A Feathered River Across the Sky

by Joel Greenberg

  Pigeoners doggedly pursued a large roost that settled into the forests of Shannon, Oregon, and Howell Counties in southern Missouri in early 1879. The birds drifted north between eight and twelve miles a day with the men in hot pursuit. When the birds began their rest for the night, hunters would work in close coordination with each other. They would scatter through the tract, waiting for a prearranged signal before starting to fire into the trees. The carcasses were collected in the morning and delivered to Piedmont, the closest station on the Iron Mountain railroad: “From here are shipped every day from seven hundred to one thousand dozen pigeons, bringing into the county from six to eight hundred dollars, net cash per diem. The birds are sent to Boston and New York, where they sell at $1.30 and $1.60 per dozen.”44

  The birds did not always make it easy for the professional pigeoners, however. Some places proved difficult to operate in because of terrain, distance from transportation nodes, or other factors. Pennsylvania, for example, drew lots of pigeoners and produced huge numbers of dead birds, but with its rough topography even the most experienced hands caught far less than they would have expected. A nesting in Emmet County, Michigan, occurred in dense cedar swamps reached by almost unusable tracks. H. T. Phillips, whose Detroit commission house handled its first live pigeons in 1864, tells how he transported live pigeons that had nested on the Black River near Cheboygan, Michigan, in 1869. He placed the birds in the crates that he had just constructed out of split cedar. The crates were then loaded on two canoes that had been tied together. Phillips and his birds shoved off on a six-mile float downstream to a dam, at which point he had to transfer the rig to the other side. After twelve more miles they reached the steamer at Mackinaw City that would take them to yet another boat that would complete the final leg of their trip to Detroit. At least his birds arrived at their destination. In another instance, Phillips had to discard three thousand pigeons “because the railroad did not have a car ready on the date promised.”45

  James Bennett began his career as a pigeoner in 1867. He and his uncle lived in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where the pigeon flights were an expected annual occurrence: preparations for catching the birds were as ordinary as the sowing of crops. But that year, he decided to follow the birds and would continue to do so for fifteen more. On September 15, 1877, he headed southwest, prepared to go as far as the Indian Territories (Oklahoma) to find the roosting pigeons.46

  Bennett began searching in earnest in Verona, Missouri, southwest of Springfield. Having gained the use of a wagon and two horses, he methodically explored valley after valley until he arrived in Cherokee, near the border of Arkansas and the Indian Territory. Word was that the birds were in a tract of blackjack oaks fifteen miles by forty miles, just two days to the west. The information proved true, for on the night of the second day he came upon the pigeons, “craking and flying in such numbers for about a mile before I reached the roost.”

  The sky was clear and the moon reflected with bright intensity. Not being able to wait, he fired his shotgun into the trees and brought down forty-one birds. Nine Indians were there, too, collecting pigeons for various dealers. In three nights of shooting, they bagged and sold 3,630 pigeons. Bennett stayed all the way until February. Then it was back to Pennsylvania for the spring flight: “That season there was carload after carload shipped from Kane and Sheffield to the northern market.”

  A few years later he finally called it quits, “leaving the forests of Potter County, on the Coudersport Pike, May 29, 1882.” There just weren’t enough birds to make it worth his while anymore, although he did get a card in 1888 announcing that “scout” pigeons had arrived near Sheffield. But the scouts either did not like what they saw, represented all there were, or never made it back to their waiting comrades, for that was the last Bennett heard of them.

  Another professional, W. C. Waterman, held out a little longer. He saved the last sales receipt he ever received for passenger pigeons. On April 25, 1884, the firm Bond and Pearch of 163 South Water Street in Chicago credited his account in the amount of $90.46 for two barrels of pigeons, 523 birds, procured near Madison, Wisconsin. The total reflected their subtraction of $7.60 for freight and commission.47

  “January 5, 1878, The Christmas Season/Game stand, Fulton Market, NY.” The artist is A. B. Frost and this first appeared in Harper’s Weekly, date of issue unknown.

