USA > Pennsylvania > A pioneer outline history of northwestern Pennsylvania > Part 16
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The wild carnivorous animals are found in all parts of the world, except Australia, the Dingo dog being imported there.
John Long and William started out one morning on Sandy Lick to have a bear-hunt, taking with them nine dogs. William had been sent out the day before with two dogs, and had a skirmish with a bear on Sandy Lick, near where Fuller's Station now stands. The two brothers went to this point and found the track, and chased the bear across the creek at Rocky Bend, the bear making for a windfall; but the dogs stopped him before he reached the windfall and commenced the fight. They soon heard some of the dogs giving death-yells. They both hurried to the scene of conflict, and the sight they beheld was three favorite dogs stretched out dead and the balance fight- ing. William ran in and placed the muzzle of his gun against bruin's breast and fired. The bear then backed up to the root of a large hemlock, sitting upright and grabbing for dogs. John and William then fired, and both balls entered bruin's head, not more than an inch apart. In this mêlée three dogs were killed and the other six badly wounded. When William was still a boy he went up the North Fork and killed five deer in one day. On his way home about dark he noticed a pole sticking in the hollow of a tree, and carelessly gave this pole a jerk, when he heard a noise in the hole. The moon being up, he saw a bear emerge from this tree some distance up. Young Long shot and killed it before it reached the earth. In that same fall, William killed in one day, on Mill Creek, nine deer, the largest number he ever killed in that space of time. At that time he kept nothing but the pelts, and carried them home on his back. Panthers often came around Louis Long's home at night, screaming and yelling. So one morning, after three had been prowling around the house all night, William induced his brother John to join him in a hunt for them. There was snow on the ground, and they took three dogs with them. The dogs soon found the " tracks." Keeping the dogs back, they soon found three deer killed by the brutes, and then they let the dogs go. The dogs soon caught these three panthers feasting on a fourth deer and treed two of the panthers. John shot one and Billy the other. The third escaped. The hunters then camped for the night, dining on deer- and panther-meat roasted, and each concluded the panther-meat was the sweetest and the best.
In the morning they pursued the third panther, treed it, and killed it. These were the first panthers the Long boys ever killed. This stimulated young William, so he took one of the Vastbinder boys and started out again. taking two dogs. They soon found a panther, the dogs attacking it. Young
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Vastbinder fired, but missed. The panther sprang for Long, but the dogs caught him by the hams and that saved young Long. The panther broke loose from the dogs and ran up on a high root. Long fired and broke the brute's back. The dogs then rushed in, but the panther whipped them off. Then Long, to save the dogs, ran in and tomahawked the creature. Long was now about eighteen years of age. At another time a panther sprang from a high tree for Long. Long fired and killed the panther before it reached him,
Long fires at a panther
but the animal striking Long on the shoulder the weight felled him to the earth.
In 1815 six brothers of Cornplanter's tribe of Indians erected wigwams in the Beaver Meadows, where Du Bois now stands.
In 1826 Ludwig Long moved to Ohio, and young Bill went with the family. He remained there about twenty months; but finding little game, concluded to return to the mountain-hills of Jefferson County, then the para- dise of hunters. In 1828, William Long married Mrs. Nancy Bartlett, for- merly Miss Nancy Mason, and commenced married life in a log cabin on the North Fork, three miles from where Brookville now is, and on what is now the Albert Horn farm, formerly the Gaup place. About this time, game being plenty, and the scalps, skins, and saddles being hard to carry in, Bill Long in- duced a colored man named Charles Southerland to build a cabin near him on
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what is now known as the Jacob Hoffman farm. Long was to provide for Charlie's family. The cabin was built, and Southerland served Long for about five years. Charles never carried a gun. I remember both these characters well in my childhood, and doctored Long and his wife in my early practice and as late as 1862. In 1830, taking Charlie, Long started up the North Fork for bears; it was on Sunday. After Long killed the first bear, he called Charlie to come and bring the dogs. When Charlie reached him he yelled out, " Good God, massa, hab you seed one?" They continued the hunt that day, and before dark had killed seven bears. Charlie had never seen any bears killed before, but after this day was crazy to be on a hunt, for, he said, " if dem little niggers of mine hab plenty of bear-grease and venison, they will fatten well enough." This fall Long killed sixty deer and twenty-five bears, all on the North Fork, and the bears were all killed near and around where Rich- ardsville now is. This locality was a natural home for wild animals,-
" With its woodland dale and dell, Rippling brooks and hill-side springs."
