History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 3

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 3

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Probably no other portion of the earth was ever peopled by a more interesting variety of birds than the Ohio wilderness. Mr. Atwater's remarks on this subject are interesting. He says : "The wild goose visits ns on the Scioto early in the autumn, and tarries with us until spring. ... This bird lives all winter about Sandusky bay, and from thence southwardly to Pickaway plains. . . . Loons are seen along the Ohio River, but they are seldom killed. The heron and the crane visit us in the spring, and tarry here all summer and rear their young. The sand- hill crane lives on the Scioto, and tarries there nearly all the year. . . . After a long storm from the southwest many birds of different species are often seen here of a most beautiful plumage, which disappear again after a week's fair weather.

. Gulls, or stormy petrels are often seen along the Ohio River, before a south- . western storm. A few years since, paroquetts, in large flocks, lived in the woods, along the Ohio River, from Miller's bottom downwards, and along the Scioto River, upwards from its mouth, to where Columbus now stands. They are still in the woods along the bottoms below Chillicothe near the river where there is proper food for them to eat, and birds enough for them to torment by their squalling noise. " 26

Myriads of wild pigeons nested in the wilderness, and their migratory flights over the silent "sea of woods " were sometimes prodigious. One of the French voyagers on the Mississippi remarks that " the air was darkened and quite covered with them. " Harris's journal ( 1803 ) contains these statements referring to Ohio :

The vast flights of pigeons in this country seem incredible. But there is a large forest in Waterford ( on the Muskingum ) containing several hundred acres, which had been killed in consequence of their lighting upon it during the autumn of 1801. Such numbers lodged upon the trees that they broke off large limbs; and the ground below is covered, and in some places a foot thick, with their dung, which has not only killed all the undergrowth, but all the trees are as dead as if they had been girdled." 29

Jobn Bradbury, an English botanist who explored the Missouri country in 1809-11, writes of these birds :

I . . . soon discovered that pigeons were in the woods. . . . This species of pigeon ( Col- umho migratorius ) associates in prodigious flocks: one of these flocks when on the ground, will cover an area several acres in extent, and are so close to each other that the ground can scarcely be seen. This phalanx moves through the woods with considerable celerity, picking

THE OHIO WILDERNESS.

up, as it passes along, everything that will serve for food. It is evident that the foremost ranks must be the most successful, and that nothing will remain for the hindermost. That all may have an equal chance the instant that any rank becomes the last, they rise and flying over the whole flock alight exactly ahead of the foremost. They succeed each other with so much rapidity that there is a continual stream of them in the air, and a side view of them exhibits the appearance of the segment of a large circle moving through the woods. I observed that they ceased to look for food a considerable time before they become the last rank, but strictly adhere to their regulations, and never rise until there are none behind them." 29

The ornithologist of the Geological Survey, Dr. J. M. Wheaton, M. D., late of this city, says in his report :

Until about 1855 pigeons were extremely abundant in Central Ohio, having at and before this time a roost and breeding place near Kirkersville, Licking County. Then, for weeks at a time, they might be observed flying over this city or around its suburbs. In the morning soon after sunrise until nine o'clock or after, their flight was westward from the roost. In the afternoon from four o'clock until sundown they were returning. During these periods they were never out of sight, and often dozens of flocks were in view at once. Vast a day, and the way numbers were shot, killed with poles on their roosts, or captured in nets .... Many a figura matcher thousands were offered for sale in the market of this city. Most of them were brought alive files them in by in coops, and the purchaser had the choice of carrying them home alive or having them killed on the spot. If he chose the latter, the seller by a dexterous movement fractured or dislo- cated the bird's neck between his teeth. 'The average price at this time was five or six cents a dozen.

