26 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[JCLT 30, 1891. 



FISH AND FISHING IN THE PIONEER 

 WEST. 



1 REMEMBER when a boy tliat a neighbor made a 

 journey into Illinois, and being of an adventurous 

 turn" he sold his horse and came home by the way of the 

 Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio rivers. By bis envious 

 neighbors he was regarded as a much-traveled man, and 

 his store of information gathered on his voyages made 

 him a welcome visitor at all the firesides for many a day 

 thereafter. This, you must know, occurred a good many 

 years ago, away back in the forties, when there was as 

 yet bub about twenty-five miles of railroad in all of In- 

 diana, and not an iron rail west of that. 



One of the stories told by the returned traveler was of 

 a catfish caught by a fellow traveler in the Mi-sissippi. 

 According to his tale the fellow traveler shot a blackbird, 

 and baiting an immense hook he waited for the boat to 

 land at the first woodyard, where he flung hook and bait 

 out into the stream and secured his prifee. The fish was 

 of monstrous size in the eyes of our traveled neighbor, 

 and I think it altogether probable that it lost nothing by 

 his telling. I remember that he gave feet and inches 

 and pounds and ounces, for the captain had measured 

 with the "boat yard-stick," and weighed with the "boat 

 steelyards" and our traveler had a good memory, and he 

 invariably emphasized this part of his story by a 

 solemn declaration that "the fi.sh was as big as a nigger 

 boy." 



Notwithstanding our traveled neighbor was reputed to 

 be a man of truth, boy as I was, and always keen on the 

 scent of the marvelous, I couldn't help doubting the 

 truth of his lish story. A fish as big as a "nigger bny," 

 when the only boy'of the kind I had ever seen would 

 kick the beam at l401bs., was too great a demand on my 

 credulity, and so, without making my doubts known, I 

 set that man down as unworthy ®f belief when it came to 

 catfish. 



But I have changed my mind since then, and to the 

 descendants of the traveled man I hereby make all the 

 amends it is possible tor me to make for doubting their 

 ancestor's word. The catfish he saw captured with the 

 blackbhd bait was a very possible fish. There were 

 "nigger boys" bigger than the "black George" known to 

 me iu my youthful days, and there are catfish as big, and 

 bigger, no"doubt, than the biggest of them. 



One of the noticeable things to the reader of literature 

 relating to the West of fifty and one hundred years ago, 

 is the paucity of reference to the fish of its rivers and 

 lakes. A_ few of the French explorers occasionally refer 

 to the ichthyological monsters now and then encountered 

 by them, and notably among these stands Father Henne- 

 pin; but the good Father's reputation for truth and 

 veraciiy among the historians has been shaken to such 

 an extent that it is hardly to be wondered at if the stories 

 he tells of Mississippi monsters are taken nowadays 

 cum graiio. 



I not only find that those who wrote about the pioneer 

 West had comparatively little to say about its fish, but 

 even the pioneers themselves were largely indifferent to 

 the wonderful development of fish life in the waters 

 around them. I account for this indifference on the part 

 of writer and pioneer, from the fact of the great abund- 

 ance of wild animals in the woods. We have heard much 

 of the wonderful abundance of game that Boone and his 

 first settler companions met with in Kentucky. Well, 

 the first Indianians went into a forest no less swarming 

 with game than were the Kentucky woods, and among 

 the active and vigorous men of that day (and all were 

 such) the only sport worthy of the name was found in 

 the chase. Men might fish, but for the same reason they 

 picked berries, that they might furnish their tables. I 

 have made quite a study of the settlement of Indiana, 

 and have examined numerous county histories and biog- 

 raphies of pioneer settlers, and other writings relating to 

 the time, and while I have my note book crammed with 

 pioneer's reminiscences and tales of adventure with 

 bears, wolves, wildcats and deer, it is only now and then 

 one finds a word about the fish. 