" A life in the forest deep, Where the winds their revels keep; Like an eagle in groves of pine, Long hunted with his mate."
The day after Long killed the seven bears, he took Charlie Southerland, and travelled over the same ground that he had been over the day before. He heard nothing, however, during the day but the sigh of the breeze or the speech of the brook until near evening, when, within about a mile of home, he saw a large buck coming down the hill. He fired and wounded the buck, and then motioned Charlie to come up to him while he was loading. Charlie came with a large pine-log on his back. Long asked him what he was doing with that log. Southerland replied he wanted it for dry wood. Long told him to throw the wood away, and made him carry the buck home for food. Long then yoked his two dogs up and told Charlie to lead them, but soon discovering bear signs, told Charlie to let the dogs go. The dogs took the trail, and found two bears heading for the laurel on the head of the North Fork. Long knew the route they would take, and beat them to the laurel path. Soon Long heard them coming, the dogs fighting the bears every time the bears would cross a log, catching them from behind. The bears would then turn around and fight the dogs until they could get over the log. When the bears came within about thirty yards of Long, he shot one through the head and killed him. At this time Long only took the pelts, which he always carried home, the meat being of no account. This same year Long took Charlie with him to get some venison by watching a lick, and he took Charlie up a tree with him. In a short time a very large bear came into the
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lick. Long shot it while he and Charlie were up the tree. Much to Long's amusement, Charlie was so scared that he fell from the tree to the ground, landing on his back with his face up. He was, however, unhurt, and able to carry home to his cabin the pelt and bear oil. The next morning they saw a bear, and Long fired, hitting him in the lungs. This same fall, on the head of the North Fork, Long saw something black in the brush, which, on closer inspection, proved to be a large she bear. On looking up, he saw three good- sized cubs. Long climbed up, and brought the whole three of them down, one at a time. He then handed them to Charlie, who tied their legs. Long put them in his knapsack and carried them home.
Knapsacks were made out of bed-ticking or canvas, with shoulder-strap. One of these young bears Long sold to Adam George, a butcher in Brookville. Even at this late day Long only took the skins and what meat he wanted for his own use. This fall Long was not feeling well, and had to keep out of the wet. He therefore made Charlie carry him across the streams. He also made Charlie carry a wolf-skin for him to sit on at night, when he was watch- ing a lick. At another time Charlie and Long went out on a hunt near the head of the North Fork. In lonely solitude the dog started a bear, and Long could not shoot it for fear of hitting the dog, so he ran up and made a stroke at the bear's head with a tomahawk, wounding it but slightly. The bear jumped for Long, and the dog came to the rescue of his master by catching " the tip of the bear's tail end," and, with the valor and fidelity of a true knight, held it firmly, until Long, who had left his gun a short distance, ran for it. Charlie thought Long was running from the bear, and took to his heels as if the " Old Harry" was after him. Long tried to stop him, but Charlie only looked back, and at this moment his foot caught under a root, throwing him about thirty feet down a hill. Charlie landed on a rock hard enough to have burst a shingle-bolt. Long, seeing this, ran to the bear with his gun and shot him. He then hurried down the hill to see what had become of Charlie, calling to him. Charlie came out from under a bunch of laurel, saying, " God Almighty, Massa Long, I am falled from heben to hell! Are you still living? I tot that ar bar had done gon for you when I seed him come for you with his mouth open. Bless de good Lord you still live, or this nigger would never git out of dese woods!" That night Charlie and Long lay out in the woods. The wolves came up quite close and commenced to howl. Long saw there was a chance for a little fun, so he commenced to howl like a wolf. Charlie became nervous. " When lo! he hears on all sides, from innumerable tongues, a universal howl, and in his fright" said there must be five thousand wolves. Long said he thought there was, and told Charlie that, if the wolves came after them, he must climb a tree. In a few minutes Long made a jump into the woods, yelling, " The wolves are coming," and Charlie bounded like a deer into the woods, too. The night was dark and dreary; but deep in the forest Charlie made out to find and climb a majestic
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oak. Long, therefore, had to look Charlie up, and when he got near to our colored brother, he heard him soliloquizing thus: " Charles, you have to stick tight, for if this holt breaks you are a gone nigger." Long then stepped up to the tree and told Charlie the danger was over; but coming down the tree was harder than going up, for Charlie fell to the earth like a thunder-bolt and doubled up like a jack-knife.
