A Feathered River Across the Sky

by Joel Greenberg

  In 1863, Bergh, along with his wife, Catherine Matilda, left for Russia, where he was to serve as secretary of the American legation in St. Petersburg, a position to which he had been appointed by President Lincoln. But for reasons that are not clear, they did not stay long. By then, however, he had cultivated a deep and abiding aversion to cruelty. For the rest of his life he fought against brutalizing animals through the organization he founded in 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the first such society in the western hemisphere. He would say, “Mercy to animals means mercy to mankind.” He meant it, for nine years later he cofounded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.26

  The last four decades of the 1800s offered an exciting variety of competitions to the devotees of rat baiting, dogfighting, bearbaiting, and even exotic contests between such animals as lions and bulls. On one cold night in February 1867, for example, New York cognoscenti enjoyed a bout between a local favorite, the bulldog Belcher, and a visitor from Boston, the bitch Venus. Backers of each put up $500. After fighting for thirty minutes, Belcher made the home crowd proud, leaving Venus’s “head a mass of blood, her jaws, jagged and torn, dripping a purple fluid, one ear torn away, and altogether not a kick left in her.” One venue in Philadelphia, unable to obtain dogs from New York, offered a show pitting twenty-four large rats against “a bull-headed little man,” who plowed into the milling rodents, grabbed them to his mouth, and broke their necks with his jaws. He yanked rat hairs from his teeth and cleansed his palate with a slug of whiskey. While dogfighting still goes on, it has been illegal for a long time. Bergh’s challenge in ending these contests in New York was enforcement. But his campaign against the pigeon shoots in New York required a preliminary step: he first had to get them outlawed.27

  Bergh started his crusade against the pigeon-shooting matches in 1869 by prosecuting their organizers under the New York cruelty law and a municipal ordinance. In response, the specific match he was trying to shut down moved across the river into New Jersey. This gave pro-shooting forces time to organize and they issued a warning to Bergh: if he took them to court, they would get an injunction and gut the law that enabled him to prosecute cases involving other forms of cruelty. His confidants persuaded him not to press the shooting issue so he backed off reluctantly: “I still indulge the belief that the day will come when the ‘sport’ in question will be substituted by a more humane pastime.”28

  Some powerful people who inhabited the same world of privilege as Bergh supported the contests. One was the newspaperman Robert Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle), who said of Bergh, “He is about the best intentioned and least practical man in the community. The idea of cruelty in field sports has long been exploded.” The shooters made a big point of claiming how careful they were in preventing the living targets from being pained. The bigger matches had armed men standing on the edge of the field to dispatch any wounded birds that might have eluded death by the competitors. Boys were around to catch the birds no longer able to fly, while additional gunners stood outside the gates ready to shoot any bird that might make it that far. Promoters claimed that all of these precautions prevented unnecessary suffering and virtually assured that few birds released for the meets survived the gauntlet.29

  Bergh did have his supporters, though, with one newspaper pointing out that his critics supported the reforms on the treatment of draft animals, but when it came to stopping cruelty in a sphere they found entertaining, their views suddenly changed. Through constant effort, public attitudes toward the shoots began to shift by 1881. Already, such states as New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts had outlawed the meets. Pro-Bergh New York papers headlined their views on a proposed match: “A Brutal Exhibition”; “Slaughtering: A ‘Gentlemanly Sport’”; and “Protect the Pigeons.”30

  The New York Times ran a satirical refutation of the argument that pigeon shooting prepared marksmen for military service and therefore enhanced national defense:

  It is generally supposed that the pigeon is a harmless and inoffensive bird, but who can tell what depths of ferocity lurk beneath its smooth and plausible plumage? We should be in a nice position were an army of millions of pigeons to suddenly fall upon us and begin to peck our eyes out. While we heedlessly ignore the possibility of such a calamity, brave and prudent pigeon-shooters are acquiring the skill which will enable them to defeat an invading host of infuriated pigeons … But if it is amusing to kill a bird, how much more interesting to kill a man! Men shooting would prepare sportsmen to defend their country against an invading army of Europeans.31