I turned to "Ashe's Travel-." the other day, thinking 

 that I would surely find something concerning the pio- 

 neer fish in his book. He was an Englishman who 

 "came West" a Mttle over eighty years ago, and who 

 wrote a book about the country. His book abounds with 

 anecdotes of wild beasts. No story was too improbable 

 for bis pen. Accounts of snakes and lions and buffaloes, 

 and nightingales and turkeys, and I know not what all, 

 except fish, fill his pages. In all his travels he found 

 occasion to make but one allusion to the subject, and I 

 must say his one story is by no means a remarlrable one, 

 as compared with some of his snake and wild beast 

 stories. 



There are no waters of a like latitude anywhere more 

 prolific in fish life than the waters of the northern three- 

 fourths part of the State of Indiana. All this region is 

 covered by what the geologists denominate drift, and for 

 reasons not necessary to be suggested here, the waters run- 

 ning through the drift are peculiarly well adapted to the 

 support of fish life. Not less than 150 species of fish have 

 been found in the waters of the State, and in that jaart of 

 White River lying between Indianapolis and Gosport, 

 which are about forty miles asunder by railroad, eighty 

 species have been found, a larger number, I have heard 

 it said, than have been found in any other one river in 

 like distance in the world. 



The truth is, but for the illegal fishing and the pollu- 

 tion of the streams, the Indiana creeks and rivers flowing 

 through the drift would stand at the head of the bass 

 streams of the country. 



It is remarkable how firmly the fishes and the very best 

 of the game and food fishes at that, have maintained their 

 foothold in our streams. All the game that once roamed 

 the woods is gone. Even the little gray squirrel, that in 

 the beginning was not considered as game and not even 

 as fit for food, but which were so numerous as to contest 

 grain by grain the corn raised by the pioneer farmers, 

 have disappeared, and all the legislation in the world can- 

 not bring them back again. The conditions of the coun- 

 try have so changed, and the shotguns are so numerous, 

 that it is not possible for the gray squirrels ever to thrive 

 in Indiana again. Nor will it be any better with the fox 

 squirrels. It was about the time of the election of Presi- 

 dent Pierce that these rodents began to move in, and 

 there was a time when they were far more numerous than 

 they are now. They are by no means as abimdant as 

 they were fifteen years ago. 



And so of aU other animals of the woods ihsLtha>ye Mot 



disappeared altogether. With the most, as the pioneer 

 ste]jped in at the front door they went out at the back. 

 But' the fishes are still here, though in greatly reduced 

 numbers. Some of the larger varieties, it is true, have 

 disappeared The sturgeon and the drum went with the 

 Indians and the bears, but the best are here yet, and if 

 the streams could be kept clear from the pollution of the 

 cities and the manufactures, and if the dynamiters and 

 seiners would let them alone, the Indiana waters would 

 yet be a paradise for fishermen. 



But I sat down to recount the story of what must have 

 been the excellence of the fishing in the early days, and 

 while as stated above, the writers of those days made 

 comparatively few references to the subject, nevertheless 

 one now and then catches a glimpse through the few 

 references they do make, which leads to the incompara- 

 ble sport there is to be had. 



I have found in no writer of the pioneer times so fre- 

 quent and satisfactory reference to the fish and fishing 

 in the West, as ur the journal kept by Col. John May, 

 who came from Boston to the Marietta settlement, of 

 Ohio in 1788 and again in 1789. The writer does not 

 seem to have been a fisherman himself, but he showed 

 great interest in the fish he saw in the Ohio River, and 

 from what he says of them one can gain an idea of their 

 great abundance as well as size in that river, and frouT 

 that a more or less correct concluf^ion as to the 

 number and size of the inhabitants of other Western 

 streams. 