  Courtesy of the New York Public Library

  Modern commentators emphasize the importance of the national markets in driving the pigeons to extinction. Some have stressed that once the pigeon population went below a certain point the professionals, such as Bennett, had to throw in the towel. Thereafter, the argument goes, the birds were not heavily exploited. This is not true, however. Amateurs took a huge toll on birds and kept it up so long as they encountered pigeons of any size population. They did not necessarily chase the pigeons far, if at all, for it is likely there were people to catch and people to buy within a day’s ride of wherever the pigeons put down. Edward Howe Forbush wrote, “From soon after the first occupancy of New England by the whites until about the year 1895, the netting of the Passenger Pigeon in North America never ceased. Thousands of nets were spread all along the Atlantic seaboards” (italics his). The birds, he correctly states, were caught wherever they appeared, both before there were regional and national markets, and within a few years of their disappearance as a wild species.48

  Except at the big nestings, these folks who supplemented their livelihoods by the temporary, if not fortuitous, presence of the pigeons neither attracted much attention nor left much of a record. There was William Armstrong, who related that a majority of his neighbors near Blairstown, New Jersey, netted during pigeon season. Lucy Bennett was another who left information on the occasional killing of pigeons for economic gain. She and her husband, John, lived in Decatur, Michigan. She kept a diary, and from February 12, 1873, to April 9, 1875, she made at least twenty entries related to John’s pigeon hunting. Early in the season, usually February, he worked on his net. In 1873 he knitted one that was sixteen by thirty-two feet. Many days he came back empty-handed, but on a few he scored large hauls. On April 7 of that year he caught forty dozen. These were plucked the following day and shipped out on April 9, the first the Bennetts seem to have sold in such a manner. For March 31, 1875, she notes, “We arose at half past 3 o’clock, got breakfast, then John and Peter took the horses and went pigeon hunting. Hope they will catch some … John caught several dozen pigeons today.” Although John captured a few the following day, the wind blew too hard for his efforts to be very fruitful. The final entry is April 9, 1875: “John came home just as I did. He caught 27½ Doz. Pigeons today … I think all the money they will bring is dearly earned.”49

  Jennifer Price creates a compelling vignette of how a pigeon from Sparta, Wisconsin, would get to a restaurant table in New York City in 1871: “One might well begin with an eight-mile wagon ride one morning from the northwest edge of the nesting to the Sparta rail depot. The squab is packed in a barrel of ice and shipped on the 3:00P.M. Milwaukee–St. Paul express train to Milwaukee and then south to Chicago, where the barrel is transferred to the Chicago, Burlington & MO express train to New York City. A driver for the American Merchant’s Union Express picks up the barrel at Grand Central Station and delivers it to a game dealer, who has purchased the pigeons from a Chicago dealer on commission.” New York City had two game markets at the time, with Fulton’s being the choice of the higher-end restaurants, including Delmonico’s. A representative of the restaurant, often Lorenzo Delmonico himself, would visit early every morning to select the fare that would be offered that day. On that particular day, his wagon would carry pigeons, as it made its way “from Fulton and South Streets up Broadway to Fourteenth Street and is unloaded in the restaurant kitchen on Fifth Avenue.”50

  What went into that sojourn goes to the heart of the nineteenth-century game business. A unique perspective into that business is provided by H. Clay Merritt, who jokingly claimed he wa
s born with a gun in his hand. Merritt was unusual for men of his profession in having had a first-rate education. He attended a prep school and then spent four years at Williams College, where he received his degree. Throughout it all he loved to hunt, and after college he moved to Henry, Illinois, to make a living out of his great passion. Passenger pigeons made up only a small part of his trade, which was dominated by ducks, shorebirds, bobwhite, and various grouse. The key to his success was not his ability to procure birds, but to sell them when the price was highest. During, say, woodcock season, the price was low, for everyone had the plump little fellows for sale. Merritt would hold his stock for varying lengths of time up to and beyond a year until he was comfortable with the price. To hold them that long, he needed ways to store and ship the birds that kept them edible.51

