82 Bird -Lore 



them, was the Indian who levied upon the flocks wherever he found them. 

 The populous roosts of the southland he invaded at night, and, firing the under- 

 brush, killed the birds by the thousands. Large numbers were caught around 

 the numerous licks in simple traps. But it was at the great nestings that the 

 tribe settled down to a continuous banquet, and during which it gathered a 

 bounteous harvest of savory produce. Some of the older historians occasionally 

 refer to those hunting camps. Writing about 1650, Adrian Van der Douk, 

 in his Description of the New Netherlands, says: "The Indians, when they 

 find the breeding places of the Pigeons, frequently remove to those places 

 with their wives and children to the number of two to three hundred in a 



PASSENGER PIGEON 

 A characteristic attitude assumed as the bird walked through branches 



company, where they live a month or more on the young Pigeons which they 

 take after flushing them from their nests with poles or sticks." Recalling the 

 old days, Pokagon states that they seldom killed the old birds, but made great 

 preparations to secure their young, out of which the squaws made squab 

 butter, and smoked and dried them for future use. As to the amount of food 

 preserved, John Lawson, who traveled among the tribes of the Carolinas 

 in the first decade of the eighteenth century, relates: "You may find several 

 Indian towns of not above seventeen houses, that have more than a hundred 

 gallons of pigeon oil or fat, they using it with pulse or bread as we do butter." 

 Savage people, the world over, carefully protect their organic resources, and 

 the aborigines shared this wholesome instinct of self-preservation. 



A pupil of Linnaeus, Peter Kalm, whose name is perpetuated by our Kalmia, 

 or sheep laurel, botanized in the forests of the Atlantic slope between 1740 

 and 1750. In his copious notes upon the Pigeon, he speaks of this universal 



