USA > Pennsylvania > A pioneer outline history of northwestern Pennsylvania > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
" It required more skill to hunt the elk than it did to trail the deer, as they were much more cautious and alert. For all that, an elk, when startled from his bed, did not instantly dash away, like the deer, but invariably looked to see what had aroused him. Then, if he thought the cause boded him no good, away he went, not leaping over the brush, like the deer, but, with his head thrown back, and his great horns almost covering his body, plunging through the thickets, his big hoofs clattering together like castanets as he went. The elk did not go at a galloping gait, but travelled at a swinging trot that carried him along at amazing speed. He never stopped until he had crossed water, when his instinct seemed to tell him that the scent of his trail was broken before the pursuing dogs.
" At the rutting season the elk, both male and female, was fearless and fierce, and it behooved the hunter to be watchful. An elk surprised at this season did not wait for any overt act on the part of an enemy, but was in- stantly aggressive. One blow from an elk's foot would kill a wolf or a dog, and I have more than once been forced to elude an elk by running around trees, jumping from one to another before the bulky beast, unable to make the turns quick enough, could recover himself and follow me too closely to prevent it, thus making my way by degrees to a safe refuge. I was once treed by a buck elk not half a mile from home, and kept there from noon until night began to fall. I haven't the least doubt that he would have kept me there all night if another buck hadn't bugled a challenge from a neighboring hill, and my buck hurried away in answer to it. I didn't wait to see it, but there was a great fight between those two bucks that night.
" I visited the spot the next day. The ground was torn up and the sap- lings broken down for rods around, and one old buck lay in the brush dead." his body covered with bloody rips and tears. I didn't know whether this was the elk that treed me or not, but I have always been fond of believing it was.
8
II3
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
" The whistle of the buck elk, as the hunters used to call it, wasn't a whistle, although there were changes in it that gave it something of a flute-like sound. The sound was more like the notes of a bugle. In making it the buck threw back his head, swelled his throat and neck to an enormous size, and with
Elk
that as a bellows he blew from his open mouth the sound that made at once his challenge or call for a mate. The sound was far-reaching, and, heard at a distance, was weird and uncanny, yet not unmusical. Near by it was rasping and harsh, with the whistling notes prominent.
II4
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
" The Pennsylvania elks were never much scattered. When I first came to the Sinnemahoning country, nearly seventy years ago, the salt marsh that lay in the wilderness where my residence now is was trampled over by herds of elks and deer that came there to lick the salt from the ground as if a drove of cattle had been there. I have seen seventy-five elks huddled at that marsh. That was 'the great elk lick' of legend, which the reservation Indians have often talked to me about when I lived in Allegheny County, New York, as a boy, and it was to find that lick that my father and I, following the rather indefinite directions of one Johnnyhocks, an old Shongo Indian, entered the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1826."
A TOUGH OLD BUCK
" To follow an elk forty miles before running it down was considered nothing remarkable. I have done it many a time. Leroy Lyman, Jack Lyman, and A. H. Goodsell once started on an elk-hunt from Roulette, Potter County, struck the trail at the head of West Creek, in Mckean County, thirty miles from Roulette, followed it through Elk, Clarion, and Clearfield Counties, and finally drove it to its rock eighty or ninety miles from where the trail was first struck. They had followed the elk many days, and finally the quarry was found,-an enormous buck,-with a spread of horns like a young maple-tree. The hunters ran out of rations the second day, and were nearly starved when they ran the elk to its rock. All three of them put a bullet in the defiant elk and ended his career. Visions of elk-meat for supper had haunted the fam- ished hunters, and when the buck fell they shouted for joy. Without delay they started in to carve expected juicy morsels from the carcass to cook for supper, but there was not a knife or a hunting-axe in that party that could make an impression on the old fellow's flesh. He was a patriarch of the woods, and long past use as food. All the starving hunters could manage to make edible of the elk was his tongue, which, roasted, was a grateful offering to hungry men, but would have been impossible of mastication otherwise. The horns were the only trophy that the hunters got from the long and tedious chase, and that trophy was well worth it. It was the largest and next to the finest pair of antlers ever carried by an elk in the Pennsylvania forest, so far as there is any record."
