|
Chapter 9
Wild Animals
|
The American Panther and Tiger.-Panthers in the
Mountains. -One killed in Cairo.-A Panther rand Bear.-A Warm
Embrace.-Peter Osterhout, Esq. -A Bear, Panther, and Deer.-An
Indian's Luck.-A Panther treed.-One seen in
1865.-Wildeats.-Wolves.-Elk or Moose.-Snakes in the
Mountain.-Thorpe's Statement.-Swine cat them.-Black Snakes.-Hung as
Criminals.-Their Length.-Rattlesnakes.-A Texas Story.-Snakes in
Cairo.-A large Family.-Bears.-A Wolf-chase.-Wild Animals in Schoharie
County.-The Indian " Bear Catcher."-Warner and a
Bear.-Schaeffer and Schell.-Maria Teabout and a Panther.-Panther Meat.-Beavers.-Wildcats.-Dr.
Moulter.-Deer.-Six of them Shot with Arrows.
The cougar or American panther, or painter, as
this animal is often called, painter being a corruption of the word
"panther," belongs to the feline or cat species, and is
found from Patagonia, in South America, to the northern bounds of the
State of New York. Its color on the back is reddish, brown, with a
lighter hue about the neck and the lower part of the body. Their
whole length, including the tail, is commonly six feet or a little
more, and they are the same with the Puma or South American lion. The
jaguar, or American tiger, is somewhat larger and stronger than the
panther, and is found from Paraguay, in South America, to the Red
River in Texas. It has some seven stripes on each side, made up of a
row of open rings, and, with the panther is by furriers and by some
naturalists held to be of the same species with the leopard, while
others make them a distinct class.
Panthers were met with in the Catskill
Mountains and the country around from the time of its first
settlement, though there were never many of them. An aged neighbor of
mine told me, that, when young, he saw two panthers not fully grown
cross the road and meadow east of the house of Colonel Lawrence, and
leap through the grass until they reached a knoll south of the
meadow, where they jumped on the trunk of a fallen pine, and gave a
loud cry, which was answered by their mother, who was some distance
to the west, on the cliff above them. He afterwards saw the mother at
the first road turning to the left, above the house of Colonel
Lawrence, on the road up the mountain.
Mr. and Mrs. Jessie Taylor, aged eighty-seven,
worthy members of the Reformed Dutch Church in Kiskatom, relate that
sixty-five years ago, in 1802, soon after they were married, on
visiting her father, James Van Atten, or "Van Atta," as
some wrote it, about a mile east of where the village of Cairo now
is, near the ford of the Catskill Creek, they found that the night
before a panther had driven in her father's young cattle from the
woods, and, having climbed a white-oak tree near the house, was so
shot; that one of his fore legs was broken, when, coming to the
ground, he found a hiding-place among the rocks near by, where he was
watched all night, and was killed in the morning by a bullet in his
head, having been thus dosed with lead several times in different
parts of his body before he finally fell. He measured nine feet and
seven inches from his nose to the end of his tail, a huge monster of
his kind. His body was thick and large, and his legs of the size of a
man's arm. An aged man, living in the neighborhood at the time when
this panther was killed, told me that an Englishman who was present
was seriously injured by the panther.
Many years since, Mr. Wolven, a carpenter,
living in Kiskatom, while fishing in one of the lakes near the
Mountain House, saw a bear cross a log between the two lakes, and
quickly dig a hole in the soft ground near the water, placed himself
on his back in it, when, soon after, a panther that was following him
came, and rushing upon the bear, received from him a warm and sharp
embrace, in his powerful legs and paws, which caused him to cry out
loudly for quarter, and to retreat post haste from his ugly neighbor.
Had the bear been standing, the panther, by leaping on his back,
clinging there, and putting out his eyes with his claws, or by
digging into his vitals, or by his superior activity and strength,
might soon have killed him.
