of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 259-260
A GREAT HUNTER. We think no story of hunters and hunting in Muscatine would be complete without including J. P. Walton's tale of James Davis, A Great Hunter and a Very Successful One. We are constrained to tell this story and to borrow some other items from Walton's Pioneer Papers. Although we have no positive evidence that any of the parties we mention as hunters of the '40s and 50s of the nineteenth century hunted in Illinois, beyond the belief that it would be perfectly natural for the very early settlers to cross the river when looking for game.
James Davis, according to Mr. Walton, was the first sheriff of Muscatine county. In 1839 and 1840 he resided at a beautiful little village or town called Geneva, located about three miles up the river from the Rock Island passenger station, on what until late years was known as the Colonel Hare farm. This town had five or six houses or cabins, a store, a postoffice and a steamboat landing and rivaled Bloomington in importance. Not a vestige or sign of the town remains today. Mr. Walton says Davis kept the postoffice well supplied with game. We recollect seeing him bring in two bucks with their horns locked so tightly that they were never separated. The larger one had killed the smaller and he in turn fell a prey to Davis' rifle.
As evidence of the plentifulness of game in the '40s, read the following taken from the Iowa Territorial Gazette and Advertiser of January 1, 1842: "Game has never been so abundant in our markets as during the present winter. Quails--by epicures accounted one of the rarest delicacies--from the number brought in have got to be a mere drug, selling at twenty-five and thirty-seven and a half cents the dozen ready for cooking. So, too, the supply of venison and turkeys is greater than usual and prices consequently low. We have noticed but few grouse or prairie fowls in the streets, but this probably is owing to the lowness of the prices paid."
In the newly settled town of Bloomington, later Muscatine, in the '40s and '50s money was a scarce article and the hunters used the skins of the various animals which fell to their marksmanship as a medium of exchange. Old timers tell us when an early settler paid the merchant for a small purchase with a coon skin, it was a common sight to see a rabbit or a muskrat given back in exchange. Mr. Walton mentioned an advertisement in the Bloomington Herald of October 26, 1840, in which John Zeigler set forth the merits of his large stock of general merchandise and winds up by saying "all of which will be sold for cash, or exchanged for dry hides, deer skins, etc."
Among other hunters of this period the best records all mention the Warfields: Charles A., Major A. 0. and their cousin, David R. J. P. Walton says: "David R. Warfield was a man of horses, dogs and guns, kept batch on the classic banks of Mad creek with Benjamin Mathews as master of ceremonies, and enjoyed frontier life hugely. This Benjamin Mathews was our old friend 'Uncle Ben,' colored. We had a high regard for him in our youth."
Andrew J. Fimple was also recorded as a hunter of wild geese, turkeys and ducks in the '40s and '50s. Mr. Fimple was a tailor by trade and one of the first to keep a shop in Muscatine.
During the twenty years after the first settlements upon the Mississippi river in this locality, it should be borne in mind the accoutrements of the hunter were rather crude. The flintlock gun was in use and no shot was on the market. The hunter purchased his lead in bars and with the aid of a hand mold manufactured his own leaden missiles. In the latter part of these years and in the early '60s gunsmiths were kept busy changing the flintlock guns, placing tubes in them and attaching the new mechanical arrangement for exploding the percussion cap.
An advertisement in the Iowa Territorial Gazette and Advertiser of May 15, 1841, under caption of gunsmithing and lock making, says: "Percussion powder, flints, gun worms, rifle powder, lead and almost every article usually kept in such establishments, kept constantly on hand. L. W. Babbitt."
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