Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright. 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
M„";h” B C S.‘ CoP7 '( NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1906. 
VOL. LXVII.-No. 24. 
No. 346 Broadway, New^York. 
THE GAME PRESERVE IDEA. 
A common and popular cry against game pro¬ 
tection is that the game is protected for the 
benefit of the rich man and against the poor: 
Demagogues love to make speeches about what 
they call the “classes” as opposed to the 
“masses,” and ask why any land-owner should 
prohibit other persons from shooting, or fish¬ 
ing on his property? Did not God give the 
earth to man for his use? and put in the forests 
and in the streams, game and fish for whoso¬ 
ever might take it? Still more loud-voiced is 
the complaint against the game preserve idea, 
which is called an importation from the old 
world, a reminder of. kings and princes, out of 
place in free America. Persons who talk in 
this way seem to forget that here in free 
America the people are the kings and princes, 
and have the right to say what shall be done 
with their game. 
Since property rights exist, and since the 
law provides that the land-owner, if he choos'es, 
may keep others from trespassing on the acres 
which he owns, it follows that he may reserve 
its game and fish for himself. If he may re¬ 
serve them for himself, if they are his prop¬ 
erty, he may also transfer his rights in them to 
others by sale, lease or gift. Hence comes the 
game preserve situation. 
For many years we have pointed out that 
this game preserve idea was certain to be one 
Of the means by which wild game and fish in 
thickly settled regions were to be preserved. 
As yet only a beginning has been made in 
carrying out this idea, but the time is coming 
before long, when game preserves will be more 
extensive, more elaborate and stocked by a 
better system. 
It may fairly be asked where this idea came 
from. Is it an importation from the effete 
monarchies of the old world, as we are told 
by some of the yellow journals of the day? It 
is not. There were game preserves here long 
before the white man reached America. 
Among the native Americans food was to a 
large extent common property, and within the 
tribe land was common to all. No one individ¬ 
ual could hold title to any foot of land as we 
understand title. He might occupy a piece of 
land, and after him his children for as long 
a time as they might see fit, but he could not 
sell his title, nor could his children, to any 
other individual. The ownership of the land 
was in the tribe, not in any individual of the 
tribe. Moreover, the tribe was merely the 
trustee for those who were to come after it, 
and the tribe thus had no power of alienating 
the land, because it could sell only what it 
owned. It could not sell the right of genera¬ 
tions who had not yet been born. 
Now, as against all this is found the curious 
condition that certain groups of people — that 
is to say, certain families or bodies of relations 
or clans within the tribes — had definite and 
positive property rights in certain places or 
tracts of land which were used for the cap¬ 
ture of food. Statements to this effect are 
common in the old books dealing with Indian 
customs', yet they seem never to have at¬ 
tracted much attention. 
As far back as 1764, Alexander Henry the 
elder, writing of his captivity with the Chippe- 
was, by whom he had been adopted, says of the 
season of sugar making, “We were joined by sev¬ 
eral lodges of Indians, most of whom were of the 
family to which I belonged and had wintered 
near us. The lands belonged to this family, 
and it had therefore the exclusive right to 
hunt on them. This is according to the cus¬ 
tom of the people, for each family has its own 
lands.” 
If this was the case for the country of the 
Great Lakes, not less was it and still is it so 
for portions of Alaska. The country there is 
divided into districts for. fishing and for hunt¬ 
ing, each district belonging to certain families 
and being handed down from generation to 
generation. No Aleut would trespass on the 
territory of -his neighbor, either for fishing or 
for hunting. At various points on certain 
salmon rivers, barabaras were erected by the 
owners of the fishing district, where they built 
their drying scaffolds and left their fishing 
implements after the fishing season was over, 
feeling sure that when they returned the next 
season they would find them where they left 
them. 
In the interior north, the Chippewyans have 
their hunting ' grounds. Simpson, in his “Dis¬ 
coveries,” says, “It is perhaps not generally 
known that in some parts of the Indian 
territory the hunting grounds descend by in¬ 
heritance among the natives, and that this 
right of property is rigidly enforced.” This 
applies not merely to the hunting of flesh 
food, but to trapping as well. 
In the same way, many well-known fishing 
stations on the Columbia and Fraser rivers, 
where salmon were captured each summer, and 
where practically the Indians procured their 
food supply for the whole year, belonged to 
certain families and were handed down by one 
generation to that coming after them, and 
were possessed by this family until no de¬ 
scendant remained, or until the white invaders 
expelled them from the land. 
In the vast marshes of the Gulf coast west 
of the Mississippi delta, the Creoles exercise 
rights that are almost identical with those of 
the Indians. Lots are drawn annually to de¬ 
cide which families or groups shall shoot and 
fish over certain sections of the marshes, and 
the rights of each group or family are strictly 
observed. 
In the North those who have watched the 
Indians with respect to the gathering of wild 
rice, know that the great rice beds have been 
controlled for years by certain tribes, at whose 
councils the territory each family or village 
may call its own, during what might be called 
good behavior, is allotted. 
In other words, in primitive times in Amer¬ 
ica, different families possessed their own 
fishing and shooting grounds, and their rights 
were respected by their neighbors. There 
were game preserves among the primitive In¬ 
dians. 
THE SHOOTING SEASON. 
In a number of the States at the north the 
short shooting season has already closed, and 
gunners have reckoned up their successes for 
1906, and are considering the prospects for 1907. 
The wisdom of having the season for upland 
birds close at the end of- the autumn instead of 
letting it run into the time of cold and snow, 
which often comes in December, seems quite 
clear. In our northern States the game - birds 
have a hard time at best. The severity of the 
climate aside, hawks, owls, foxes, weasels and 
mink are constantly on the watch for them, and 
if, in addition to these dangers they have to face 
the shotgun for thirty days, their case is hard 
indeed. 
I11 many sections in the Middle States we are 
told that ruffed grouse have been quite abundant, 
but woodcock scarce; the very mild open fall hav¬ 
ing perhaps delayed the flight of the latter. In 
New England quail have been deplorably scarce 
and it is gratifying to know that in many local¬ 
ities gunners have declined to shoot the quail that 
they find, preferring to leave these as seed for 
next year, hoping that if the winter should be 
mild, next season’s quail crop will be large 
enough to give them a little shooting. This is an 
’example of self-restraint well worthy of imita¬ 
tion. 
An interesting report comes to- us from Con¬ 
necticut, which in these days is almost wholly 
without quail. In a certain town there were 
known to be three or four coveys of quail, none 
of which so far as known had been shot into. 
On the very first day of the close season a 
gunner who had spent much time chasing over 
the country in the effort to locate all the quail 
that there were, discovered two bevies of which 
no one had previously known. This emphasizes 
again a point frequently made in these columns; 
that after the quail have been cut down to very 
small numbers, in any section, shooters cease to 
look for quail, the birds are not pursued and 
thus gradually increase in numbers and with 
time tend to re-establish themselves. 
The close of the shooting season this year will 
be followed by an exodus of gunners to the 
south, and from Virginia, North Carolina, 
and still further south we may soon expect to 
hear reports of the shooting. 