The fish that engaged Col. May's attention were the 

 pike, buffalo, sturgeon, cat, perch, bass, herring and 

 "other sorts." The bass were of "two sorts," he says, and 

 likewise the sturgeon. From the time he struck the 

 river at Pittsburgh, his observations began. The fame 

 of the Ohio for its fish seems to have reached him in his 

 Boston home before he left it, for in a letter written to 

 his wife shortly after reaching Pittsburgh he says, 

 "What has been said of the fish in these quarters I am 

 certain must be true from what I have seen and experi- 

 enced in the short time I have been here — only twenty- 

 four hours. Within fifteen rods of where I now sit they 

 are all day catching fish of various kinds. Some do not 

 weigh more than lib., but I have seen others that 

 weighed lllbs. Within ten minutes after I put up at 

 this house a little boy ten years old fetched a perch alive 

 that weighed 5Uhs. ' These are things 1 have seen, and 

 I have dwelt on the subject somewhat because it strikes 

 me agreeably." 



Col.- May stopped at Pittsburgh fourteen days, and nearly 

 every day he had something to say about fish. One day 

 it is, that "two lads brouglit to my quarters a number of 

 fine fish just caught. Among them were two perch 

 weighing '40ilb8. together. They have been caught 

 weighing 241 bs." At another time he says "there has 

 been a fish caught here which weighed 1251bs., and the 

 story goes," naively adds the writer, "that he drowned 

 the men who caught him." 



After Col. May reached Marietta he continues his 

 notices of the fish. He is inclined to find fault with their 

 size, for he says: "There are seven stout, hearty men of 

 us and we have not been able to eat more than one fish 

 at a meal." The supply was evidently greater than the 

 demand. At another time he throws some light on this: 

 "Dined on buffalo fish, the weight of which when caught 

 was 14Slbs. We also had a pike weighing 7ilbs. The 

 men and I ate the whole," 22[bs. in all. 



If the seven men consumed the 23lbs. of fish at one 

 meal they must have been stout, hearty fellows sure 

 enough, for that gave an average of Sflbs. to each man, 

 which was certainly big eating. But Mr. Bailly-Groh- 

 man, who wroie "Camps in the Rockies," a very enter- 

 taining book of sport indeed, tells, all things considered, 

 a biggpr story in regard to the eating of fish than does 

 CoL May: "Three times a day," writes he, "did six big 

 frying pans appear on our primitive greensward dinner 

 table," and never did fish taste nicer, and never did four 

 men and two dogs eat more of thera. Hardly credible as 

 it sounds, 301bs. a day was hardly sufficient, to feed our 

 six hungry mouths; and when tow^ard the end of my 

 .^hort stay in the basin great economy in flour became 

 imperative, 401bs. vanished in a similar wonderful man- 

 ner." Tvvo pounds and three ounces per meal for man 

 and dog, day in and day out, was big fish eating for 

 certain! 



Pike weighing 18, 24 and even 29ilbs., a cat 591bs. and 

 a sturgeon 4|ft. long fell to Col. May's lot. And "almost 

 every evening" he writes "there can be seen large schools 

 of fish playing around the boat— I dare say twenty or 

 thirty barrels to a school." Indeed, he found the fish of 

 the Ohio so large, numerous and impudent that, com- 

 pelled as he was to sh'ep in his boat until he could get his 

 house in readiness, the catfish and perch made such a 

 noise under theboat that they "frequently keep me a wake 

 half the night." 



The editor of Col. May's journal appends one or two 

 foot notes corroborative of the testimony given by Col. 

 May. One is an extract from "Cranmer's Navigator," 

 published at Pitt^burgh in 1821. "The fish of the Ohio," 

 says the author, "are numerous and of various kinds — 

 the black and yellow cat weighing from 3 to lOOlbs.; the 

 buffalo from 5 to SOlbs. ; the sturgeon from 4 to 40lb3., and 

 the perch from 3 to 121bs." 



"I wish you were here to view the bfiauties of Fort 

 Mcintosh," writes Gen. Harmer to a friend, "what think 

 you of pike of aSlbs., perch of 15 to251bs., catfish of 401bs., 

 bass, pickerel, sturgeon, etc.?" 



