{ After J.B. Zwecker. The Bison’s Charge. Wood-cut engraving by Spottiswoode
& Company from Grantley Berkeley’s The English Sportsman in the Western Prairies, 1861. An adept horseman, Berkeley considered running unwounded buffalo to bay great sport, “...worthy the contemplation of any lover of nature or scion of the chase...” }
Foreword by E. Norman Flayderman
2008 Missoula, Montana
{ TABLE OF CONTENTS }
Foreword By E. Norman Flayderman | Acknowledgments | Introduction |
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xiii
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Chapter I The Object of the Chase: Big-Game Animals of the American West |
2
Chapter II The Subsistence Hunters: Twelve Millennia Surviving with Wildlife | Chapter III The Sport Hunters: Adventurers and Aristocrats, 1800-1865 | Chapter IV The Arms of the Chase: An Evolving Array of Weaponry | Chapter V The Market Hunters: Demand, Depletion, Devastation |
28
66
110
160
Chapter VI The Sport Hunters: Officers, Blue-Bloods, and Foreign Gentlemen in the Golden Age, 1865-1900 | Chapter VII The Image of the Chase: Artists, Illustrators, Photographers, and Engravers |
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Chapter VIII The Sport Hunters: American Adventurers in the Golden Age, 1865-1900 |
296
Chapter IX The Hunter-Naturalists: Conserving Western Big-Game Animals | Bibliography | Index |
386
374
354
206
{ Alfred Jacob Miller.
Hunting the Bear. Pencil and watercolor on paper, 1837. The grizzly bear provided Captain William Drummond Stewart with several dramatic skirmishes. Of this scene, artist Miller wrote, “As the Grizzly bear takes precedence of all his congeners by his enormous weight, power, and ferocious disposition, it is a favorable thing for the hunters that the first impulse of the animal is to escape. Indeed it is a rule with the Indians and white hunters not to attack him without a strong party, and even then not to press him too closely.�
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 37.1940.107. }
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foreword
A
droitly fulfilling the promise of its title, Hunting the American West: The Pursuit of Big Game for Life, Profit, and Sport, 1800-1900 captures the grandeur, excitement, peril, and often-misunderstood impact of the historical quest for large game in the broad expanses of the western frontier. Author Richard Rattenbury has produced a veritable tour de force with this incomparable and evenhanded approach to an often controversial, yet vastly absorbing subject. It is appropriate to note that this engrossing study is not merely a narrative of a century’s incessant carnage, but a deft synthesis of eyewitness accounts and pictorial material that affords unusual insight into the diverse methods and motives for hunting big game in the Far West. No other work on the subject conveys the feeling and character of the hunt in its various eras and styles, or its profound consequences, as convincingly or as engagingly. The accomplished treatment of diverging modes of subsistence, market, and sport hunting, underpinned throughout with colorful accounts in the words of the actual participants, is further enriched with a profusion of period illustrations, artworks, and photographs. Such a melding of engaging narrative, direct quotations, and historic imagery provides a vivid new interpretation of big-game hunting during its most dynamic era in the United States. Justly meriting the author’s emphasis are the significance and consequences of buffalo hunting over the nineteenth century. As
much as may have been told of the vast herds of buffalo and their near extinction, readers are certain to be enlightened on the historic background of the market and sport hunters who all but wiped out those magnificent beasts. That saga is told—and illustrated—as never before, presenting a broad cross-section of the hunters and their divergent motives and methods in the unprecedented slaughter. Although the annals of American hunting are replete with countless works by a broad and markedly diverse legion of observers, hunters, historians, and writers, the author has produced a brilliant new panoramic history of the quest for big game in the frontier West. Given a subject so well established and widely popular in the larger genre of outdoor literature, and one today often found provocative or emotionally charged, this thoroughly researched book stands apart. Both as a historian and curator of western material culture, Rattenbury’s scholarship is conspicuous throughout his writing. His expertise is particularly revealed in exacting and often overlooked details, which contribute to make this unique work impressive, lively, and thoroughly enjoyable. Whether one is a historian, conservationist, environmentalist, sportsman, or collector of hunting arms and memorabilia, this is a book that deserves to be read. E. Norman Flayderman Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Foreword | xi
{ DeCost Smith. Antelope
Hunting—South Dakota. (Detail). Oil on canvas, circa 1890. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the West was open to sport hunters from all levels of American society, including more than a few ranchers and cowboys like Theodore Roosevelt, Granville Stuart, and the men who worked with and for them.
