This excerpt, edited out of the final version of my new book Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion’s Soul through Science and Story, is a quick history of how the mountain lion was exterminated from the eastern U.S. due to attitudes brought by European settlers.
Europeans had long since removed their own top predators, and from the beginning of stepping foot on new soil, they carried with them an attitude of removing wolves, bears, and cats in the New World as well. With their arrival, a dark chapter began for the mountain lion, and all large predators, in North America.
As early as the late 1500s, barely a century after the Spanish stepped foot in the Americas, Jesuit priests in California were offering a bull for the killing of a cougar. The first recorded cougar bounty on the East Coast was in 1680 and by 1742 Massachusetts followed suit. In early America, these new inhabitants feared and loathed lions, wolves and bears. Stories were spun that cougars were malevolent, evil, even supernatural beings that killed wantonly. Europeans brought their pigs and cows into the New World under a silent compact that they would flourish. And indeed the domestic animals did thrive, in the marshlands, in the oyster beds of coastal New England, and in the newly cleared forests. Euro-Americans left behind a homeland where African lions had been exterminated centuries before, and wolf extermination began in earnest after the Black Death in the mid-1300s. By 1684 in Scotland, and 1770 in Ireland, wolves were gone, while the rest of European wolves quickly followed. Now the colonists were confronted with a wide new array of predators, and their stance was stanch that extermination without mercy was their God-given right.
Wolves, who traveled in packs, and howled across the countryside, were easily spotted by men who carried with them the folklore and prejudices from the old country. Because of this, they received the most visible and ongoing persecution. Cougars, on the other hand, with their secretive, surreptitious nature, received less attention in lore but were persecuted and eliminated none the less. A story from Jon Coleman’s Vicious illustrates not only the settlers relentless cruelty towards wolves, but also their attitude towards all predators, from the largest to smallest meso-predators such as raccoons and fishers. On the Maine coast in the 1660s, a group hunting for waterfowl along the beach happened upon a wolf. Their dogs, led by a large female mastiff, chased after the wolf up the coastline and pinned it down by the throat.
“The hunters bound the animal’s paws and carried him home swinging ‘like a calf upon a staff between two men.’ That night, they unleashed the predator inside their living room. The beast sank to the floor. No biting, no snarling, he just slouched there, staring at the door. The men tried to rile him up with the dogs, but the pack was listless and uninterested, too worn out to care following that afternoon’s long chase. Their evening’s entertainment ruined, the hunters took the wolf outside and crushed his skull with a log.”
Individuals in early America who took matters into their own hands, enjoyed weaving tales that celebrated their valor, and manhood, while also characterizing the animals they killed as vicious and aggressive to bolster their reputation. As more people arrived with their livestock, individual efforts were soon not enough. Circle or drive hunts soon emerged in eastern frontier towns. These drives killed many more animals in a shorter period of time with less effort. Some of these drives were duly recorded.
In 1753 citizens of three surrounding villages in Massachusetts combined forces to rid the forests of wolves and other predators. In 1810 in Vermont, a large group of men, women, and children used an ever enclosing circle to capture and kill six wolves. Local papers and fliers announced these drives, asking citizens to turn out with the hopes of killing sheep-eating predators. These early hunts laid the groundwork for the ritual of circle hunts throughout New England. The preferred method was a ringleader would send out an invitation to the men living in the surrounding areas. A description of one of these drives included over 400 men, advancing to the center “under the direction of the local militia officers. When the hunters could hear the shouts of their cohorts across the circle, their commanders ordered a halt….the best marksman among them, entered the ring and killed the wolves and foxes trapped there. The farmers scalped the wolves and marched to the town clerk’s office to collect the bounty.” Just as colonists came together for barn raising, and other tasks done as a community effort, the circle hunt became part of the communal tradition: first build the cabin, then clear the woods of predators
A vivid accounting of a circle hunt took place in the woods of Pennsylvania in 1760. Black Jack Schwartz organized two hundred townspeople into a drive so wide it practically encircled the entire county. Men armed with guns, fire, and noisemakers created a circle thirty miles in diameter, slowly driving all the game towards the center, then began shooting indiscriminately for several hours. A few terrified animals escaped the ring, yet the final tally revealed a slaughter of 41 Panthers, 109 wolves, 112 foxes, 114 mountain cats, 17 black bears, 111 buffalo, 98 deer, and more than 500 smaller animals. The animals were skinned, the bison tongues taken, and all the carcasses were heaped in a pile “as tall as the tallest trees” and burned. The stench was so dreadful that settlers vacated their homes for over three miles. Black Jack’s reputation with the Indians of the area, who only killed game as needed for food and clothing, was so unpopular after the drive that he was ambushed and killed while on a hunting trip. The last of these drives was held in 1849 in Pennsylvania.
On the Pacific coast, the Spanish tradition of roping grizzlies and pitting them against bulls for sport is well-documented. These bull-bear fights included betting and even after-church festivities in arenas built specifically for the sport. In California Grizzly Storer and Tevis describe a bear-panther fight near Big Sur that took place after California was admitted to the Union. The gold rush brought in hundreds of thousands of new settlers, and with the arrival of these new residents, grizzlies were being killed in greater and greater numbers. The Spanish bull-bear spectacle continued for a few years until the dearth of bears caused the sport to dwindle. The event in 1865 was described by a young Frank Post who witnessed the event when he was only 6 years, yet never forgot it.
“The lion, which seemed to have no fear, leaped onto the bear’s back and while clinging there and facing forward scratched the grizzly’s eyes and nose with its claws. The bear repeatedly rolled over onto the ground to rid himself of his adversary; but as soon as the bear was upright, the cat would leap onto his back again. This agility finally decided the struggle in favor of the lion.”
The old growth hardwood forests of the East were cleared so quickly that by 1800 residents of the Hudson Valley in New York worried about the scarcity of firewood. By the mid 1800s, from 50% to 90% of the eastern landscape had been cleared for agriculture. Game were so diminished that even by 1639 hunting seasons were closed. Between habitat and food loss, along with human persecution, cougars were effectively eliminated east of the Mississippi River by the mid- to late 1800s. The rugged, arid West and Southwest remained as the only suitable hiding places and cover for mountain lions.
Filed under: Cougars, Felidae, New ideas | Tagged: Bears, Cougars, mountain lions, Pumas, Wolves | 3 Comments »
Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces 