CHAPTER IV -- FAUNA AND FLORAY
The fauna of western Iowa, including Shelby county, based upon what would seem a fair conclusion from all data beginning about 1800, would
undoubtedly include the buffalo, elk, deer, black bear, beaver, otter, occasionally an ermine, raccoon, mink, muskrat, weasel, badger, large striped skunk, small striped skunk ("civet cat"), swift (a species of fox), timber or gray wolf, black wolf, prairie wolf, lynx, wildcat (also called "bobcat" by the early pioneers), probably an occasional panther, the opossum, gray squirrel, striped squirrel, chipmunk, fox or timber squirrel, pocket gopher, gray rabbit, or "cottontail," jack rabbit, or prairie hare, mud turtle, clam, the small catfish, known as bullhead, and the larger species known as channel catfish, the lizard or newt, the rattle-snake, bull snake, blue racer, black water-snake, dark in color, found around ponds, and sometimes attaining the length of five feet; the garter snake, viper, etc., the mallard, teal, and other wild ducks, geese, an occasional swan, prairie chicken, quail, wild turkey, etc.
In a diary kept by the Lewis and Clark expedition, passing up the Missouri river less than fifty miles from Shelby county, in 1804, under date of July 31 of that year, it is recorded that deer, turkeys, geese, beavers and catfish were abundant, and that a "buffalo fish" was seen. One beaver was caught alive on this date. The diarist continues: "One of our men brought in an animal called by the Pawnees 'cho-cartoosh,' by the French, 'blaireu,' or badger." It also appears that the members of the expedition saw what they called grouse. Another animal that was prevalent and active enough to receive special mention was the mosquito, which was said to "annoy us very much." The expedition also mentions that the Indians were hunting elk and buffalo, possibly, for all we know, over the territory now known as Shelby county.
In a diary kept by John James Audubon, the famous ornithologist, then navigating the Missouri on a scientific expedition chronicled, under date of May 10, 1843, his arrival at Fort Croghan (later Council Bluffs), where the United States government had stationed a garrison of soldiers to protect the Pottawattamie Indians from the Sioux. This fort was established as a temporary post on May 31, 1842, midway between the outlets of the Boyer and the Mosquito rivers, near the southwest corner of the present city of Council Bluffs. The entry in the diary of Audubon continues: "Fort Croghan was named after an old friend of that name, with whom I hunted raccoons on his father's plantation in Kentucky, thirty-five years before. His father and mine were well acquainted, and fought together with the great Generals Washington and Lafayette in the Revolutionary War against 'Merrie England.' The parade ground here had been four feet under water in the late freshet." Mr. Audubon further records the fact that, owing to the scarcity of provisions, the officers had the year before (1842) sent off twenty dragoons and twenty Indians on a buffalo hunt; and that in this hunt, within eighty miles of the fort, the hunting party hud killed fifty-one buffaloes, one hundred and four deer and eleven elks. If this hunt covered the sector of a circle with a radius of eighty miles or even very much less, sweeping from the east of the fort in a northwesterly direction to the Missouri river, it would have covered all of Shelby county and it is not outside of the range of possibility that some of this game was pursued and killed along the branches of the Nishnabotna or Mosquito in Shelby county, or on her prairie ridges.
So far as the author has been able to discover by interviews with several Shelby county settlers of the fifties, none of the white settlers of this county ever saw or hunted the buffalo here. There is no doubt, however, that the buffalo roamed through the timber and over the prairies of this county at some period prior to the coming of the white man to make his home in Shelby county, since remains of the animal have been found in a number of the different parts of the county. C. E Dudley of Irwin, Iowa, a local naturalist of much ability, has a very well preserved skull of the buffalo, which was found one and a half miles north of Irwin, in 1911 in a ditch about fourteen feet deep along Elk run. While excavating for a pond in a slough, which years before had been very marshy. J. W. White, of Jackson township, found buffalo horns in a bed of peat three or four feet below the surface, undoubtedly the remains of some unfortunate which mired and lost its life in the bog.
It is interesting, in this connection, to note that the records of an excellent observer in Sac county, but one county north of Shelby, show that the buffaloes were present there, only as stragglers, however, in 1854 when the early settlers came to Sac county. He also reports that the bones of the buffalo are often found there in wet or swampy places where drainage ditches are constructed, in the beds of lakes, and sometimes plowed up prairies. This observer states that a three-year-old buffalo was killed in Storm Lake, Iowa, in January, 1858, and that three others were killed there about the same time; that two were killed near Jefferson in i860, and that a buffalo was seen in 1863 about a mile and a half south and three miles west of Sac City; that five were killed near Lake City in Calhoun county in 1862.