THE ELK VS. WOLVES
" There are scattered through the woods, generally high on the hills, from the Allegheny River down to the West Branch and Clarion River, huge rocks, some detached boulders, and other projections of ledges. These are known as elk rocks, and every one of them has been, in its day, the last resort of some elks brought to bay after a long and hard chase. It was the habit of the hunted elk, when it had in vain sought to throw the hunter and hound from the trail, to make its stand at one of these rocks. Mounting it, and facing
115
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
its foes, it fiercely fought off the assaults of the dogs by blows of his forefeet or tremendous kicks from its hind feet, until the hunter came up and ended the fight with his rifle. It would be strange if one or more of the dogs were not stretched dead at the foot of the rock by the time the hunter arrived on the scene. I have more than once found dead wolves lying about one of these elk rocks, telling mutely, but eloquently, the tragic story of the pursuit of the elk by the wolves, his coming to bay on the rock, the battle, and the elk's victory. The elk was not always victor, though, in such battles with wolves, and I have frequently found the stripped skeleton of one lying among the skeletons of wolves he had killed before being himself vanquished by their savage and hungry fellows.
" In the winter time the elks would gather in large herds and their range would be exceedingly limited. Sometimes they would migrate to other regions, and would not be seen for months in their haunts, but suddenly they would return and be as plentiful as ever. They had their regular paths or runways through the woods, and these invariably led to salt licks, of which there were many natural ones in Northern Pennsylvania. One of the most frequented of these elk paths started in a dense forest, where the town of Ridgway, the county seat of Elk County, now stands, led to the great lick on the Sinnemahoning portage, and thence through the forest to another big lick, which to-day is covered by Washington Park, in the city of Bradford. I have followed that elk path its whole length, when the only sign of civilization was now and then a hunter's cabin, from the head-waters of the Clarion River to the Allegheny, in Mckean County. Hundreds of elks were killed annually at the licks or while travelling to and from them, along their well-marked runways."
HUNTING ELKS AT NIGHT
" Hunting elks by night was an exciting sport. You have heard of per- sons being scared by their own shadows. If you had ever hunted a Pennsyl- vania elk at night you would have had an opportunity of seeing something scared by its own shadow, and scared badly. A blazing pine-knot fire would be lighted in the bow of a flat-bottomed boat, and while one man sat near that end with his rifle, another paddled it through the water. Elks were always sure to be standing in the water early in the evening, after darkness had fully set in. When the light of the fire fell on an elk you would not only see his eyes shining like coals, but the whole big spectral spread of his antlers would stand out against the darkness-not only the horns of one, but of perhaps half a dozen. When the hunter fired at one elk all the others would make a break for shore, but the instant they landed, their great black shadows would fall before them from the light of the blazing fires, and back they would rush in terror to the water. Then a hunter might kill every elk in the herd, or several of them, before their fright at the gun overcame the terror of the shadow and the survivors fled to the impenetrable darkness of the woods.
I16
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
" The biggest set of elk antlers ever captured in the Pennsylvania woods was secured in the Kettle Creek country by Major Isaac Lyman, Philip Tome, George Ayres, L. D. Spoffard, and William Wattles. Philip Tome was a great hunter, and the famous interpreter for Cornplanter and Blacksnake, the great Indian chiefs. He came over from Warren County to help Major Lyman capture an elk alive, and the party started in on the first show, with plenty of ropes and things. They camped, but the elks were in such big herds that they couldn't get a chance at a single buck for more than a week. Then they got the biggest one they ever saw and gave chase to him. They started him from his bed on Yocum hill. The dogs took him down Little Kettle Creek to Big Kettle, and up that two or three miles. There the elk came to bay on a rock. He kept the dogs at a distance until the hunters came up, when he left the rock and started away again. Tome, knowing the nature of elk, said that all they had to do was to wait and the elk would return to the rock. They dropped poles and fitted up nooses. They waited nearly half a day, and then they heard the buck coming crashing through the woods, down the mountain-sides, the dogs in full cry. He mounted his rock again. The hunters he did not seem to mind, but the dogs he fought fiercely. While he was doing that the hunters got the nooses over his immense horns and anchored him to surrounding trees. They got the elk alive to the Allegheny River, and floated him on a raft to Olean Point. From there they travelled with him through New York State to Albany, exhibiting him with much profit, and at Albany he was sold for five hundred dollars. That elk stood sixteen hands high and had antlers six feet long, and eleven points on each side, the usual number of points being nine on a side."