Facts somewhat similar to those just stated
were furnished me, with many others in this work, by my worthy and
venerable friend, Peter Osterhout, Esq., of Schoharie, a native of
Catskill, a retired merchant, a gentleman and Christian of the old
school, now nearly eighty years of age. In a long and valuable letter
to me, dated August 7, 1866, he thus writes: "I must give you an
adventure of a celebrated Indian, a great hunter, before the
Revolutionary War, living in the town of Catskill. I have heard the
story related by several aged persons who knew him and had no doubt
of his veracity. His name was Wancham; his statement was as follows:
While hunting in the Catskill Mountains, he came upon the carcass of
a deer, quite recently killed, as he supposed, by a panther or a
bear; so he hid himself behind a windfall near by, and had not been
there long when a large bear came up and began to make a meal out of
the deer. A few minutes after a large panther came also, and began to
tear the carcass of the deer. This did not suit bruin, who claimed
the deer as his spoil, and struck the panther , who jumped on the
other side of the deer, when the bear followed him up and tried to
hug him, but the panther soon" (having, doubtless, leaped on the
bear's back), "with his hind claws, ripped him open and killed
him. The Indian, thinking that the game was now in his favor, fired
and killed the panther; and thus he had a deer, a panther, and a
bear, all in a pile, by a single shot of his gun."
Frederick Layman relates that when, as a boy,
he was living with his uncle Sax, they were called out in the night
by the barking of the dogs, at a tree near the house ; supposing that
there was a raccoon on the tree, he climbed to near its top, where he
could see and hear a large animal directly above him. He told his
uncle that the animal was much larger than a coon; but being accused
of being afraid, and told to break off a limb and strike the animal,
while doing so a large panther leaped to the ground, to a distance of
more than thirty feet from the tree, and ran up the side of the
mountain, with the dogs after him.
In the spring of 1865, Mr. Daniel Layman, a
son-in-law of Frederick Sax, while looking for some young cattle in
the woods on the side of the mountain north of the tollgate on the
mountain road, saw a panther near them, who would, doubtless, soon
have provided himself with a supply of fresh meat, had he not been
thus disturbed. With the loud cry peculiar to these animals, he beat
a hasty retreat up the mountain.
The lynx, or common wildcat, is still met with
in the mountains and near them; and animals of this class are often
killed there.
Forty or fifty years since, wolves were as
thick in the woods on and near the mountains as gray rabbits now are;
their howling could be heard in all directions at night. Abraham Van
Vechten, Esq., whose ancestors settled in Catskill in 1681, says that
a moose, the elk of Europe, and musu of
the Indians, from which comes our word "moose'' was once killed
on his father's farm, one of the feet of which he saw. The male has
immense horns, and is sometimes seventeen hands high, and weighs
twelve hundred pounds.
Copperheads, with black snakes and
rattlesnakes, used to abound in the mountains ; but with the
exception of black snakes, which are not poisonous, are now rarely
met with. Thorpe, "the bear-hunter, "-though he has killed
but few bears,-the old man at the Mountain House, affirms that when
he first came to the mountains as a young man many years since, he
saw hundreds and hundreds of rattlesnakes, but that during his recent
residence of several years there he had not seen more than twenty,
most of which were dead, having been killed by visitors there. Those
who pick berries among the upper heights of the mountains have told
me of sometimes seeing a rattlesnake, though very rarely. Swine,
running in the woods, where they feed on acorns and other nuts,
greedily devour snakes, and are not injured by those which are
poisonous ; and hence they soon destroy most of these reptiles where
they run at large.
My pupils once had eleven black snakes hung as
criminals by the neck to a long, projecting stake, in a rail fence by
the roadside near the parsonage, which were killed in the cliff below
the house, some of them having been shot as they lay coiled up to
enjoy the pleasant heat of the sun. The largest of them were from
four to five feet long. A black snake eight feet long is said to have
been killed near the mountains some years since, and a gentleman in
Orange County told me of one that was killed near where he lived that
was twelve feet long. Rattlesnakes which I have seen have not been
more than from three to five feet in length. I have, however,
recently met with the following in a newspaper: "Large Snake.-A
rattlesnake was recently killed near Belleville, Texas, which was
fourteen feet long, six inches thick, and had forty-five rattles.
Three men, armed with fence rails, had a desperate combat with it."
About five miles north of the Kiskatom
parsonage, in Cairo, is a large rock on a sidehill, which I have
often seen, over which water flows after a rain, and from under which
there came, during a single warm season, more than one hundred black
snakes, which were killed by a family living near by, from whom I had
the facts stated above. Fourteen snakes were killed one day, twenty
another, twenty-two another, and smaller numbers other days. They
measured from two and a half to six and a half feet in length. The
old gentleman at the head of this family, at the age of eighty-two,
in the summer of 1865, one day loaded and mowed away six tons of hay
on a stack for one of his neighbors, between nine A.M. and two P.M.
