RA TTLE SNAKE HIS TOR Y. 289 



Rattlesnake Den was thus cleared of its inhabitants for 

 many long years. 



Catlin affirms that the Valley of the Wyoming used to be 

 more infested with these terrible pests than any other portion 

 of the globe. Every summer the lives of persons as well as 

 cattle were destroyed by them, and the 'happy little valley ' 

 would have been rendered uninhabitable but for the peri- 

 odical battues} 



Howe in his Histories of Ohio and of Virginia relates 

 many similar facts. A Mr. Stone, one of the first settlers of 

 the ' Western Reserve ' along the shore of Lake Erie, has 

 immortalized himself as a slayer of rattlesnakes. They were 

 ' in great plenty along the track,' and he being the first to 

 'survey' the land in 1796, had the honour of doing battle 

 with them. In Trumbull County they abounded. One year, 

 about the first of May 1799, a large party armed with 

 cudgels proceeded to a sunny level of rock on which hosts 

 of the reptiles had crept. Approaching cautiously, step by 

 step, the enemy came upon them suddenly, and then began 

 to cudgel with all their might. Hot and furious was the 

 fight ; the rattles were ringing as the snakes beat a retreat up 

 the hill, and the ground was strewed with the slain : four 

 hundred and eighty-six were that day collected, most of 

 them over five feet in length. 



In another of these spring campaigns eight hundred rattle- 

 snakes were killed, including a few of their relatives the 

 copper-head, and hundreds more of harmless snakes of which 

 the slayers ' took no account.' 



Holbrooke records that once in New York State two men 



1 Last Ramblt's among the Indians, by Geo. Catlin. London, 1S65. 



T 



