A Feathered River Across the Sky

by Joel Greenberg

  Children often had the job of keeping the pigeons at bay. While dad sowed, the kids would be dispatched to watch for pigeon flocks. Armed with such implements of noise as cowbells and metal pans, they would chase the birds until the seeds could be covered. But they had to be quick about it, as R. D. Goss discovered. He grew up in Wabasha County, Minnesota, during the 1860s. Back then wheat was sown by hand, so his father had taken advantage of a calm evening and morning to seed five acres. Goss had finished his chores and was headed to the barn to tend the horses when he spotted the pigeons. A cloud of them landed on the newly seeded field, and in that familiar wavelike action they began to feed. Goss ran toward the birds as fast as he could and managed to flush them. But to no avail: despite the short duration of their visit, the flock had cleaned three acres of the four and half bushels of seed that Goss’s father had just planted. The pair could not find a single kernel of wheat.25

  When Per Kalm made his trip through the eastern United States and Canada (1748–51), he saw boys guarding stacks of harvested wheat. They would fire their rifles as the flocks landed, hitting some of the birds. Since the birds in the flocks had fledged earlier in the year, the survivors were not easily discouraged and would merely move to a nearby stack. All that running around proved more effective in tiring the boys than frightening the pigeons. A similar predicament faced eleven-year-old Moses Van Campen when he was serving as “scare pigeon” one Sunday morning in September 1768 while his parents were at church. (The family lived near the Delaware Water Gap in northwestern New Jersey.) A short while after they left, masses of pigeons settled on a newly planted wheat field. His joy in chasing off the pigeons soon ebbed, and his actions had not been particularly effective anyway, as the flocks merely repositioned themselves from one part of the field to the other. Then he remembered the six-foot-long “fowling piece” that hung on the kitchen wall. The gun had accompanied the family from the Netherlands and was considered a prized heirloom. It was always loaded, so Van Campen merely took the rifle and crept outside where he could rest it on the fence railing near the pigeons. “He put his face down along the stock just back of the lock, sighted along the barrel and pulled the trigger. There was success at one end of the weapon and disaster at the other.” Twenty pigeons were killed, but the kick from the gun flung him backward, skinning his nose in the process. But the real disaster came later when his father, ignoring Moses’s valor in trying to save the family’s produce, gave him “a flogging for having ventured to lay desecrating hands on that treasured” firearm.26

  Even from a purely anthropocentric view, the guardians against pigeon depredation sometimes went too far. Officials in Quebec twice issued orders protecting landowners from the destruction wrought by the pigeon hunters themselves. In 1710, pigeon hunting was banned on land “that had been planted with wheat, peas, and other grains”; in 1748 authorities expanded that prohibition to property held by one particular landowner in order to protect his woods and fields.27

  Occasionally farmers resorted to chemical weapons. There was no social harm in luring the pigeons with wheat soaked in alcohol, as one farmer did in Wisconsin. As the birds became soused, he merely loaded them into bags. There were, however, potentially deadly consequences to consider when the agent was strychnine or other poisons highly toxic to people. The pigeons might well survive for several hours and cover many miles before expiring, thus tempting numerous people with potentially harmful victuals. One of the most accomplished female bird students of her day, Jane Hine, recalled the spring in the early 1850s when passenger pigeons invaded the southern Lake Erie shore from Erie to Cleveland: “They produced a panic among farmers. They swarmed in oat fields recently sown and took the seed from the ground. They came into barns for grain.” Everyone dined on pigeon pie until they heard that the birds might be tainted—farmers near Erie were said to be poisoning them. Fortunately, the scare ended when the birds moved on a short while later. A decade of pestiferous pigeons in eastern Minnesota led some farmers to lace grain with strychnine to vanquish the feathered hordes. Warnings against eating the birds were issued, as they had been earlier to discourage the consumption of pigeons that might have partaken of gopher poison.28

  Happily, dealing with the pigeons did not rely exclusively on poison, guns, and clanging bells. It led to an important innovation in agriculture. Daniel Van Brunt, working in Horicon, Wisconsin, developed the first underground seeder in 1860, specifically as a way to thwart the pigeons.29