On several occasions we have been favored with a general migration of these birds, when and crushing they have appeared as described by Wilson, in " congregated millions." This was the case in 1854, when the light of the sun was perceptibly obscured by the immense, unbroken, and apparently limitless flock which for several hours passed over the city. In the fall of 1859 I his stunt mode. witnessed a similar migration near Granville, Licking County, since which time the birds have been much less numerous. On this occasion I had an opportunity of observing a large flock while feeding. The flock, after a little circling by the foremost ranks, alighted upon the ground, presenting a front of over a quarter of a mile, with a depth of nearly a hundred yards. In a very few moments those in the rear, finding the ground already stripped of mast, arose above the treetops and alighted in front of the advance column. This movement soon became continuous and uniform, birds from the rear flying to the front so rapidly that the whole pre- sented the appearance of a rolling cylinder having a diameter of about fifty yards, its interior filled with flying leaves and grass. The noise was deafening, and the sight confusing to the mind.30

If such were the multitudes of these birds which swarmed over the country nearly sixty years after civilization had begun to destroy them and drive them from their haunts, how phenomenal must they have been when they roved the silent, unseen wilds before the white man's advent!

The waterfowl of the wilderness,

Consulting deep, and various, ere they took Their arduous voyage through the liquid sky,

we may well believe constituted one of its most curious phases. Smith gives us some glimpses of it in his narrative. Describing a grand circular hunt on the Maumee during which the Indians drove multitudes of deer into the river he says :

" The squaws and boys were busy tomahawking the deer in the water, and we shooting them down on the land. We killed in all about thirty deer, tho' a great many made their escape by water "; and then adds :

We had now great feasting and rejoicing, as we had plenty of homony, venison, and

D' Mr. is wrong. I have caught then by the 100 day. un

taking the head Schuren his thank and fore finger. the skull with

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

wild fowl. The geese at this time appeared to be preparing to move southward - it might be asked what is meant by the geese preparing to move? The Indians represent them as hold- ing a great council at this time concerning the weather in order to conclude upon a day that they may all at or near one time leave the Northern Lakes and wing their way to the south- eru bays. When matters are brought to a conclusion and the time appointed that they are to take wing, then, they say, a great number of expresses are sent off in order to let the dif- ferent tribes know the result of this council, that they may be all in readiness to move at the time appointed. As there is a great commotion among the geese at this time, it would ap- pear by their actions that such a council had been held. Certain it is that they are led by instinct to act in concert and move off regularly after their leaders.

In another place Smith says: "Then (in October) the geese, swans, ducks, cranes, &c., came from the north, and alighted on this little Lake (Sandusky bay) without number or innumerable. Sunyendeand [a Wyandot town on the bay] is a remarkable place for fish in the spring, and fowl both in the fall and spring."

The approach of civilization modified but by no means discontinued these phenomena. " Wild geese, swans, ducks and wading birds," wrote Dr. Kirtland in 1850, " literally swarmed about every lake, pond and creek, during spring and autumn. Many species also bred on the Reserve. Forty years since, while travel- ling from Buffalo to Ohio, along the immediate shore of the lake, the scene was constantly enlivened by the presence of ducks leading their young on the margin of the water, or hastily retreating to it on our approach. It often happened that on doubling some point of land or fallen tree, we placed ourselves in a position to cut off their communication with their favorite element. The instructive expedi- ents to which the thoughtful mother would resort to extricate her charge from impending danger, was to us a matter of amusement and interest."

" At the present time," wrote Dr. Wheaton in 1879, " the geese find no more secure feeding grounds than the vast cornfields of the Scioto Valley. However these birds are less numerous than formerly, at least in the vicinity of this city. They seem to retain for a long time an attachment for places, and visit each year a favorite locality on the Olentangy River, so near this city that I have known amateur sportsmen to refrain from shooting them, for the reason that they ' were too near town to be wild geese.' ''31

A letter quoted by Dr. Manasseh Cutler, writing at the Marietta settlement in 1788, says: "Every spring a prodigious number of storks come to visit these plains ; they are at least six feet high, and more than seven feet from tip to tip of wings. I have never seen them come to feed that they were not surrounded by sentinels who watch around them to announce the approach of enemies. Some- times before their departure they assemble in great flocks, and the day being fixed all rise, turning slowly, and preserving always the same order, they describe long spirals until they are out of sight."