Independence Day was celebrated at Marietta while 

 Col. May was there, and after the ovation the settlers and 

 the soldiers sat down to a dinner at which, according to 

 Hddreth's history, "they had venison, bear and buffalo 

 meat, and a pike (speared in the Muskingum by Judge 

 Devall and his son Gilbert) which weighed lOOIb-^." 



The age of big fish in the Ohio River lasted till long 

 after Col. May's visit. An anecdote related by Sol. Smith, 

 an actor of the last generation, is evidence of this. The 

 "Chapman Family," of which he was at one time a mem- 

 ber, made the descent of the Ohio in a "floating theat-^r," 

 playing at the towns along the shore, about 1833 or 1833. 

 The players were all very fond of fishing and would 

 pursue this fascinating pastime on occasion, even during 

 a perPormance. "On one occasion," says the writer, 

 "while playing the 'Stranger' (Act IV,, Scene 1) there was 

 a long wait for Francis, the servant of the misanthropic 

 Count Walborough. 

 " 'Francis! Francis!' called the Stranger. No reply. 

 " 'Francis! Francis! (a pause) Francis!' rather angrily 

 called the Stranger again, A very distant voice, 'Coming 



Sir!' A considerable pause, during which the Stranger 

 walks up and down d la Macready, in a great rage. 

 'Francis!' 



"Francis (entering) — 'Here I am. Sir!' 

 "Stranger — 'Why did you not come when I called?' 

 '•Francis — 'Why, Sir, I was just hauling in one of the 



d est big catfish you ever saw!' 



"The curtain had to be rung down." 

 The big fish and the "multitudes of fish" were not con- 

 fined to the Ohio. They were in all the Western streams. 

 In 1816 David Thomas made a tour to tlm western 

 country, passing through southern Indiana, along what 

 was then known as the "Cincinnati Trail" to the Wabash, 

 and in his book of travels he gives a list of the most 

 notable fish in that river, and the size to which some of 

 them attained. Three kinds of catfish he mentions, the 

 Mississippi cat, the mud cat and the bullhead. The first 

 attains to the weight of 1201bs., he says, and the second 

 to 100. The sturgeon was another of the Wabash fishes, 

 and weighed from 20 to 60 lbs. The drum would run to 

 301bs., and the black bass from lib. to 71bs. Buft'alo fish 

 were taken weighing as high as 301bs., the rock mullet 

 from 5 to 15lbs., the red horse the same, and the river 

 pike and jack pike from 6 to 20ibs. 



Let us turn to one more book relating to the period, 

 entitled "Old Settlers," by S. C. Cox, a Hoosier peda- 

 gogue of the last generation. Tlie following is his yarn 

 anent the fish in Sugar River, a small stream in the 

 neighborhood of Crawfordsville: "At John Still's mill, 

 below town on Sugar River, there is a fish trap, and in 

 one night we caught 900 fish, the first spring we were in 

 the county, most of them pike, salmon, bass and perch. 

 Some of ths largest pike and salmon measured from 2 to 

 4ft. in length, and weighed from 12 to 201bs. We carried 

 them by skifi: loads and threw them alive into the mill- 

 pond hard by, which was fed by spring!?, and thus we had 

 fresh fish the year round. When a customer wished to 

 purchase a few fish, Still took him to the pond and the 

 fish were selected and the price agreed upon before the 

 salmon was lifted from the water." 



Additional historical evidence of the great abundance 

 and large size of the fishes of these Ohio and Wabash 

 waters, including their tributaries, might be given did 

 space permit. But enough has been said for my purpose. 

 Indiana Untvsrsitt, 1891. D. D. B^^'TA. 



BOSTON ANGLERS. 



FULLY as many of the vacationists are taking their 

 fishing rods with them this season as ever, and 

 sport in that way is fully up to the average, though the 

 last reports from Maine and New Hampshire indicate 

 rather low water in some of the streams. Mr. Harry 

 Brown, son of the late Walter Brown, both well known 

 in the wool trade of Boston, is planning a fly-fishing trip 

 to Rich'^rdson Lake. The fly -fishing he got there last 

 year revived all the old love for the sport. His father 

 was a trout artist as well as a fisherman, and his piece 

 representing the last struggle of the trout hooked upon 

 the fly, has been much commended. Mr. Eldridge, of 

 the wool trade, left for Maine, flsh rods in hand, on Mon- 

 day morning. 