  Passenger pigeons competed with farmers in yet one other way. Given the omnivorous feeding habits of swine, farmers allowed their animals to rummage freely through whatever habitat made up the neighborhood. During mast years, the pigs could fatten up on the nuts, obviating the need to provide grain. (In the absence of mast, another and less expensive alternative would be to bring skinny hogs to market at a lower price.) But an influx of millions of pigeons left little in the way of surplus for the semidomesticated pigs. In few places was this possibility of greater concern than east Texas, where sizable numbers of people lived at marginal levels during the best of times. That concern grew as the pig population in the state swelled from seven hundred thousand to almost two million over the three decades ending in 1880.

  Whenever a big mast year began to draw pigeons, the newspapers of the region started voicing fears the birds would usurp the food, leaving none for the pigs. From Jasper County in 1875: “The wild pigeons are robbing the hogs of the mast.” From Nacogdoches in 1881: “We think there is a sufficient crop of mast in some localities to fatten pork, if not destroyed by the pigeons and squirrels.” But no one was more agitated over the avian threat to porcine welfare than a newspaper editor from Leon County, about sixty miles east of Waco: “Droves of one or two hundred each can be seen flying around prospecting, and it will not be many more weeks before there will be millions of them sweeping through the forest, eating all the acorns and causing a wail of despair to ascend from the throats of our beautiful razorbacks.”30

  PASSENGER PIGEON AS PRODUCT: MARKET HUNTING

  It probably did not take long after the first European settlements in North America gained their footholds before people began selling passenger pigeons to their neighbors. The author of one early account from 1633 “bought at Boston, a dozen of Pidgeons ready to pull’d and garbidged for three pence.” Some of that which was sold was likely the surplus of what was killed initially for home consumption. But over the centuries as human populations increased and technical advances allowed access to nearly everywhere, a trade in passenger pigeons developed that was maintained by thousands of people, most of whom were not pros, but merely locals who opportunistically took advantage of an easily made buck. This new situation intensified the plundering of the pigeons and ensured their extinction.31

  Many are the tales of rural people bringing their pigeons to the nearest town for sale. In the 1820s so many birds were brought to the market at Quebec that large quantities went unsold and were allowed to putrefy on the street, even though a dozen could be unloaded for as little as three pence. To eliminate the health risk, city officials enacted a law requiring proper disposal. A few decades later near Terre Haute, Indiana, Tacitus Hussey wrote of the thousands of pigeons sent to market that brought a penny apiece, even though they were already dressed: “I have in some neighborhoods, seen wash tubs filled with these dressed birds carted off to village markets and sold at a price which would not pay for the time taken, if time was worth anything at all!”32

  Sullivan Cook moved to Cass County, Michigan, in 1854 and set about carving out a farm from the forests. Taking a break one morning, he was roused by one of his daughters, who ran into the house exclaiming, “Pa, come out and see the pigeons.” A massive flight was under way, as he observed “flock after flock of the birds, one coming close upon the heels of another.” But he did not watch for long. He grabbed his shotgun, powder, and ammunition and ran with his twelve-year-old to a high point where he blasted away for a half hour before he broke for breakfast.
A tally of the morning’s work revealed twenty-three dozen birds. He was low on ammo anyway so he drove to Three Rivers and sold the lot for sixty-five cents a dozen. Given the high price he received and his location, the birds might have been destined for such cities as South Bend or Kalamazoo, or even Chicago.33

  Markets blossomed at different speeds at different places. There is no evidence, for instance, that pigeons taken in Texas were sold out of state. In Ontario, a market for pigeons did arise, but it never reached the proportions that it did in most of the U.S. pigeon range. In the states, pigeons sold by the dozen, hundreds, or barrel, while in Canada the measure was usually by the bird, the pair, or less commonly by the dozen.34