William B. Ruger Collection; Jeffrey Nintzel image; courtesy Adrienne Ruger Conzelman. }
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acknowledgments
I
n researching and writing this book, the author has pursued the big-game hunters of the nineteenth-century American West nearly as fervently as they pursued their quarry. For without their surprisingly rich literary legacy, this work would have been impossible to create. To them he is particularly indebted for recording all that they saw and experienced. In locating and securing much of this written and pictorial material, special thanks are due the staff of the Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; including the Center’s director, Charles E. Rand, associate librarians Jeri Stone and Karen Spilman, and imaging technician John Hayes. Over the past eight years the Research Center has built a fine collection of literature and imagery relevant to big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century West. Also at the Museum, gratitude is due Dustin Potter, associate manager of information technology, who proved especially helpful in image replication. And particular appreciation is owed to longtime-friend and fellow-curator Ed Muno, who produced the images of the institution’s collections. Acknowledgment for the provision of other artistic, historic, and artifact images is due the following institutions and businesses: American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Blue Book Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Butterfield & Butterfield (now Bonham’s and Butterfield’s) Auctioneers, Inc., San Francisco, California; Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, Colorado; Western History Department of the Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Glenbow Museum Archives, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Haley Memorial Library and History Center, Midland, Texas; Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio; Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, Saint Louis, Missouri; James D. Julia Auction Company, Fairfield, Maine; Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas; the Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.; Greg Martin Auctions, Inc., San Francisco, California; Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana; Montezuma Masonic Lodge No. 1, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Museum of Northwest Colorado, Craig, Colorado; the National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska; the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; the New-York Historical Society, New York, New York; State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck, North Dakota; Oklahoma Publishing Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Norman, Oklahoma; Panhandle-Plains Historical Society Museum, Canyon, Texas; The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Remington Arms Company, Madison, North Carolina; Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York; Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas; Rock Island Auction Company, Moline, Illinois; Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas; Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Austin, Texas; Union Pacific Railroad Museum, Council Bluffs, Iowa; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland; Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; and National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. As well, the following individuals, collectors, and connoisseurs magnanimously shared material from their personal holdings: Raymond Bentley; Big Sky Collection (Larry and LeAnne Peterson); H.B. “Britt” Brown; Daniel Cullity; E. Norman Flayderman; Mark J. Gera; Jim Gordon; Joe and Murlene Grandee; Michael Haynes; Martin J. Lane; Edward Lewis; the Magruder Family; Greg and Petra Martin; A.I. McCroskie; Peter & Patty Murray; Herb Peck, Jr.; the William B. Ruger Collection (Adrienne Ruger Conzelman); Tony and Jody Schwab; Frank Sellers; Neil and Sharon Snyder; Glen Swanson; Siro Toffolon; Richard J. Ulbrich; the Tom Webster Family; R.L. Wilson; Donald Yena; and Private Collections.
Acknowledgments | xiii
{ Photographer unknown.
Our Camp Near Lake Abundance [Montana], U.S.A. From a stereograph published by J.F. Jarvis, Washington, D.C., circa 1895. As their predecessors had for nearly a century, these ardent sportsmen sought out the wilderness of the American West in their pursuit of adventure and big game.
Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2004.237. }
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Particular acknowledgment is due colleague, friend, widely recognized arms authority, and devoted big-game hunter E. Norman Flayderman, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who very graciously authored the Foreword. And for their reading and critique of the manuscript, my special thanks to longtime-friend and museum-colleague B. Byron Price, Director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West, Norman, Oklahoma; historian, educator, and author Dr. John F. Reiger, Professor of History, Ohio University, Chillicothe; and, again, ardent hunter, antiquarian, and author E. Norman Flayderman. Each offered insightful historical and editorial comments that corrected, smoothed, and enriched the final product. Gratitude as well to Paul D. McCarthy of McCarthy Creative Services, New York, New York, for sage advice on the niceties of publishing. Extraordinary acknowledgment is due the venerable Boone and Crockett Club of Missoula, Montana, which cordially adopted the book. The author is greatly honored to be published under its imprimatur. Special thanks to Dr. Mark Steffen, Chairman of the Publications Committee; and particular gratitude to Julie T. Houk, the Club’s Director of Publications, whose fine editorial and design talents ably melded manuscript and images into an informative and attractive package. Finally, my deepest appreciation to my wife, Suzette, to whom this book is dedicated. She offered many helpful suggestions from the non-hunter’s perspective and provided encouragement throughout some sixty months of cloistered distraction. Errors of fact, or faults in interpretation, are entirely the author’s own. Richard C. Rattenbury Edmond, Oklahoma
{ Photographer unknown.
