BROKEN TRADITIONS 



gratory routes, and that the persistent persecution of that community on 

 that especial route will eventually exterminate that community." 



This, no doubt is what happened to the Eskimo Curlew, which was 

 killed heavily through much of its migratory and winter range. Carroll 

 (1910) says that in Labrador, "the Hudson's Bay Company's people at Cart- 

 wright annually put up large numbers of hermetically sealed tins for the 

 use of company's officials in London and Montreal. I have seen as many as 

 2,000 birds hung up in their store as the result of one day's shooting by 

 some 25 or 30 guns." In Nebraska, as Swenk ( 1915 ) tells it, "hunters would 

 drive out from Omaha and shoot the birds without mercy until they had 

 literally slaughtered a wagonload of them, the wagons being actually filled, 

 and often with sideboards on at that. Sometimes when the flight was un- 

 usually heavy and the hunters were well supplied with ammunition, their 

 wagons were loaded too quickly and easily filled, so whole loads of the birds 

 would be dumped on the prairie, their bodies forming piles as large as a 

 couple of tons of coal, where they would be allowed to rot while hunters 

 proceeded to refill their wagons." 



Bogardus ( 1899 ) , the great wing-shot of his time, says that when "two 

 or three of the plover or curlew are crippled, the others will circle round 

 them and often offer chances for capital shots. . . . On one such occasion 

 I remembered having killed forty-two golden plover and curlew, all shot 

 on the wing, before I picked up one of them. Many a time I have killed 

 as many as fourteen or fifteen without lifting a bird, there being opportuni- 

 ties to load and fire again and again while the plover swept and circled 

 over the dead and wounded of their own flock. ... Of late years I have 

 generally killed from fifty to two hundred plover and curlew a day." The 

 days of Captain Bogardus are gone forever, and so are the great flocks of 

 Eskimo Curlew. 



The Golden Plover was spared, and so, too, has been the Upland Plover 

 of our prairies. Roberts (1932:487) says that "to recite the history of the 

 Upland Plover in Minnesota is to tell a sad tale of wanton destruction of 

 a valuable and once abundant bird that resulted in its almost complete 

 extermination. Sixty years ago it was present all through the summer every- 

 where in the open country in countless thousands. ... In May, 1893, the 

 writer visited Jackson and Pipestone counties, and the Upland Plover was 

 present everywhere on the prairies. A return visit was made in 1899, and 

 it was largely gone — the incessant and musical qua-a-aily, qua-a-aily of the 

 hovering birds was a tiring of the past." Roberts tells of the heavy market 



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