Mr. and Mrs. F. K. Dexter, of Boston, have just re- 

 turned from a nine months' trip round the world. Mr. 

 Dexter is well known in the paint and oil trade of the 

 Hub. He retired from business last year, and proposed 

 to spend a year or two in traveling. Soon after he sailed 

 for Europe, to return in a year or more. But July, 1891, 

 has br 'Ught them both back, and they have just started 

 for Dixtield, Maine. There they will remain a few days, 

 at the exxiiration of which they will leave for Keunebago, 

 one of the Rangeleys, there to spend the months of 

 A.ugust and September. Mr. and Mrs. Dexter have spent 

 the same months at the same lake about every year for 

 nearlv ten years. The remarkable feature is that lovers 

 of tro'ut fishing in the wilds of Maine should hurry a trip 

 around the world for the pake of being at the old camp- 

 ing grounds again. At Dixfield Mr. and Mrs. Dexter will 

 be joined by ftlr. and Mrs. F. E. Stanley, of the Stanley 

 Dry Plate Co., of Newton, Mass,, and together they will 

 make a camping and fishing trip to Weld Pond, the 

 guests of Fish Commissioner Henry 0. Stanley, at his 

 camp there. Mr, and Mrs. Stanley take their own team 

 to Bith, Me., by steamer, and thence they drive across 

 the country to Dixfield. They will probably be joined at 

 Hebron by Mrs. W. K. Moody and Mrs. J. F. Moody, for 

 a carriage trip part of the way. 



Mr. W. T. Farley, of the Boston dry goods firm of Far- 

 ley, Harvey & Co., is just back from a trip up the Hud- 

 son, where he was obliged to take his vacation rather too 

 soon, instead of to the Adirondacks, as on previous years. 

 Mrs. Farley almost always goes with him, being with him 

 last year when he shot a deer under the jack from a 

 canoe. Tbev will go to the Adirondacks later, if busi- 

 ness permits", together with the foot that Mr. Farley has 

 been up the Hudson to nurse. He ran a rusty nail into it 

 some time in the winter, and lockjaw was very nearly 

 the re.sult. He says that it is not y^ t quite well enough 

 for a long woods tramp. Mr. G. D. Harvey, one of the 

 senior members of the same firm, has just returned from 

 a two weeks' trip to the Upper Saranac, where he has 

 been with his wife and his two boys. They were camped 

 at Rustic Lodge. Mr. Harvey returns more in love 

 with the Adirondack wilderness than ever. Pickerel 

 fishing was good, with some trout, and the boys en- 

 joyed it to the overflow. Mi-s. Harvey gained six 

 pounds in flesh and the boys "growed" about a foot 

 apiece. The worst drawback to what should have been 

 a most pleasing outing of pleasant memories was to 

 find their residence at Auburndale broken open when 

 they returned, and silver, clothing and precious keep- 

 sakes stolen to the extent of about $500. Mr. Harvey 

 says that money cannot replace some of the articles taken. 

 Among other things was the magazine shotgun of Mr. 

 Will Farley, w^hich he had kindly loaned Mr. Harvey, 

 but which, for some unaccountable reason, was left be- 

 hind in the house. 



I have just received the card of Mr. Henry C. Litch- 

 field, so well known in the fishing tackle trade, formerly 

 of the firm of Appleton & Litchfield, and later alone in 

 the business. His new card says, "With Dame, Stoddard 

 & Kendall," who, it will bf^ remembered, are the succes- 

 sors of the old firm nf Bradford & Anthony, where both 

 Mr. Litchfield and Mr. Geo. B. Appleton, of Geo. B. Ap- 

 pleton & Co., were trained in the tackle business under 

 the much-beloved and lamented Prouty. Special, 



