The Passenger Pigeon 



89 



at one time; and, could they have been counted on the hemlocks, as well, I 

 doubt not but five thousand, at one turn around." Certainly, this assembly 

 of these birds, both in their migrations and during breeding, has no parallel 

 among the feathered tribe. 



Methods of Capture. — Whenever a roost was located, the Indians frequently 

 removed to such places with their wives and children to the number of two 

 or three hundred in a company. Here they lived a month or more on the 

 squabs, which they pushed from the nests by means of long poles and sticks. 

 Similarly, in later times, the whites from all parts adjacent to a roost would 

 come with wagons, axes, cooking utensils, and beds, and would encamp at 

 these immense nurseries. Sometimes, just before the young Pigeons could 



PASSENGER PIGEON 

 A highly characteristic attitude. Photographed by J. G. Hubbard 



fly, the settlers and Indians would cut down the trees and gather a horseload 

 of young in a few minutes. In one case, two hundred were secured from 

 one tree. At night, it was a universal custom to enter the roosts with fascines 

 of pine splinters, dried canes, straw, wood, or with any torchlike material, 

 and push old and young from the trees by means of poles. Not infrequently 

 they took pots of sulphur, to make the birds drop in showers, as it was claimed. 

 In some of the larger roosts, the crashing limbs made it too dangerous for 

 man or beast to approach. In Canada, they occasionally would make ladders 

 by the side of the tallest pines, on which the Pigeons roosted. Then, when 

 night came, they crept softly under and fired up these ladders. "But the grand 

 mode of taking them [in the roost] was by setting fire to the high dead grass, 

 leaves and shrubs underneath, in a wide blazing circle, fired at different parts 

 at the same time, so as soon to meet. Then down rushed the pigeons in im- 