Paroquets in the Ohio woods are referred to in various old chronicles, some of which have been already quoted. Their harsh squawk must have been one of the most impressive if not pleasing voices of the summer wilderness. They seem to have been partial to the valley of the Lower Scioto, although they were observed as far north as Lake Michigan. Audubon, writing in 1831, says : "Our Parra- keets are very rapidly diminishing in number, and in some districts where twenty- five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen." In 1838 Dr. Kirtland observed that " the parrakeets do not usually extend their visits north of

THE OHIO WILDERNESS.

the Seioto." In July, 1862, the late W. S. Sullivant, of Columbus, noticed a flock of twenty-five or thirty which alighted among the trees opposite his residence on the Capitol Square.89

Another impressive bird of the wilderness, and one especially in keeping with its gloomier aspects, was the turkey buzzard, of which we have the following strik- ing picture in Bradbury's account of his explorations of the Missouri woods : " We began to notice more particularly the great number of drowned buffaloes floating on the river; vast numbers of them were also thrown ashore. ... These careasses had attracted an immense number of turkey buzzards ( Vultur aura) and as the preceding night had been rainy, multitudes of them were sitting on the trees, with their backs toward the sun, and their wings spread out to dry, a eom - mon practice with these birds after a rain."33

A similar spectacle formerly frequent on the Ohio is mentioned by Harris, who says in his journal : " On the upper beach of one of the islands we saw a large flock of Turkey Buzzards, attracted there by a dead carcass that had floated down the river, and lodged upon the bar. These birds did not fly upon our ap- proach."34

Dr. Cone says of these scavengers : "The Turkey Buzzard breeds sometimes in communities and sometimes by single pairs, depositing its eggs on the ground, on rocks, or in hollow logs and stumps. The situation is generally in thick woods : and when numbers breed together, the foulness of the resort is beyond description - vegetation may be destroyed over large areas. .. . They walk or hop indifferently, and sometimes move with a succession of leaps, accelerated with the wings. When about to take flight from the ground, they stoop for an instant till the breast almost touches, and then unfolding the wings, give a vigorous spring into the air; with a few powerful hurried flaps they are fairly off. They soon begin their gyrations with set wings, only beating at intervals, when they are forced to rise rapidly away from some obstaeles; and cireling thus they are shortly in the upper air."

Of the eagles a whole chapter of interesting facts might be written. Smith says in his narrative : " We came to Lake Erie about six miles west of Canesa- dooharie [Black River, in Lorain County]. . .. I saw on the strand a number of large fish, that had been left in flat or hollow places; as the wind fell and the waves abated, they were left without water, or only a small quantity ; and num- bers of Bald and Gray Eagles, &c., were along the shore devouring them."

In another place he says " great numbers of turkey-buzzards and eagles " collected to devour some rockfish left by the Indians.

The black eagles, says a colonial writer, "are most frequently sitting on some tall tree by the riverside, whence they may have a prospect up and down the river, as I suppose to observe the fishing hawks ; for when they see the fishing hawk has struck a fish, immediately they take wing, and 'tis sometimes very pleasant to behold the flight, for when the fishing hawk perceives herself pursued, she will scream and make a terrible noise, till at length she lets fall the fish to make her own escape, which the eagle frequently catches before it reach the earth or water."35

Wilson's Ornithology contains the following references to the whitebeaded eagle in this State :

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

In one of those partial migrations of tree squirrels that sometimes take place in our west- ern forests, many thousands of them were drowned in attempting to cross the Ohio ; and at a certain place not far from Wheeling, a prodigious number of their dead bodies were floated to the shore by an eddy. Here the vultures assembled in great force, and had regaled them- selves for sometime, when a bald eagle made his appearance, and took sole possession of the premises, keeping the vultures at their proper distance for several days. He has also been seen navigating the same river on a floating carrion, thongh scarcely raised above the sur- face of the water, and tugging at the carcass regardless of snags, sawyers, planters or shallows."36

Doctor Wheaton, writing in 1879, says : " In the immediate vicinity of Colum- bus the white headed eagle is rare, and migrant or winter visitor. I have not seen one for twenty years, but a fine adult speciman was observed on Alum Creek, abont four miles from the city, by my friends Doctors Fullerton and Landis in Sep- tember last. I have seen it in October, at the Licking County Reservoir, and have been informed that it remains through the summer and probably breeds there. About thirty years since, when a fatal epidemic prevailed among cattle, eagles ap- peared in considerable numbers in the northern part of this county and fed upon the carcasses of the victims."87