By the way, one of the pioneers of Shelby township, E. A. Collins, attracted a good deal of attention by placing on his thousand-acre ranch in Shelby township, two buffaloes and an elk in 1874. The Shelby County Record of October 1, 1874, refers to the matter thus:
"Colonel Collins, of Shelby township, has received two yearling buffaloes and one elk. The elk he keeps in an inclosure near the house, but the buffaloes are allowed to range in his herd of two hundred cattle. They always remain in the center of the herd, and seem perfectly at home. The first day they were put with the cattle, an old bull stalked proudly up to the little bull buffalo and was going to demolish him. But the little fellow seemed to like it and, lowering his head, made a rush for the gentleman cow. Stopping to get one glance, he turned and fled, thoroughly frightened and has not since attempted any familiarity with the humpbacked strangers."
Settlers establishing themselves on the prairies in the seventies and earlier in Shelby county, found many elk horns. After the hard winter of 1856 very few elk were seen in Shelby county. Elsewhere in this work is told the story of a hunt in 1856 participated in by J. B. McConnell, J. B. Stutsman and others from Bowman's Grove, in which they killed an elk in Correction Grove, in what is now Clay township. The largest herd of elk of which there is any record in the county, estimated at twenty-five to fifty, was seen and slaughtered on the ridge between Bowman's Grove and Merrill's Grove in the winter of 1856. The snows of 1856 were especially deep, crusted with a thin ice, and it is said that the elk were forced south by the severe winter and coming into Shelby county, broke through the snow, which that winter was three feet deep on the level, thus falling an easy prey to hunters, who, it is said, slaughtered them without mercy.
So far as the writer has been able to learn, the last elk seen in Shelby county were on the Thomas Darling farm in 1867, about three miles southeast of Irwin. Two were seen at this time. Deer were seen in Shelby county in the late seventies, but were probably not found after that time until the famous herd, kept by W. B. Cuppy, a Cuppy's Grove pioneer, at Avoca, Iowa, escaped from their inclosures and established themselves in a half-wild state in the native timber, brush and corn fields up and down the 'Botna valley between Harlan and Avoca, also north and south of these points. Competent observers have seen one hundred and fifty of these in one herd, and estimated the total number at four hundred to five hundred head. Philip Armentrout, now of Jefferson township, speaks of having, on horseback, in 1874, pursued four deer from the south part of Jackson township up to a point near where John C. Peterson once lived about a mile and a half south of the Center school house in Jackson township. W. D. Fritz, son of John Fritz, a well-known pioneer, speaks of having seen a small drove of deer on the ridge where Nick Hess lived in Jackson township, about a quarter of a mile south of the Copenhagen school house, in the year 1873 or 1874.
A Harlan newspaper announced that on March 24, 1877, there would be a general wolf hunt on the Mosquito in Cass township, and also that a Polk township man, during the winter of 1876 and 1877, had killed eleven deer and trapped two hundred muskrats and sixty mink during the same winter. The Shelby County Record, of January 13, 1873, contains this item:
"Deer are said to be very numerous in the northern part of the county and numbers are being killed. It is believed they have been driven from the north by the inclement weather. How we would extol the manifold virtues of someone if something should happen." A Harlan paper states that in January, 1876, a fine buck, weighing one hundred and twenty-five pounds dressed, was killed in Union township.
At one time John Burcham pursued up what was then a slough, now included in the northwest part of Harlan, a deer which ran into some wild resin weeds, immediately back of the court house, which stood where Hotel Harlan, formerly the City Hotel, now stands. Mr. Burcham shot the deer from the back door of the court house, which brought Milo Adams, then county treasurer, running to the door in great surprise, and with rather harsh words on his lips. He, however, forgave Mr. Burcham, when he saw the dead game.
The writer has not found any persons who ever saw the black bear in Shelby county, but the existence of this animal at Council Bluffs, about 1840, or a year or two preceding that date, is affirmed by Father DeSmet in his journal kept at the Catholic mission, which later became Council Bluffs. He says: "It is not uncommon to meet bears in our neighborhood, but this animal will seldom attack a man first, though he will defend himself when wounded. Dated July 20, 1838--Nation of the Potawatomies at Council Bluffs." It also appears from the diary kept by an officer in the United States garrison stationed at Fort Des Moines, that a black bear was covered on the prairies between Des Moines and what is now Sioux City and was pursued hy a number of soldiers, about 1835. An observer in Sac county states that a black bear in 1855 was pursued by three mounted hunters from south of Wall lake to the Boyer river, but escaped. The raccoon seems always to have been in the native timber of Shelby county and the beaver was common in the fifties in Shelby county, and, indeed, much later.