  Keeping birds reasonably fresh was one of the great challenges of the game industry. In Minnesota, for instance, the period from 1870 to 1900 saw many warm autumns that “played havoc with the shippers … for the game often spoiled before it reached St. Paul.” Merritt tried numerous techniques to freeze product. He would cool birds on ice and then pack them into boxes so tightly they retained their temperature for several days at least. When the birds were obtained in winter, he could freeze them at ambient temperature and hold them until prices rose. In 1870 he went out to Sandusky, Ohio, to inspect a new model of freezing room designed for butchers. He bought one and then two others. Eventually, he hired a carpenter to construct one of his own design that was built belowground: “Though they were inferior to those that came later, we could and did freeze birds fairly well in summer.”52

  H. Clay Merritt. Photo from Shadow of a Gun by H. Clay Merritt

  Shipping birds as cold as possible enabled them to be sent dry. This was an important goal of Merritt’s, for any ice accompanying the packages cut into profits by raising shipping costs. In fact, he was often warned that unless the shipment was iced, it would be lost. But given that he would ship up to twenty thousand birds at a time, it was a risk worth taking. Merritt was proud that he only lost one entire batch. More commonly, the birds became moldy and even began to smell. With just a little scraping, though, the product was once again salable, albeit at a reduced price if the birds had ripened too much. One fall Merritt received an order for snipe, which he had many hundreds of from the previous spring. This request was from a good customer, so he went to the freezing bins where the birds had been stored and discovered they were all in bad condition. Still, to satisfy his buyer, he sent a box of four hundred and threw away the rest, in no worse shape. He kicked himself for the latter action when he received a check for over $100.53 The challenge of sending meat long distances and having it arrive wholesome was finally resolved in 1878 when Swift and Company, a Chicago-based meatpacking firm, introduced the first successful refrigerator car.

  Merritt dabbled in passenger pigeons, but they were apparently local enough by the mid-1870s that he no longer encountered them in his ordinary hunting activities in central Illinois and points west. He, therefore, bought them from W. W. Judy, “the ruling game dealer in St. Louis.” Pigeons were his specialty. Merritt purchased several thousand birds for seventy-five cents a dozen. The next time around, in 1881, Judy charged only fifty cents a dozen, and Merritt procured “a good carload,” which arrived in batches of fifty to seventy-five. These were frozen and kept until the next spring, when they were sold for two to three times as much. His final purchase of pigeons occurred with Judy’s death. Merritt bought “stall-fed” birds—pigeons kept and fattened in cages before being killed. These sold for as high as $3 a dozen. He held some for as long as three years: “The last barrel we marketed in Boston at full price … We believe that these were the last stall fed birds that were ever marketed.”54 If only he knew that at the time, for he could have auctioned them off to some baron who would have paid handsomely for the privilege of eating the last of a foodstuff, if not the last of a species.

  Live birds for trapshooting brought the highest prices. This trade depended more on national markets than perhaps even the business in dead birds, for the big shooting meets varied in time, place, and sponsors. The market for live birds was surely smaller than for dead ones, but the waste was much greater, for although match organizers would utilize pigeons in awful condition, the birds had to be at very least alive. Of course even a blob of fermenting meat and feathers could be propelled through the air by a plunge trap, and if the shooter was quick, maybe no one would notice. Perhaps it was the heat, but some of the most horrific reports of waste came from Missouri: of sixty thousand birds secured for a trap meet, two thirds died before they reached their destination, while on another occasion only thirty-three hundred out of twenty thousand wound up as targets.55

  Thomas Stagg focused his business on the trap trade. He maintained his home and operations on forty acres between Fullerton and Diversey on the western edge of Chicago. He had removed the external sidings of a barn and replaced them with a lattice of narrow wooden strips, thereby converting the structure into a giant cage that could hold over five thousand passenger pigeons. The selling price for his product was on average $1.25 per dozen. Stagg and an assistant would travel frequently to nesting grounds in Michigan and Wisconsin to procure birds. They entered the pigeon cities at night and grabbed low-roosting birds by hand, depositing them into bags. From the bags, the birds would be placed into crates and then shipped to Stagg’s place. Upon reaching their destination, the birds were often parched, and “many drank themselves to death, or were killed in the mad scramble for water.” Sometimes the birds did not arrive at their final destination in the best of condition, as was the case with a load of thirty-five hundred that Stagg sent to New York. They arrived with feathers and skin missing from their heads as a consequence of their having rubbed against the crates.56