The last elk killed in this State was in 1864, by Jim Jacobs, an Indian. This elk had been pursued for several days, and in despair sought his "rock" near the Clarion River, and was there shot. He was too old and tough to be used for food. The buffalo, elk, panther, wolf, and beaver are now extinct. The last buffalo killed in the State of which there is a record was about 1799. There were originally in this State over fifty species of wild, four-footed ani- mals. We had three hundred and twenty-five species and sub-species of birds, and our waters, including Lake Erie, had one hundred and fifty species of fish. It may not be amiss to state here that all our wild animals were pos- sessed of intelligence, courage, fear, hate, and affection. They reasoned, had memory, and a desire for revenge. A wolf could be tamed and trained to hunt like a dog. It is recorded in history that a pet snake has been known to travel one hundred miles home. It is undeniable that they could compute time. courses, and distances. Elks, bears, and deer had their own paths. Bears blazed theirs by biting a hemlock tree occasionally.
Elks are polygamous. The chief is a tyrant, and rules the herd like a czar. The does all fear him. Does breed at the age of two years, having but one fawn, but when older often two or three at a time, and these young follow
IT7
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
their mother all summer, or from the date of birth in May or June to fall. The elk's whistle varies much and has different meanings; they seem to have a language like all other animals, big or little. A full-grown elk never forgets an injury. They can soon be taught to work like oxen, but it takes from six months to two years to be able to stand in front of an elk and command him.
In 1834, Mike, William, and John Long and Andrew Vastbinder captured a full-grown live elk. Their dogs chased the animal on his high rock, and while there the hunters lassoed him. The elk only lived three weeks in cap- tivity. The last elk in the State was killed in our forests. A noted hunter thus describes a battle between wolves and a drove of elks : " I heard a rush of
Gray or timber wolf of Pennsylvania
feet from the opposite direction, and the next moment a band of elks swept into sight. Magnificent fellows they were, eight bucks and three does, with a couple of fawns. They had evidently been stampeded by something, and swept past me without seeing me, but stopped short on catching sight of the wolves. The does turned back and started to gallop away in the direction from which they came, but one of the bucks gave a cry, and they stopped short and huddled together with the fawns between them, while the bucks sur- rounded them. Each buck lowered his horns and awaited the attack. The wolves, seeing the cordon of bristling bone, paused, disconcerted for a moment ; then the foremost, a gaunt old wolf, gave a howl and threw himself upon the lowered antlers. He was flung fully ten feet with a broken back, but his fate did not deter the others. They threw themselves upon the elks only to be
I18
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
pierced by the prongs. It was not until fully twenty had in this way been maimed and killed that they seemed to realize the hopelessness of the thing."
The largest carnivorous beast was the panther. After the advent of white men into this wilderness panthers were not common. In the early days, however, there were enough of them in the forests to keep the settler or the hunter ever on his guard. They haunted the wildest glens and made their presence known by occasional raids on the flocks and herds. It is probable that here in our northwestern counties there are still a few of these savage beasts.
The puma, popularly called by our pioneers panther, was and is a large animal with a cat head. The average length of a panther from nose to tip of tail is about six to twelve feet, the tail being over two feet long, and the tip of which is black. The color of the puma is tawny, dun, or reddish along the back and side, and sometimes grayish-white underneath or over the abdo- men and chest, with a little black patch behind each ear. The panther is a powerful animal, as well as dangerous, but when captured as a cub can be easily domesticated and will be good until he is about two years old. The pioneers shot them and captured many in panther- and bear-traps. The pelts sold for from one to twelve dollars. The catamount, or bey lynx, was a species of the cat, had tufts on the ears, a cat head, long-bodied, three or four feet long, short-legged, big-footed, and mottled in color. The fur was valu- able. The lynx is sometimes mistaken for the panther.
