, hurried in that direction. They had not gone far before the dogs set up a terrible bark- ing and a large panther sprang into a tree not far off. They shot it to death. Thomas Shay was quite dead and Tate was almost dead from loss of blood. The carcass of the panther that he had stabbed to death was lying on him and the two little kitten panthers were nestled down by the side of their dead mother. The panther the rescuing party had killed was not in the battle, but came in answer to the scream of its mate. It had nearly covered the body of Shay with leaves, as is their habit when killing game. When they have eaten all they want, they cover the remainder until they are hungry again.
They carried Tate to the camp and dressed his wounds as
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best they could, but it was several months before he was able to go about.
Shay was buried near the place where he was killed and a history of his death was cut by the surveyors with their tools on a beech tree near his grave. The surveyors sent for. David Johnson, who had been with them the year before. to hunt for their camp again. While there he had an adven- ture near where the old Indian road crosses White river. He had shot a small deer and dressed and prepared it so he could carry it shot-pouch fashion to the camp, when he heard a noise of something which was in a tree not far off. Bending down a sapling and cutting off a limb he hung his deer on it and when the sapling straightened up, it went out of the reach of any animal. Slipping up to the point where he heard the noise, he saw a bear cub which would weigh about one hundred pounds. He shot and broke its shoulder. It set up a terrible noise and in a moment out came the old bear from a tree all in a pile. She jumped up and ran to the cub and was trying to get it away by going off and expecting it to follow, but the little fellow could not walk and kept up the squealing noise. Johnson was trying to load his gun but in the hurry, as he was pulling his gun stick out, it went out of his hand and some distance to one side. In stepping from behind the tree to get it, the old bear saw him and came at There was a large tree standing but a little
him full drive. way from him. He ran to this and got behind it, intending to finish loading his gun but the bear was after him and he ran around that tree many times, the bear in close pursuit. The little bear commenced to make a very loud noise and the old bear ran to the place where it was, when Johnson finished loading his gun and shot the old bear.
In 1854 when Mr. Johnson told me this story he said that sometime in the early twenties he, with a hunting party, had a camp near the place where the panther fight took place and that while the beech tree had been blown down, Shay's grave was yet to be seen.
WILD HOGS.
When it became so that the people could turn their hogs
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on the range all the time, some of them would stray off and become so wild, they would run from a man. They were very prolific. A sow would usually raise two litters of from six to eight pigs each year. In a short time the surrounding wood was full of wild hogs. The pigs which were raised in the woods were as wild as other animals and equally as hard to domesticate. An old saying among the early people was, "A wild hog once, a wild hog all the time." The country was covered over with a heavy growth of timber and a large por- tion of it was nut-bearing and acorn trees. In the more open or barren wood there were immense thickets of hazel bushes and on these bushes a large quantity of hazel nuts were pro- duced each year. In the fall and winter the ground was cov- ered with the different sorts of nuts and acorns. Not one- half of it could be eaten by the animals. All winter, except when there was a deep snow, there was an abundance of food for everything that would eat mast. The hogs would at all times keep in good living order, and in the fall and winter would get very fat. The farmers in early .times marked their stock by cutting their ears in many shapes, such as an upper bit in the right ear, and a crop off the left ear; an un- der bit in both ears, a crop and a split in the right ear, and so on. 1
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