BILL LONG AND HIS ATTENDANT, "BLACK CHARLIE"
In 1833, on his way home one day, Long saw a bear at the foot of a large tree. He came up close and tried to get a shot at its head, but the bear kept moving about so that he dared not fire. After trying for some time, he knew
2
Common brown bear
from the action of the bear that there were young ones near, so he bawled like a cub, when the old bear came on the run for him, with her mouth open. Long waited until she came up close, when he rammed the muzzle of the gun in her open mouth and pulled the trigger of the gun with the thumb of his left hand, the load knocking her teeth out and breaking her jaw. She then went back to the tree and commenced walking around in a circle. As soon as Long reloaded the gun he bawled again, and the bear this time came within sixteen feet of him and sat up straight, wiping her mouth with her paws. He then took aim at the stalking place and killed her. Going to the tree she had been
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walking around and looking up, he saw two cubs. At the sight of Long these cubs commenced to crawl down; one dropped to the ground and ran off. Long fired at the other, breaking its back. This cub then fell to the ground, and Long tomahawked it. Knowing the other cub would not go far away, he reloaded the gun, and espied the cub under a log close by. Taking aim at its head he fired, and the cub fell dead. A bear weighing four hundred pounds would render fifteen gallons of oil.
This same year, on the head of the North Fork, " where rippling waters still flow," Long espied a cub bear on a tree-top. He told his attendant, " Black Charlie," that there was an old bear near, or soon would be, and if
Bear and cubs
the old one did not soon come back he wanted Charlie to make the cub bawl. After waiting for some time for the old bear to come, Long impatiently climbed the tree, caught the cub and gave it to Charlie, telling him to take it by the hind legs and hold it up and shake it, which would make it bawl. After some time the cub was made to bawl. The bear, hearing this, came running with her mouth open. Charlie threw the cub to its mother, but the bear ran by the cub and stopped, looking first at Long and then at the cub. Long fired at her, hitting her in the breast. She then turned and ran toward the cub. After loading again he shot her through the lungs, when she started and ran some
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distance, and then came back to the cub, which sat still. After firing the second shot Long heard Charlie yell, " What tidings?" Long answered him, " Good." Charlie started for the rear, saying, Long " didn't get dat nigger back dar again till dat brute am killed." As she came up Long shot her in the head, killing her. He then got the cub and took it home alive.
At one time Long took thirteen wolf scalps and five panther scalps to Indiana for the bounty.
Once in this same year, when Long was up on the North Fork, he shot a deer, and it fell apparently dead; but when he went to cut its throat it jumped to its feet and made for him, and threw him on the ground, with a horn on each side of his breast. The stone and gravel stopped the horns from going into the ground to any great depth. Long then called for Charlie and the dogs, but they were slow in coming to his aid. Before Charlie got to him Long had let go of a horn with one hand and had secured his knife, and made a stroke at the neck of the deer, plunging the knife in the throat, and again dexterously clinched the loose horn. The blood came down on him until he was covered and perfectly wet. When the deer commenced to rise Long still held on to both horns until the deer raised him to his feet. The deer then gave a spring, and fell dead. By this time Charlie and the dogs came up, and the negro was crying. Long was angry, and said to Charlie, "You black son of a b -- , where have you been?" "Oh, massa, am you killed?" "No, damn you ; where have you been ?" "Oh, just came as soon as I could. Will I let the dogs go?" Long said, " No, the deer is dead."
Charlie's domestic life was not all peace, as the following newspaper advertisement will explain :
" CAUTION
" Whereas my wife Susey did on the 26th day of March last leave my bed and board, and took with her two of my sons and some property, having no other provocation than 'that I would not consent to my son marrying a white girl, and bring her home to live with us.' Therefore I hereby caution all persons against harboring or trusting her on my account, as I will pay no debts of her contracting.
" If she will come home I promise to do all in my power to make her comfortable, and give her an equal share of all my property.
" CHARLES SOUTHERLAND.
" April 7, 1847."