  Much of Ontario remained relatively undeveloped as late as the end of the nineteenth century. People devoted most of their efforts toward agriculture or other infrastructural activities such as lumbering. As one resident from Manitoulin Island said of the pigeons, they “came at a time when there was something else to do than disturb game.” But where cities arose, so did local markets, and with time birds killed in such Ontario counties as Middlesex, Simcoe, York, Lincoln, and Welland supplied urban markets. In Middlesex County locals took bushels of birds throughout the summer and early fall from the pines where they roosted. Pigeons killed by gunfire brought five cents each, while those that were netted or poled yielded an extra cent apiece. The hunters collected the carcasses and prepared them: “We usually hung the birds … overnight, to cool off, and packed them in layers of straw in apple-barrels.” The product was then packed on boats to Buffalo. Detroit was closer, but during years when the species was thick in Michigan, the price was probably better in New York. Birds originating in other counties were stuffed in barrels and shipped to Toronto or Montreal.35

  When the pigeons still appeared in large numbers in New England, local markets were in the big cities. Luther Adams was a “farmer and horticulturalist” who lived in Townsend, Massachusetts, just fifty miles from Boston. It is wooded and hilly country, and he conducted most of his netting on a high promontory. In 1847, he took 5,028 birds, and in 1848 almost 2,000. There is no record of what he received for them, but he was conscientious about listing his cost for bait and other expenses. In 1847, he bought nine bushels of buckwheat for $4.50, wheat for $3.50, labor for $1.00, use of netting sites for $3.50, and other expenses for $0.75.36

  Regional markets were already in full operation by 1851. In that year, at least four different companies trading in pigeons shared the Plattsburg, New York, nesting. A careful count indicated that one million birds had entered the nearby town of Beekmantown over two days. The networks were already in place, for “the news of this congregation … soon reached the ears of the old pigeon catchers in different parts of the country.” A firm from Massachusetts, the Harris Company, arrived first and began baiting, eventually reaching the level of four to six bushels of grain per day. (Over seven hundred bushels of corn and buckwheat would be used by all the parties during the nesting.) Then the other companies showed up, as did freelancers. The number of birds they shot or netted broke previous records: “It would be almost impossible to give an accurate account of the whole number taken; but four companies engaged in catching and purchasing, the writer knows, forwarded to the different markets not less than one hundred and fifty thousand dozen” (emphasis in the original). Live birds brought from thirty-one to fifty-six cents a dozen. Fifteen to twenty-five people were paid five cents a dozen to dress the birds.37

  Efforts to create national markets for game started before rail service became available. Chicago, for example, received vast quantities of dead birds collected from nearby grasslands and marshes. But the dealers had no way to transport it east, as they had no ice to keep the product fresh during the summer when shipping on the lakes was an option. In November 1850 merchant Robert Saunders tried an experiment. A four-horse prairie schooner hauling 1,650 grouse (sharp-tailed and/or ruffed) and 3,500 prairie chickens in boxes left his warehouse at the South Water Street market and headed to Buffalo. The weather proved favorable, as temperatures were cool enough to preserve the carcasses. Much of the cargo sold in Buffalo, with the remainder being shipped to Albany and New York City. The driver made the lonesome trip back having earned for Saunders an acceptable profit, but presumably the risks were deemed too high to repeat, and the rails reached Chicago soon thereafter.38

  National markets became established as the tentacles of the railroads penetrated more and more deeply into pigeon range. The first rail service in the country commenced on Christmas Day 1830 when the engine Best Friend of Charleston towed several train cars along six miles of tracks out of South Carolina’s capital. (The engine exploded the following year.) Within the next three decades, the nation’s length of track would exceed thirty thousand miles. During the 1850s, rail expansion linked New York City with the Great Lakes, Philadelphia with Pittsburgh, and Baltimore with the Ohio River at Wheeling. The Michigan Central and the Michigan Southern each made it to Chicago in 1852. Connections from Chicago to Galena and East St. Louis, both on the Mississippi River, were completed over the next three years. In Wisconsin, towns that would become famous for the vast pigeon cities nearby, such as Kilbourn City (now Wisconsin Dells) and Sparta, received rail service in 1857 and 1858, respectively. As early as 1842, three thousand pigeons from Michigan were delivered to a station, perhaps by boat, and then rode the rails to Boston. The extension of the Erie Railroad from New York City to southwestern New York opened up the pigeon trade from that area of frequent nestings, while in 1882 thirty-seven miles of new track allowed the easy transport of birds from Potter County, Pennsylvania.39