  The New York State Sportsmen’s Association’s annual meeting opened at Coney Island on June 20, 1881, to all the pomp and splendor that usually marked such events. The first day was devoted to business, but the actual meet started on June 21. Ten plunge traps stood twenty-one yards from the shooting platforms. The contestants came forward in “teams of twenty each and shot alternately in squads of 10 each.” The various member organizations ran hospitality tents that dispensed copious amounts of liquid refreshment, food, and cigars. Housed in a temporary shed nearby were stacks of crates filled with the thousands of pigeons that would provide the entertainment. Despite the cloudless sky and cooling breeze, few spectators were in attendance. At twelve thirty a closely watched party of three bought tickets and made it as far as the grandstands before they were stopped. Bergh had been recognized and was confronted by Abel Cook, president of the state association. Bergh demanded that he be allowed to inspect the premises to ensure that the birds were being treated in a humane manner. Cook said it was obvious nothing untoward was going on and denied Bergh further access. Bergh retreated to the grandstand and lingered an hour scanning the proceedings with binoculars. He then left, but not before conveying to Cook his intention to go straightaway to Albany to make sure such a meet never occurred on New York soil again. The law that emerged later that year became a model for the country.32

  As for this last meet in the state, the New York Times noted that a boy broke his arm by stumbling into a ditch as he chased a wounded pigeon. On the last evening, “carelessness of the person in charge” caused a fire that destroyed one tent and a number of valuable guns housed inside.33

  Shooting matches continued in the places where it was still legal. As the passenger pigeons became more and more difficult to obtain, those marksmen who felt deprived if they could not kill something began using substitutes. Besides rock pigeons, a host of other critters were enlisted as targets, including house sparrows (the weaver finch formerly known as the English sparrow), purple martins, blackbirds, bats, mallards, rabbits, and bobwhite. The quail would apparently fly in a straight line, and a likely score out of ten was only six or seven. Snow buntings, “as game little fellows as ever lived,” proved the most challenging, though, especially when snow was on the ground. A white target against a white background meant that a shooter would be lucky if he could see, let alone nail, half his birds.34

  Eventually, inanimate objects replaced live ones in most places. First there was the glass ball, one variant of which was developed by Captain Bogardus. But that was replaced by the “clay pigeon,” patented by George Ligowsky in 1880. Ligowsky went through forty different configurations before settling on the saucer-shaped target that is used today. Bogardus gave his endorsement: “Clay pigeons are by far a Superior Article for the sportsmen … This new invention will largely fill the void in trap shooting made by the scarcity of the wild pigeons.”35 Indeed, clay is still going strong.

  ETTA WILSON: A CHILDHOOD OF PASSENGER PIGEONS

  Shooting passenger pigeons was an important part of Etta Wilson’s heritage. Her later revulsion to what she had witnessed and abetted as a child led her to a distinguished career in ornithology and conservation. She worked tirelessly on behalf of the National Audubon Society and Bureau of Biological Survey, researching such topics as migration and the spread of house sparrows, as well as lecturing to over twenty thousand people a week. A
newspaper reporter for a long time, she left behind a quantity of writings documenting the varied chapters of her life. And a most extraordinary life it was.36

  Etta Wilson. Courtesy of Connie Ingham and Cindy Laug, Grand Valley State University

  Her paternal grandmother was Kin-ne-quay, the daughter of the great Odawa (Ottawa) chief Joseph Wakazoo. She herself attained distinction as a healer, providing relief to many patients, although unable to save her husband and six children from smallpox. Tribal elders pressed her to marry again to help maintain her royal lineage. She resisted strenuously, saying no one available was worthy of marrying a Wakazoo. In her forties, after great trepidation, she finally relented to wed Nayan Mi-in-gun, two decades her junior but from a family as distinguished as her own. Their union produced one son, Payson. Nayan Mi-in-gun died in a hunting accident, so it would be just the mother and child.37