In a copy of the Jeffersonian printed in 1852, I find the following :
" In this day's paper we record the death of Charles Sutherland (colored). who was one of the oldest inhabitants of this county. Sutherland had arrived at the advanced age of nearly one hundred years. He came to what is now Jefferson County upward of forty years ago, when the ground upon which Brookville now stands was but a howling wilderness. Many there are in this
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borough who will miss the familiar and friendly visits of ' old Charley,' who, with hat in hand, and his venerable head uncovered, asked alms at their hands. No more will they hear from him a description of the 'Father of his Coun- try,' when he, Charley, held his horse at the laying of the corner-stone of the Capitol at Washington City. His breath is hushed, his lips are sealed, and his body is wrapped in the cold habiliments of the grave. Requiescat in pace."
When this wilderness commenced to settle up, Long visited Broken Straw Creek, in Warren County, on the head of the Allegheny River, to see a noted hunter by the name of Cotton, and to learn from him his method of hunting young wolves. He learned much from this man Cotton, and afterwards secured many young wolves by the instruction given him by Cotton. In the winter of 1835 Mike and Bill Long went to Boone's Mountain to hunt. This mountain was a barren region in those days, that always looked in winter-time like
" Rivers of ice and a sea of snow, A wilderness frigid and white."
During the season Bill killed one hundred and five deer and Mike one hundred and four, and together they killed four bears. At this time there was some local demand in Brookville and other towns for venison, and in this year the Longs sent loads of venison to Harrisburg, making a trip to the capital in seven or eight days. In 1839, Long moved into Clearfield County, and his history in Jefferson County was closed.
Number of animals killed by Long in his life-time: bears, 400; deer (in 1835 one white one), 3500; panthers, 50; wolves, 2000; elks, 125; foxes, 400; wild-cats, 200; catamounts, 500; otters, 75.
In 1824 Bill Long had a thrilling adventure with a huge panther in what is now Warsaw Township. He, in a hand-to-hand encounter, killed the animal near where Bootjack, Jefferson County, now stands.
Long used to catch fawns, mark their ears, turn them loose, and kill them when full-grown deer. Elks were easily domesticated, and sold as follows,- viz .: for a living male elk one year old, $50; two years old, $75; three years old, $100; and for a fawn three months old, $25. In 1835 Long had five wolf-dens that he visited annually for pups, about the Ist of May.
In 1834 Bill Long, his brother Mike, and Ami Sibley started on a hunt for elk near where Portland now is. At the mouth of Bear Creek these three hunters came across a drove of about forty elks. Bill Long fired into the herd and broke the leg of one. This wounded elk began to squeal, and then the herd commenced to run in a circle around the injured one. Sibley's gun had the wiping-stick fastened in it, and he could not use it. Bill and Mike then loaded and fired into the drove as rapidly as they could, the elks con- tinuing to make the circle, until each had fired about twenty-five shots, when the drove became frightened and ran away. On examination, the hunters
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found eight large elks killed. They then made a raft, ran the load down to where Raught's mill is now, and hauled the meat, pelts, and horns to Brook- ville. Portland and Bear Creek are now in Elk County.
In 1836 Bill Long took Henry Dull and started on a hunt for a young elk. On the third day Long saw a doe elk and fawn. He shot the mother, and his dog caught the fawn and held it without hurting it. Long removed the udder from the mother, carrying it with the " teats" uppermost, and giving the fawn milk from it until they reached Ridgway, where a jug of milk was secured, and by means of an artificial " teat" the fawn was nourished until Long reached his North Fork home. Dull led the little creature by a rope around its neck. Mrs. Long raised this elk with her cows, feeding it every milking-time, and when the fawn grew to be some size he would drive the cows home every evening for his supper of milk. When this elk was full grown, Long and Dull led him to Buffalo, New York, via the pike westward to the Allegheny River, and up through Warren, and sold the animal for two hundred dollars,-one hundred dollars in cash and a note for the other hundred, that was never paid.
In the fall of 1836 Long took Henry Dull with him to hunt wolves. The second evening Long found an old wolf with six half-grown pups. He shot two and the rest ran away. Long and Dull then climbed a hemlock, and Long began his wolf howl. On hearing the howl, two pups and the old wolf came back. Long then shot the mother, and afterwards got all the pups. Dull became so frightened that he fell head first, gun and all, through the brush, striking the ground with his head, producing unconsciousness and breaking his shoulder. "Thanks to the human heart, by which we live," for Long nursed Dull at his home on the North Fork for three months. Scalps then brought twelve dollars apiece. In that same year Fred. Hetrick and Bill killed an elk at the mouth of Little Toby which weighed six hundred pounds.
