A Vanished Race 83 



trait as shown by the natives. "While the birds are hatching their young, 

 and while the latter are not able to fly, the savages or Indians in North Amer- 

 ica are in the habit of never shooting or killing them, nor allowing others to 

 do so, pretending that it would be a great pity on their young, which would 

 in that case have to starve to death." 



But neither the modest tribute levied by the Indian nor the gigantic con- 

 tribution exacted by the pioneers sensibly diminished the Pigeon population, 

 which maintained its numbers until improved methods of communication and 

 the decrease of its habitat created new and more adverse conditions. The 

 rapid development of transportation by steam over land and water provided 

 hunter and trapper with ample facilities for the shipment of game to the 

 great cities. In a few years, the birds had become a marketable commodity. 

 About 1840, professional catchers began to prey upon the unprotected flocks. 

 By degrees they bettered the older methods of luring and taking. The chief 

 contrivance universally employed consisted of a capacious net, which could 

 be quickly dropped over a bed baited with salt, mud or grain, and to which 

 the Pigeons were attracted by imitation of their call or by the voices of captive 

 mates serving as decoys. 



By 1870, the netters had much increased in numbers. The register book 

 of pigeoners in Wisconsin lists some five hundred names of persons engaged 

 in this unholy traffic at about that time. The business of locating, killing, and 

 marketing the birds was now thoroughly systematized and assumed ominous 

 proportions. Invading the winter home of the flocks, which so far had es- 

 caped their marauding expeditions, the pigeoners raided through the cold 

 season. Tracking the birds to the breeding range, they continued their nefarious 

 operations in the great nestings, sparing neither the brooding mates nor 

 their young. 



The unfortunately merely reminiscent accounts of some of the active 

 participants in the forays of those days were brought together by Mershon 

 in his valuable book of the Passenger Pigeon. With the convincing simplicity 

 of practical men, the netters describe the remunerative business they followed, 

 and frequently give estimates of the seasonal yield. Averaging these fairly 

 reliable data, we find that the catch for the decade of 1 866-1 876 amounted 

 to more than 10,000,000 Pigeons per year. This number represents ship- 

 ments only. The birds used in the camps, those taken by farmers and Indians, 

 and the vast numbers killed accidentally in the overcrowded rookeries probably 

 exceeded 2,000,000 more. Excepting a negligible quantity of squabs, these 

 12,000,000 were brooding birds, and their death involved that of the nest- 

 lings. This annual and terrific loss suffered by the race, made irreparable by 

 the break in the sequence of generations due to the fiendish destruction of the 

 young, swiftly led to the inevitable end. 



In the spring of 1878, the waning flocks established nestings near Petosky, 

 in Emmet County, Michigan, to the south of this in the swampy woodlands of 