  Congregational minister George Nelson Smith and his wife, Arvilla Powers Smith, left Vermont in 1833 and established a mission in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. George Smith was eloquent and persuasive, and visiting Indians began talking him up to others. In 1837, a contingent of Odawa colead by Wakazoo traveled from Emmet County (just south of the Mackinac Straits) to meet the reverend. They were so impressed with each other that Smith committed his life to “the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Indians.” Wakazoo and his followers, in turn, relocated to Allegan, Michigan, where they formed a village devoted to Smith’s teachings.38

  The Smiths had a number of children, including their eldest daughter, Mary. She and Payson attended classes together at the village school and both spoke fluent Odawa and English. He, the son of a princess and the grandson of a war chief, and she, the daughter of the village’s leading white citizen—how could it be otherwise? They fell in love. Kin-ne-quay was devastated when she learned and rushed to Rev. Smith in a “furious rage”: “I will not let my son marry a white woman and learn to be a white woman’s man, to lie, to steal, to cheat, to swear, to go out and get drunk and come home with strange diseases.” Smith was none too keen on the developments either, and Arvilla remained opposed until she died. But the community elders supported the marriage, and Smith realized that he couldn’t very well obstruct the strong desires of the two young people without looking like a hypocrite to his parishioners. Like parents everywhere before and since, Kin-ne-quay performed some mental gymnastics to overcome long-held beliefs and finally assented to the arrangement. On July 29, 1851, Smith presided over the nuptials of his daughter and Payson Wolfe, who now used the anglicized version of his name. In his diary, Smith noted that “the occasion was pleasant.”39

  Payson and Mary Wolfe had thirteen children, including Etta, who was born in 1857. Their farm occupied a narrow stretch of hilly land that overlooked Grand Traverse Bay. Most of the property supported a thick woods, dominated by beech, maple, cedar, and hemlock, but with some open patches, including a four-acre pasture.40

  Etta and her family looked forward to the April arrival of the pigeons. Vast flocks streamed to a favorite breeding area not far away, where they would spend the spring and early summer caring for their young. On occasion the Wilsons witnessed a reverse migration, with strings of pigeons moving south. She surmised that these were birds aiming for a more northerly destination that inadvertently wound up on the peninsula. When they reached the tip, they preferred to backtrack rather than cross the bay.

  When it was pigeon season, her father would shine, for as befitting the progeny of Odawa chiefs, he exceeded all others in his prowess as a pigeon hunter. Payson’s goal was to shoot a thousand pigeons before breakfast. The children rushed to the house with a basket as soon as it was filled. The bodies were dumped and they headed back to Payson, where on a good day another filled container would await. This running back and forth continued until the quota was reached. At the house Mary and some of the older children would sort the birds and dress the ones for the morning meal. Payson had a knack for knowing when he’d reached his number, at which time he would usher the children homeward.

  The neighbors recognized the Wolfe farm as the premier shooting spot in the vicinity. Virtually every male old enough to handle a gun in the nearby town of Northport would call on the Wolfes to try his hand in the carnage. Many relied on the sound of Payson’s gun to signal that pigeon-plunking had begun and it was time to climb the hill. While the neighbors killed many tens of thousands of birds each season, none were as adept as Payson.

  The killing was bad enough in the spring when the adults returned, but later when the fledglings began flying, the fusillade proved devastating. Their response to the hail of bullets was to close ranks, seeking protection in one another. This merely made for a larger target. But Etta observed them react in an even more self-destructive way: “I have seen a flock of hundreds of inexperienced birds fly up the hill to and meeting the barrage of guns, falter, hesitate, turn and pass the entire gamut of the line thus exposing themselves twice to the attack, and return whence they came. If twenty-five individuals survived the double onslaught they were lucky.”