  Birds from the most remote reaches of pigeon range could be transported to rail lines. The farther it was to go, the less profit the dealer made, but it would still potentially be worthwhile. The expanding coverage of telegraph wires made pigeons even more vulnerable, since a large gathering of birds not only would draw the attention of locals, but would soon bring people from far and wide. The agents who staffed the rail stations made it their business to spread the word. (As a small measure of justice, perhaps, the sheer mass of pigeon flocks sometimes threatened or actually brought down telegraph wires as the birds flew into them or attempted to perch.)40

  The predicament that faced Stephen Sickles of Smethport, Pennsylvania, in spring 1842 illustrates the rise of markets in one area. The pigeons arrived in their throngs, and Sickles waited anxiously with his net ready to go at them. But there was no market then, so he had no way to sell what he caught. Instead, neighbors paid him $2 a day to catch the pigeons for them. Thirteen years after that, local markets were flourishing, but it still did not occur to people to transport to and sell their pigeons in the big cities. By 1880, however, things were very different in that part of Pennsylvania:

  By this time netting and shooting pigeons to be sold in the city markets had become a well organized business. Those engaged in the business were supplied with accurate information as to the locality where the birds might be found at any given time, with an estimate of their number and directions as to the most direct route by rail to a point nearest to the nesting place. This accounts for the great slaughter of the pigeons that took place during their nesting in the vicinity of Dingman Run.41

  Two of the best-established pigeon dealers were the brothers Joseph and Isaac Allen of Manchester, Michigan. The growth of their business provides another example of how pigeon trading expanded. They were just boys when the family moved from New York to Adrian, Michigan, in 1854. Flocks of pigeons migrated through in steady numbers for close to thirty years. Their early hunting activities, however, were more for sport than commerce, and they liked nothing better for breakfast than “a nice broiled pigeon.” They recognized that the price for pigeons would be highest in New York City, but their father didn’t trust the express companies. On one particularly heavy flight day, their father had bagged six hundred pigeons by ten A.M. One of the sons was instructed to take the birds into Adrian and sell them for a
dime a dozen. Being of sounder entrepreneurial timber than his dad, the son began offering them for twenty cents a dozen, and then a quarter, until he ran out. Later in the day, having replenished his supply, Dad disposed of the birds for the original dime he suggested. In New York City, the same twelve pigeons would have brought $2. The boys were tired of a measly dime or even a quarter, so during the next year’s flight (mid to late 1850s) they resolved to ship them to New York. Their father objected, “It is foolish for you to send them, as they will never be heard from.” But in just four days, they received their compensation: seventy cents a dozen. This was the lowest amount they were ever to get for pigeons, but this bunch was even more significant in being the first pigeons ever shipped from Michigan to New York City. Though small reward for a pack of pigeons, it was a giant leap toward establishing the Allen brothers as traders of national scope.42

  In 1861 few people made their living chasing passenger pigeons. A partial list of names and where they lived indicate that most claimed New York State as home, with others from Columbus; Hooksett, New Hampshire; and Camden, New Jersey. But over the next ten to twenty years the number would grow substantially, although there was never agreement as to how many there were at one time. The highest figure offered was from H. B. Roney, who opposed the slaughter. In 1878 he said that five thousand men were professionals. An estimate made four years earlier had claimed six hundred, while another in 1880 gave the figure as twelve hundred. The Allen brothers said that between one and two hundred practiced the trade full-time: “The pigeon business was very profitable for men who were used to it … When the pigeons changed their location, the pigeoners would follow them, sometimes going over a thousand miles.”43