The song birds of the wilderness excite the admiring comment of all its early explorers. Among those partial to the Scioto Valley was the thrush, of which Ai- water writes in the following strain of rhapsody :

This Shakspeare among birds seats himself on some tree where the greatest variety of all sorts of birds dwell, and makes it his business to mock and disappoint tbem. Hence his com- mon name of mockingbird. Having seated himself in a proper place he listens in profound silence to the songs of the several birds around him. In the vernal season he makes the love call of a female of some near neighbor with heart stirring melody, until the males come in flocks to caress their loved mate, when lo! no such lovely bird is there. They find in- stead of the lovely fair one a homely brown thrush. ... In the evening, after the birds have reared their young ones, and when all join to raise their several hymns of praise, the thrush seats himself in this woodland orchestra, and begins by singing in succession the notes and songs of all the birds around him, beating all of them, using their own notes and singing their own songs. '

Having thus, as he supposes, carried off the prize in this musical contest, he prepares for his finale, by taking his seat on the topmost end of the highest bough of the loftiest tree standing on the highest ground in all the grove, and then commences to sing his own clear notes, and his own most delightful song. At times his wings are expanded, his neck is ex- the Airush as tended, every feather in his whole body quivers with his exertion of every limb, and his the round out whole soul is exerted to its utmost power to produce the most perfect melody that was ever heard in the woods of Ohio.38

Such are some of the best indications we can obtain of what the Ohio wilder- year after year, ness was before modern civilization entered it. But strange to say, we find here at liberty and in the traces of another civilization, or at least of a modified barbarism, which must have antedated even the advent of the red man. We also find imbedded in the rocks, and scratched upon their surfaces, the tokens of events which took place in the vast development of nature before this goodly land became habitable for man, whether civilized or savage.

Before proceeding farther let us examine these vestiges of the past, and inter- pret, so far as we can, their mysterious meaning.

perhafer, of the robinthe cat- feed , the viste as the sparrow , or even the win, but I mean heard lan sing the song of either, and new daw any other bird which areaw to think he had some

' Is not this practical? ! have heard

his mother day after day and

He cage. and have heard in his refturous nut- only , utter all the water,

yours faithfully, А.Е. Тичная

PHOTOGRAPHED RY BAKER.

Residence of Allen G. Thurman, 517 East Rich Street, built in 1885.

THE OHIO WILDERNESS.

NOTES.

1. All the early voyagers on the Ohio, and all the first emigrants to Kentucky, represent the country as being totally destitute of any recent vestiges of settlement. Mr. Butler, in his history of Kentucky, remarks in the text, that " no Indian towns, within recent times, were known to exist within this territory, either in Kentucky or the lower Tennessee "; but in a note he says, " there are vestiges of Indian towns near Harrodsburg, on Salt River, and at other points, but they are of no recent date." The same author and all others assert " that this interjacent country between the Indians of the South and those northwest of the Ohio, was kept as a common hunting ground or field of battle, as the resentments or inclinations of the adjoining tribes prompted to the one or the other."-W. H. Harrison's Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio Valley.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the destruction of the Eries by the Five Nations, in 1656, what is now the State of Ohio was nninhabited .- Manning F. Force on The Indians of Ohio.

Speaking to the same effect, Hildreth says : " A belt of conntry from forty to sixty miles in width, on both the north and south banks of the [Ohio] River seems to have been appro- priated by the tribes who laid claim to the territory, almost exclusively as hunting grounds." -Pioneer History, by S. P. Hildreth ..

2. History accepts it as an established fact that early in July, 1669, this bold adventurer left Montreal at the head of an exploring party, and that he probably spent the winter of 1669-70 in the Ohio country between Lake Erie and the great stream which the Iodians called " Ohio," " Oligheny-sipu," or " Meesch zebe." Writers conjecture variously that he reached the Ohio by following down either the Muskingum, the Scioto, or the Big Miami. - Footprints of the Pioneers of the Ohio Valley, by W. H. Venable.

3. The Narrative of Colonel James Smith affords a good illustration of this. Smith was captured by the Indians in Pennsylvania in 1755, at the age of eighteen, and remained with them, most of the time in the Ohio wilderness, until he made his escape near Montreal in 1 759. His jornal kept during that period, and afterwards revised and published, is a valu- able and extremely interesting record of experience, but portrays meagerly the wild and wondrous forest scenes in which that experience took place ..