In the winter of 1834 William Dixon, Mike and Bill Long, with dogs, went out to "rope" or catch a live elk. They soon started a drove on the North Fork, and the dogs chased the drove over to the Little Toby, a short distance up from the mouth. The dogs separated one buck from the drove, and this elk, to protect himself from the dogs, took refuge on a ledge of rocks. Bill Long, while Mike and Dixon and the dogs attracted the attention of the elk from below, scrambled in some way to the top of the rocks and threw a rope over the elk's horns, and then cabled the elk to a small tree. This in- furiated the elk, so that he jumped out over the rocks and fell on his side. Mike and Dixon now had the first rope. Bill Long then rushed on the fallen elk and threw another rope in a slip-noose around the elk's neck, and fast- ened this rope as a guy to a tree. Each rope was then fastened in an oppo- site direction to a tree, and after the buck was choked into submission, his feet were tied, and the elk was dragged by these three men on the creek ice to where Brockwayville now is. Here they secured a yoke of oxen and
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sled from Ami Sibley, a mighty hunter. A small tree was then cut, the main stem being left about five feet long and the two forks about three feet in length. Each prong of the tree was fastened to a horn of the buck, and the main stem permitted to hang down in front over the buck's nose, to which it was fastened with a rope. A rope was then tied around the neck and antlers, and the loose end tied around the hind bench of the sled; this drove the elk close up to the hind part of the sled. The ropes around the feet of the elk were then cut, and the buck lit on his feet. After the animal had made many desperate efforts and plunges, he quieted down, and no trouble was expe- rienced until within a few miles of Brookville, when, meeting an acquaint- ance, Dixon became so much excited over the success in capturing a live elk, that he ran up and hit the elk on the back, exclaiming, " See, we have done it!" and this so scared the elk that he made a desperate jump, upsetting the sled into a ditch over a log. The oxen then took fright, and in the general mêlée the elk had a shoulder knocked out of place and the capture was a failure.
There grew in abundance in those days a tree called moose or leather- wood. The pioneers used the bark for ropes, which were very strong.
ELK AND VENISON JERK
This was " venison flesh cut off in a sheet or web about half an inch thick and spread on the tops of pegs driven into the ground, whilst under- neath a fire was kindled, fed with chips of sassafras and other odorous woods, that gradually dried it." The web would be removed and replaced until the jerk was thoroughly dried. The old hunter used to carry a little jerk always with him to eat with his bread. This jerk was a delicious morsel. Bill Long gave me many a " cut." I think I can taste it now. Mike and Bill Long would bring it to Brookville and retail it to the people at five cents a cut.
AN INCIDENT ON THE PIKE
In the spring of 1820, when the pike was being constructed, there was an early settler by the name of George Eckler living near Port Barnett. This man Eckler liked a spree, and the Irish that worked on the pike were not averse to " a wee drop at ony time." A jug or two of Long's " Mountain Dew" whiskey, fresh from the still, was secured, and a jolly " Donnybrook Fair" time was had one night in the woods. Eckler came in for the worst of it, for his eyes were blackened and he was battered up generally. On sober reflection he concluded to swear out a warrant before Thomas Lucas, Esq., for the " Paddies of the pike." The warrant was placed in the hands of the constable, John Dixon, Sr. There were about twenty-five in this gang of Paddies, and Constable Dixon summoned a posse of eight to assist in the arrest. This posse consisted of the young Dixons, Longs, and Mcculloughs, and when this solid column of foresters reached the Irish on the pike, one of the Paddies told the constable to " go home and attend to his own business."
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He then commanded the pike battalion to remove the handles from their picks and charge on the posse. This they did, to the complete rout of the natives, chasing them all in confusion like a herd of deer through and across Mill Creek. Young Bill Long was with this posse, and he ran home, too, but only to arm himself, not with a shillelah, but with his flint-lock, tomahawk, and knife. Thus armed and single-handed he renewed the conflict, keeping in the woods and above the Irish, and sending balls so close to their heads that the whiz could be heard, until he drove the whole pack, with their carts, etc., from above Port Barnett to where Brookville now stands.
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