The Longs, Vastbinders, and other noted hunters in Jefferson County killed many a panther. A law was enacted in 1806 giving a bounty of eight dollars for the " head" of each grown wolf or panther killed, and the " pelts," bringing a good price for fur, stimulated these hunters greatly to do their best in trapping, hunting, and watching the dens of these dangerous animals. The bounty on the head of a wolf pup was three dollars. The bounty on the head of a panther whelp was four dollars. The county commissioners would cut the ears off these heads and give an order on the county treasurer for the bounty money. A panther's pelt sold for about four dollars. On one occasion a son of Bill Long, Jackson by name, boldly entered a panther's den and shot the animal by the light of his glowing eyes. In 1833, Jacob and Peter Vastbinder found a panther's den on Boone's Mountain, now Elk County. They killed one, the dogs killed two, and these hunters caught a cub, which they kept a year and then sold it to a showman. In 1819 the Legislature enacted a law giving twelve dollars for a full-grown panther's head and five dollars for the head of a cub.
" Nothing among the wild beasts strikes such terror to the heart of the settler as the cry of the wolf at a lonely spot at night. The pioneers knew very well that on a lonely forest trail at any hour of the day or night the other animals could be frightened by a slight bluff. No other animals go in packs. The wolf would not attack were he alone. It is when reinforced that he is a
119
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
terror, and then the howl of the wolf is the most blood-curdling of all the noises of the night in the woods. Where he is bent upon attacking a traveller he announces it by a howl from one quarter. The signal is answered from another direction. Another piercing howl comes from somewhere else. The cry of the wolf echoes and rolls from hill to hill in marvellous multiplication of sounds. A small pack of half a dozen wolves will make the mountain seem alive for miles. The cry is anything but reassuring to the timid soul who is shut in safely by the fire of his forest cabin. It is enough to chill the marrow of the man who for the first time hears it when he is in the unprotected open. The wolf is vicious and savage. Hunger gives him any courage that he possesses, and that sort of courage drives him to desperation. That is why the wolf is such a ferocious enemy when once he is aroused to attack man. Death by starvation is no more alluring to him than death by the hand of his possible prey."
The pioneer hunter would sometimes raise a wolf pup. This pup would be a dog in every sense of the word until about three years old, and then he would be a wolf in all his acts.
" One hundred years ago wolves were common in Northern and Western Pennsylvania. In the middle of the last century large packs of them roamed over a great portion of the State. To the farmer they were an unmitigated nuisance, preying on his sheep, and even waylaying belated travellers in the forest. After the State was pretty well settled these beasts disappeared very suddenly. Many people have wondered as to the cause of their quick extinc- tion. Rev. Joseph Doddridge in his 'Notes' ascribes it to hydrophobia, and he relates several instances where settlers who were bitten by wolves perished miserably from that terrible disease."
I have listened in my bed to the dismal howl of the wolf, and for the benefit of those who never heard a wolf's musical soirée I will state here that one wolf leads off in a long tenor, and then the whole pack joins in the chorus.
Wolves were so numerous that, in the memory of persons still living in Brookville (1898), it was unsafe or dangerous to permit a girl of ten or twelve years to go a mile in the country unaccompanied. In those days the Longs have shot as many as five and six without moving in their tracks, and with a single-barrelled, muzzle-loading rifle, too. The sure aim and steady and courageous hearts of noted hunters made it barely possible for the early settlers to live in these woods, and even then they had to exercise " eternal vigilance." In 1835, Bill Long, John and Jack Kahle captured eight wolves in a " den" near the present town of Sigel. Wolf-pelts sold for three dollars. Wild-cats were numerous; occasionally a cat is killed in the county yet, even within the borough limits.
One of the modes of Mike Long and other pioneer hunters on the Clarion River was to ride a horse with a cow-bell on through the woods over the deer- paths. The deer were used to cow-bells and would allow the horse to come
I20
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
in full view. When the deer were looking at the horse, the hunter usually shot one or two.
Every pioneer had one or more cow-bells; they were made of copper and
Pennsylvania bear
iron. They were not cast, but were cut, hammered, and riveted into shape, and were of different sizes.
The black bear was always common in Pennsylvania, and especially was this so in our wild portion of the State. He was a great road-maker and king of the beasts. The early settlers in the northwest killed every year in the
I2I
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
aggregate hundreds of these bears. Bear-skins were worth from three to five dollars apiece. Reuben Hickox, of Perry Township, Jefferson County, as late as 1822, killed over fifty bears in three months. Captain Hunt, a Muncy Indian, living in what is now Brookville, killed sixty-eight in one winter. In 1831, Mrs. McGhee, living in what is now Washington Township, heard her pigs squealing, and exclaimed, " The bears are at the hogs!" A hired man, Philip McCafferty, and herself each picked up an axe and drove the bears away. One pig had been killed. Every fall and winter bears are still killed in our forests.