4. The Old Régime in Canada ; Francis Parkman.

5. Discovery of the Great West ; Francis Parkman.

6. In June, 1673.

7. Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, John Gilmary Shea.

8. Polydon spatula, now very rare.

9. Parkman.

10. Venable's Footprints in the Ohio Valley.

11. History of Ohio; Caleb Atwater, A. M., 1838.

12. Yellow-legged snipe or tattler, then common along the western rivers in antumn.

13. Francis Baily, already quoted.

14. Thaddeus Mason Harris.

15. This probably refers to the Big Darby. A note on this passage by Smith's commen- tator, Mr. Darlington, based on John Brickell's Narrative, says : " By a law of the legisla- ture of Ohio, passed in 1833, 'to restore the Indian names to certain streams,' this name (Ollentangy) is incorrectly given to the Whetstone, the eastern affluent of the Scioto, the Delaware Indian name of which was Keenhongsheconsepung, or Whetstone Creek, in Eng- lish. . .. Big Darby Creek, which rises in Logan County and flowing southeast empties into the west side of the Scioto in Pickaway County, opposite Circleville, is the real Olleutangy ; this is evident from Smith's description of his route from the Sandusky portage to that stream, and of the country between it and the waters of the Miami (or Mad River)."

16. Afterwards known as the Sandusky Plains, and now embraced within the counties of Crawford, Wyandot, Marion and Hardin.

17. History of Ohio.

18. Ibid.

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

19. Harris's Journal.

20. The town here referred to is mentioned by Smith on a preceding page, as "an Indian town on the west branch of the Muskingum, about twenty miles above the forks, which was called Tullilahs, inhabited by Delawares, Caughnewagas and Mohicans."

21. " In Licking and Fairfield counties, now known as the Reservoir or Licking Summit of the Ohio Canal, ten miles south of Newark. The main Indian trail from the forks of the Ohio to the Miami towns led by this swamp, then, no doubt, of vast extent. Christopher Gist, agent of the Ohio Company (of Virginia), sent out to examine the country, with George Croghan and Andrew Montour, messengers, with presents from Governor Hamilton, of Penn- sylvania, to the Twightwees (Miamis), reached this point and encamped on January 17th, 1751. On the next day they ' set out for the Great Swamp,' as it is noticed by Gist in his journal."- Note by W. M. Darlington.

22. History of Athens County ; C. M. Walker, 1869.

23. History of Licking County ; Isaac Smucker.

24. Hildreth's Pioneer History of the Ohio Valley speaks of the migration of gray squir- rels, in early times, " coming in millions from the north to the south, destroying whole fields of corn in a few days."

" I learn from Dr. Hoy " [of Racine, Wisconsin], says Prof. Brayton, " that one of these migrations is said to have taken place in 1842; he witnessed another in 1847, and a third in 1852. From these facts, and from observations made in Ohio and elsewhere, he is of the opinion that the migrations, in most cases, at least, occur at intervals of five years, and if he be right, the squirrels, which are now exceedingly abundant again in Southern Wisconsin, may be expected to migrate in the autumn of 1857 .* He further says that the migrations ob- served by him in Southern Wisconsin occurred when the mast was exceedingly abundant and the squirrels in good condition. Near Racine they were observed passing south ward in very large numbers for about two weeks, at the end of September and the beginning of October, and it was a month before all had passed. They moved along rather leisurely, stopping to feed in the fields, and upon the abundant nuts and acorns of the forests. So far had they departed from their accustomed habits that they were seen on the prairie, four or five miles away from any timber, but even there, as usual, they disliked to travel on the ground, and ran along the fences, wherever it was possible."-Report on the Mammalia of Ohio, by Prof. A. M. Brayton. Ohio Geological Survey Report, Volume IV.

25. History of Ohio.

26. History of Ohio.

27. Gravier.

28. Journal of a Tour, etc.

29. Travels in the Interior of America in the years 1809, 1810 and 1811 ; by John Bradbury.

30. Report on the Birds of Ohio; by J. M. Wheaton, M. D., 1879. Geological Survey Re- port, Volume IV.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 3

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202