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Beavers built dams on Elk creek one and one-half miles north of Irwin and cut all the large willows down along the creek in 1888. Nick Conlin caught about fifteen that year, among them a very large one, weighing fifty-five pounds. Mr. Dudley says that he himself, saw thirteen at one time by moonlight. Prior to this date, there was a colony of beavers on the Nishnabotna at Kimball's grove, about a mile or so northeast of Kirkman. This colony remained but one summer and then left. An otter was killed by Thomas Kimball, Sr., near Kirkman as late as 1895. W. P. Kimball secured an otter in 1866, selling the skin in Des Moines, Iowa, for ten dollars. He received for mink skins three to eight cents, muskrats three to eight cents, and for wildcats fifty cents each.
H. L. Wood, at one time editor of The Shelby County Record, who lived in Harlan from 1865 to 1874, speaks of having found a fine otter in his trap on the Nishnabotna near Harlan during the sixties. C. C. Redfield caught an ermine in the seventies near Harlan. Henry Custer says that in the late fifties, the low ground in the Nishnabotna valley, east of where Harlan now stands, was dotted thickly with muskrat houses. During the early seventies and before, the badger was very common on the prairies, usually making his home on the sharp points of the hills where the clay was near the surface. He was a remarkably fast digger. Dudley says that the badger is still found in Jefferson township, where there is brush. The mink and weasel are yet found here and probably always have been here. The two varieties of skunk are rather common. The "swift," or "kit fox" sometimes called a "kit," was more or less common here during the fifties and sixties, and the minutes kept by the county judges and county clerk, or auditor, of this county show that many persons, from various parts of the county, received bounties for the scalps of these animals. The same records also show that occasionally a citizen would, prior to 1870, bring in the scalp of a timber wolf and receive bounty on it.
The prairie wolf was always plentiful. He was a bold fellow. The author has often seen him play at a safe distance with our half-blood shepherd dog, each taking turns chasing the other round a stack of prairie hay perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house. At night his howling was hideous and ominous, often answered by the wail of the family dog. Poultry was always in danger at night from this marauder. He is surely the "survival of the fightest" as Supt. A. B. Warner used to say, for, despite the price placed upon the head of himself and progeny, he is yet with us, devouring lamhs, poultry, young pigs and the lesser wild animals yet here. To get rid of him, Shelhy county paid in bounties in 1909, $111; in 1910, $69; 1912, $78; in 1913, $127.
In the late fifties and also in the sixties, and, to a limited extent, in the early seventies, the pioneers of Cuppy's Grove, Bowman's Grove, Custer's Grove, Howlett's Grove, Galland's Grove, Kimball's or Slates' Grove, and Leland's Grove, brought in the hides of wildcats or "bobcats" as they were commonly called, and received bounties from the county therefor. One interesting item in the record of the county judge is a charge against the county of Samuel Dewell, of Galland's Grove, for services as county superintendent of schools and also for the skin of a wildcat which he had killed. He was duly rewarded for his manual and optic training. Bounties have been offered at different times to encourage the destruction of the pocket gopher, for instance in 1909 the county paid for this purpose a total of $581.90 and in 1910, $436.40. It is likely that he is more numerous now than ever before. Although he does much damage, he is also a great subsoiler, going down deep and bringing up the clay and lime beneath the surface of the ground. An observer of this animal states that in the early days of the prairies he delighted in establishing himself in wild morning-glory patches. The opossum, if known at all in the early days, was very rare, but within the last twelve or fourteen years this animal has become much more common in Shelby county, having in some way been started on a northward migration from states to the south of Iowa. Before the prairie was broken, the common rabbit, or ""cotton-tail," confined himself largely to the native timber, hazel brush, etc., remaining in the timber, probably, owing to the fact that he could find his food there, and also because the coyote of the prairie is said to have had a great liking for rabbit. The jack rabbit, or prairie hare, has apparently come into Shelby county from the north and west and was, so far as my information goes, first found in the north and in the northeastern parts of the county, notably in Greeley, Jefferson and Polk townships. One was shot by Clint Walrod near Irwin in 1885, and was then a curiosity. This animal has become much more plentiful over the county and apparently flourishes in the cultivated fields.
The gray squirrel of the prairies and the small Striped squirrel are yet numerous and destructive, especially to corn fields, soon after planting. The striped squirrel is also known to feed on garden peas and things of that character.
Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2024 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 73-79.
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