Peter Vastbinder when a boy shot a big bear through the window of his father's house, and this, too, by moonlight. This bear had a scap of bees in his arms, and was walking away with them. The flesh of the bear was prized by the pioneer. He was fond of bear meat. Bears weighing four or five hundred pounds rendered a large amount of oil, which the pioneer housewife used in cooking.
Trapping and pens were resorted to by the pioneer hunters to catch the panther, the bear, the wolf, and other game.
The bear-pen was built in a triangular shape of heavy logs. It was in shape and build to work just like a wooden box rabbit-trap. The bear steel- trap weighed about twenty-five pounds. It had double springs and spikes sharpened in the jaws. A chain was also attached. This was used as a panther-trap, too. "The bear was always hard to trap. The cautious brute would never put his paw into visible danger, even when allured by the most tempting bait. If the animal was caught, it had to be accomplished by means of the most cunning stratagem. One successful method of catching this cautious beast was to conceal a strong trap in the ground covered with leaves or earth, and suspend a quarter of a sheep or deer from a tree above the hidden steel. The bait being just beyond the reach of the bear, would cause the animal to stand on his hind feet and try to get the meat. While thus rampant, the unsuspecting brute would sometimes step into the trap and throw the spring. The trap was not fastened to a stake or tree, but attached to a long chain, furnished with two or three grab-hooks, which would catch to brush and logs, and thus prevent the game from getting away."
An old settler informs me that in the fall of the year bears became very fat from the daily feasts they had on beechnuts and chestnuts, and the occa- sional raids they made on the old straw beehives and ripe cornfields. In pioneer times the bear committed considerable destruction to the corn. He would seat himself on his haunches in a corner of the field next to the woods, and then, collecting a sheaf of the cornstalks at a time, would there and then enjoy a sumptuous repast.
Wolves usually hunt in the night, so they, too, were trapped and penned. The wolf-pen was built of small round logs about eight or ten feet high and narrowed at the top. Into this pen the hunter threw his bait, and the wolf
I22
HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
could easily jump in, but he was unable to jump out. The wolf-trap was on the principle of the rat-trap, only larger, the jaws being a foot or two long. Wolves would welcome a domestic dog in their pack, but a dog that clung to man, their enemy, they would tear to pieces.
Glutton or sloth wolverines were very rare in the northwest. They were to be found in the most northern tier. The only county reported to have these animals in the northwest was Potter County. Joseph Nelson is reported to have caught one in a trap in 1858, and one is reported to have been killed by J. P. Nelson in 1863. Wolverines were found in Mercer County in 1846.
Trappers rated the fox the hardest animal to trap, the wolf next, and the otter third. To catch a fox they often made a bed of chaff and got him to lie in it or fool around it, the trap being set under the chaff. Or a trap was set at a place where several foxes seemed to stop for a certain purpose. Or a fox could be caught sometimes by putting a bait a little way out in the water, and then putting a pad of moss between the bait and the shore, with the trap hid under the moss. The fox, not liking to wet his feet, would step on the moss and be caught.
THE AMERICAN ELK-DEER AND DEER COMBATS-HUNTERS, PROFESSIONAL AND NON-PROFESSIONAL-STALKING AND BELLING DEER-OTHER ANIMALS, ETC.
The American elk is the largest of all the deer kind. Bill Long and other noted hunters killed elks in these woods seven feet high. The early hunters found their range to be from Elk Licks on Spring Creek, that empties into the Clarion River at what is now called "Hallton," up to and around Beech Bottom. In winter these heavy-footed animals always "yarded" themselves on the " Beech Bottom" for protection from their enemies,-the light-footed wolves. The elk's trot was heavy, clumsy, and swinging, and would break through an ordinary crust on the snow; but in the summer-time he would throw his great antlers back on his shoulders and trot through the thickets at a Nancy Hanks gait, even over fallen timber five feet high. One of his reasons for locating on the Clarion River was that he was personally a great bather and enjoyed spending his summers on the banks and the sultry days in bathing in that river. Bill Long presented a pair of enormous elk-horns, in 1838, to John Smith, of Brookville, who used them as a sign for the Jefferson Inn.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.