  One of the largest dealers in the country, who marketed both live and dead birds, was also in Chicago. Bond and Ellsworth on South Water Street stocked barrels of dead pigeons on the first floor of their warehouse, which had walls adorned with elk antlers. A visitor was surprised that he saw no live birds, but upon being escorted to the upper three floors, he saw where they all were. Each floor held twelve cages of twelve feet square. The cages were equipped with perches to allow fuller utilization of the available space. Ordinarily, fifteen thousand to twenty thousand pigeons could be accommodated, but during emergencies additional birds could be squeezed in. Mortality among newly arrived birds amounted to thirty-five to fifty-five pigeons in every cage over the first two days.57

  How many birds the pigeon industry destroyed is impossible to know. Edward Howe Forbush tried to get information on the netting of the pigeons by the major firms, but by the time he tried, the firms had already dissolved. He sought the help of Otto Widdman, Missouri’s premier ornithologist of his day, to contact W. W. Judy and Company of St. Louis. He found that all but one of the partners had been dead for a while, and the survivor offered nothing except the belief that all the passenger pigeons had flown to Australia. Old ideas may be harder to kill off than hundreds of millions of birds.58

  Chapter 5

  Means of Destruction

  History suggests that few things stimulate human ingenuity more than the challenge of killing. This is most evident when the intended targets are other human beings, for no other organism poses anywhere near the same severity of threat. But as a species, we are no slackers even when the adversary is an eighteen-inch-long bird. Safe only when they rose high enough to exceed the range of weaponry, the passenger pigeons otherwise lived a gauntlet whereby they became targets of an arsenal that employed an amazing array of instruments.

  In rare instances the birds were poisoned. Asphyxiation was tried by burning sulfur underneath nests. All one needed was five or six fireproof containers, two ounces of sulfur, a few sacks, and a torch. Arrive at the roost after dark, distribute the sulfur among the containers, and then ignite the contents. Stand to the side to avoid the fumes and wait for the birds to drop
from the trees: “This hunting is easy. Women can take part with pleasure since there is neither fatigue nor danger of being wounded.”1

  Fire was also used in at least two ways. The first was described by William Bartram, one of the country’s first great naturalists. He arrived at the villa of a friend near Savannah, Georgia, just after dark. Soon, servants showed up with “horse loads” of pigeons collected over a short period from a nearby swamp. They had entered the roost with blazing torches, the light of which so blinded and confused the birds, many dropped to the ground helpless. The servants then easily gathered the prey and put them into sacks.2

  The second way was simpler and more effective, for the fire did not merely leave the birds dazed, but dead. Employing the “grand mode of taking them,” a roosting site in Tennessee was set ablaze, incinerating swarms of birds as they wheeled furiously in their confused attempt to escape. From heaps two feet deep, scorched corpses were then collected the next day for personal use or sale. Texas saw one of its few large pigeon invasions in the fall of 1872. Despite ongoing exploitation, the birds stayed into the spring, when they attempted to nest in thick stands of Ashe juniper. (Birds that fed on juniper cones were said to taste like turpentine.) But farmers, leery that their crops would be endangered by the enormous number of the feathered immigrants, burned thousands of acres of woods to rid themselves of the menace.3

  Low-flying pigeons could be downed by just about any object at hand. An anonymous Jesuit wrote at length about pigeons along the St. Lawrence River in the mid-1600s: “They passed continually in flocks so dense, and so near the ground, that sometimes, they were struck down by oars.” Clubs and stones killed pigeons as they flew low over St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 1864. The strangest weapon used to dispatch the birds was employed by settlers in Orillia, Ontario. While harvesting their potatoes, farmers took advantage of nearby birds by flinging tubers at them. It is good to read that they lost more potatoes than they gained pigeons. But to have most of a stew fall from the sky in one lump must have been convenient.4