  When the birds exited the forest, they dipped low over the pasture and stayed just above the ground as they cleared the hill. Here not just the male neighbors gathered, but many females as well, for guns were not necessary to partake of the festivities. Clubs and rocks proved effective as well. Etta’s huge family included a canine of bull/shepherd stock whose strength was as a watchdog, not a hunter. But even he could not contain himself when the pigeons swooshed over his head: leaping ponderously, he actually grabbed a bird out of the air!

  Etta’s first job was to retrieve the birds her father had only wounded. She snuck through grass as tall as she was to collect them. Etta struggled over these damaged birds. While holding the fallen pigeon gently in her little hands, she would study it, noting its “wild frightened red eyes and with one or both wings or legs broken or shot off, while its little heart beat in rapid tempo against [my] palms.” She could not kill one herself, so she handed the prisoner to her father or a brother—a quick snap of the head and the bird would be stilled.

  For reasons not stated, one of these pigeons enjoyed a reprieve. Named Partie, she roamed freely throughout the house as she recuperated from her bullet-induced injuries. Her principal mode of transportation was Mary, on whose shoulder she would perch as her ride performed domestic duties. Occasionally, the hitchhiker would “reach up to caress mother’s cheek with her slick little head.” Partie slept on a fresh bed of newspapers between two books on a shelf. Etta says the bird recovered completely save for the loss of a few feathers, but her eventual fate went unreported.

  After breakfast there remained hundreds of pigeons to process. Some number became food for the family—the fifteen mouths could devour nearly fifty pigeons in a day. Other birds were salted for consumption during the winter. And whenever a neighbor asked, Mary generously replied, “Take all you want.”

  Most of the pigeons, though, were prepared for market. The family busied itself sorting the birds: the better ones bound by the legs and sold by the dozen, while others were crammed into barrels. The Leelanau Peninsula was free of railroads, so all the birds went out by boat. During pigeon season numerous vessels stopped nearly every day, and Payson sold most of the birds he had, either those in barrels, destined for Chicago, or by the dozen for consumption by the boat crews. These latter fetched anywhere from five cents to a dime, depending on the overall quantity available at the various ports. When prices were too low or the market too saturated to merit cash purchases, Payson would on occasion trade the birds for “baker’s bread” (as opposed to the less desirable homemade bread). Twelve pigeons would bring one loaf.

  Neither Etta nor her father ever visited the nestings that took place in northern Michigan. But her brothers did and they returned with tales of “horror”: “Gnomes in the form of men wearing old, tattered clothing, heads covered with burlap and feet encased in old shoes or rubber boots went about with sticks and clubs knocking off the birds’ nests whil
e others were chopping down trees and breaking off the over-laden limbs to gather the squabs.” Etta called it “an inferno where the Pigeons had builded their Eden.”

  Etta noted the yearly decline of the pigeons. Every year fewer birds stayed to nest, until 1878, when there were none. That was the year of the last great nesting that took place near Petoskey, across the bay to the north. Others also noticed that the spring flocks seemed less dense than they used to be. Few thought the birds would vanish altogether, but merely that they would find another place to gather and that the residents would be denied a source of food and commerce. But the wiser among Reverend Smith’s Odawa congregation did complain to him that if the hunting did not let up, there might actually “be no more pigeons.” He conveyed their concerns to the professional pigeoners, suggesting that they give the birds a respite every other year. “Bosh” is the four-letter word Etta uses as their response, though likely it was harsher than that.

  Soon after the 1878 nesting at Petoskey broke up, Etta and her family woke one June morning to find the surface of Grand Traverse Bay and its shoreline covered with dead pigeons. It had been a fair night, free of wind and fog. Etta wondered if it was possible whether the birds, wrought with despair and weary of endless torment, had “flung themselves into the waters of oblivion.” The Odawa gazed upon the windrows of pigeon corpses and harbored no doubt: “They have committed suicide. Their persecution was more than any living thing could endure.”