CHAPTER VI 



Some Kentucky Observations, by Alexander Wilson 



— Vivid Description of Sacred Pigeon Dance 



by the Indian Wolf Hunter Dan Gleason 



DURING the month of May, 1810, the great orni- 

 thologist, Alexander Wilson, visited the Ken- 

 tucky river to see a real nesting piace of Passenger 

 Pigeons. With great detail he described what he saw 

 and heard there, and a few of his illuminating para- 

 graphs will paint the picture as vividly as words can 

 possibly reveal a panorama. He said: 



''As soon as the young were fully grown, and before 

 they left the nests, numerous partie.s of the inhabi- 

 tants, from all parts of the adjacent country, came 

 with wagons, oxen, beds, cooking utensils, many of 

 them accompanied by the greater p:irt of their fam- 

 ilies, and encamped for several days at the immense 

 nursery. The noise was so great as to terrify their 

 horses, and it was difficult for one person to hear an- 

 other speak without bawling in his ear. 



''The ground was strewed with broken limbs of 

 trees, eggs and young squab pigeons which had been 

 precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs 

 were fattening. Hawks, buzzards and eagles were 

 sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs 

 from their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet 

 upwards to the tops of the trees, the view through the 

 woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and 



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