He once kicked a wild bear on the nose, that was trying to bite a dog
; had killed three bears on the ground, and helped others kill two on
trees. Some of these bears weighed from three hundred and fifty to
nearly four hundred pounds. A wolf once followed him closely at night
for a mile or more through the woods, gnashing his teeth at him ;
when, thinking that he saw a club of peeled wood near him, he stooped
to pick it up, but found it to be water in a rut, which reflected the
light of the moon, so that he was defenseless still. Then the wolf
howled, and was answered by others not far off, which he took as a
loud hint for him to reach home as soon as possible, inasmuch as
while single wolves rarely attack a man unless they are quite hungry,
yet several of them together are often quite dangerous to meet with.
From Simms' "History of Schoharie" we
learn that bears, deer, panthers, and other wild animals abounded
there when the early German settlers came in 1711, and long after
that time. One of these settlers having shot and wounded a bear, it
turned upon, killed, and tore him to pieces. An Indian named Bellows
came from hunting, holding his bowels in their place with his bands,
having had his body torn open by a bear, which he killed after it had
thus injured him. An Indian called "the Bear Catcher," an
Indian living near Foxes' Creek, once treed a bear, and, having fired
upon it, brought it to the ground ; when, in a hand-to-hand fight, he
seized the bear's lower jaw so as to protect himself, and then drew
it so closely to him as for a time to confine his fore paws, until
having drawn one of them out he gave the Indian a fearful wound
across the breast; when, having called his son, he came, and placing
his gun in the bear's mouth, shot and killed him.
One Warner, living at Punchkill, went near
evening for his cows, when he met a bear with cubs, which pursued
him. Taking refuge behind a large tree, he kept out of reach of the
bear, until, having seized a heavy hemlock knot or limb, he killed
the bear with it. Near Foxes' Creek, John Shaeffer and George Schell
were hunting, and their dog having treed a bear, Shaeffer fired and
brought him to the ground, when, having seized the dog, he bugged him
so closely as to hurt him badly; when Shaeffer having grasped the
bear's paw with a view to relieve the dog, the bear quickly threw his
paw around Shaeffer's arm also, and held him fast, until, having
shouted to his companion, he came, and very carefully reaching out a
tomahawk to him, he quickly buried its blade in the bear's head, and
thus relieved both himself and his dog. We learn also from Simms that
one Maria Teabout, who was part Indian, was with several others on
Fireberg Hill, when hearing a cry like that of a child, she answered
it with a similar cry. Being told not to do so, as the cry was that
of a painter, or panther, she still continued to answer it, until,
the others having gone away, the panther came; when, before it saw
her, she hid herself in a hollow log, where it did not find her. Soon
a party well armed and on horseback came to look for traces of her or
her remains, presuming she had been torn to pieces; when, in answer
to their call, she crept forth from the log and joined them. They
then hung a blanket on a bush, so as to resemble a man ; and,
concealing themselves, an Indian who, was with them so imitated the
cry of the panther that he soon returned, and, springing at the
blanket, tore it to pieces. He was then shot and skinned, and the
Indians cut meat from the carcass and carried it home with them to
cook and eat. The last panther shot in that region was killed near
the house of Mr. John Enders, on Foxes' Creek.
Beaver were numerous when the Germans first
came to Schoharie; and at a place called Beaver Dam, on Foxes' Creek,
in what is now Berne, in Albany County, they had several strong dams.
Of wildcats, or the lynx, which are still often
met with in the region of the Catskill Mountains, it is said that one
Dr. Moulter, having found a strange animal among his geese in the
night, seized it by the hind legs and the back of its neck, and was
able to hold it fast until his sons came and killed it. It proved to
be a wildcat. If the animal was full grown, the doctor must have been
a powerful man to have been able thus to hold it.
Deer were for a long time numerous; and it is
said that in one of their runways or paths which they frequented, an
Indian who was lying in wait for deer shot six of them with arrows in
quick succession, as no noise was made by these winged messengers of
death to warn those which were coming of the fate of such as had gone
before. In order thus to kill deer, however, one must be quite near
them; and a strong bow, with a sure and steady aim, was required.
|