[Untitled]. Tintype, America, circa 1890. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the buckskinned frontier hunter had become a romantic persona emulated by many—some of whom never hunted the West. These posers appear less animated than their supposed blackbear antagonist. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2005.048. }
Acknowledgments | xv
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introduction
A
t the opening of the nineteenth century, hunting already held an integral place in Native American and EuroAmerican culture. Over the following one hundred years, though, the practice would take on a dynamic and transformative character hitherto unknown as it played out across the breadth of the trans-Mississippi West—the region extending from the Mississippi River west to the Pacific Ocean and bounded north and south by the present Canadian and Mexican borders. The distinctive character of hunting in the West sprang from many sources, not least among them the region’s immense scale, its prodigious wildlife populations, and its essentially frontier condition. Other factors—commercial, technological, political, social, and philosophical—also contributed to the dynamism of western hunting. And, certainly, yet another distinguishing feature of hunting in the nineteenth-century American West sprang from the extravagant presence of so many big-game species. Their pursuit comprises the principal focus of this book. At the beginning of the century, the region harbored an amazing variety and abundance of wildlife, not least among its biggame animals. Prior to the 1870s, antelope, deer, elk, and buffalo flourished in seemingly unlimited numbers from the eastern reaches of the Great Plains into the forested haunts of the Rocky Mountains and beyond. Among and atop the vast mountain ranges, moose, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats could be found in substantial numbers, while grizzly bears, black bears, and mountain lions thrived from the Plains to the Pacific Coast. These big-game species would have a tremendous influence on the process of settling the trans-Mississippi West, and they in turn would be immensely affected by the region’s ultimate settlement. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Native American peoples, and to a lesser extent Euro-Americans, exploited these natural resources in the role of subsistence hunters procuring food, clothing, and shelter. Both peoples acted as market hunters as well, seeking trade or profit in the West’s first truly extractive, resource industry. And the Euro-Americans also pursued the big-game animals
as recreational sport hunters in the cultural tradition of their English and Continental forebears. Following a brief description of the region’s principal big-game animals, this work will recount the progression and impact of these various hunting practices with a focus on the exploits and accounts of the peoples involved. It also will address the evolving techniques and weapons that sustained the chase throughout the nineteenth century, and include a sampling of the artistic, photographic, and material legacies of hunting in the West. The author hopes that something of the challenge and adventure of the chase, as well as something of the varied character of its participants, will emerge in the narrative, fostering a fuller appreciation of this vital, colorful, and sometimes-scandalous chapter in the history of the trans-Mississippi frontier. Hunting, certainly, was a pervasive practice throughout the West during all of the nineteenth century. And, as in most human endeavors, the activity in its varied forms involved characters admirable and otherwise—elementary survivors, pragmatic entrepreneurs, unadorned adventurers, thoughtful sportsmen, lovers and exploiters of nature. It is fortunate that many of them, from George Catlin and John Palliser to Richard Irving Dodge and Theodore Roosevelt, proved to be talented writers as well as fervent hunters. Their accounts—and those of many others—are quoted often and sometimes at length to better convey the context and immediacy of the chase, for such first-hand descriptions furnish a fuller sense of the excitement, danger, humor, and pathos of big-game hunting as it came to be realized by its practitioners. Throughout, the use of the participant’s own words has been relied upon as well to more fully convey a sense of their character, their time, and their experience. The often-inventive and colorful spelling, grammar, and punctuation practiced by many of these writers usually have been left uncorrected. Bracketed interpolations appear only in instances where it was felt that greater clarity was required. Although “buffalo running”—the sine qua non of western adventure for subsistence hunters and gentlemen sportsmen alike—
{ Opposite: Charles M.
Russell. Flagging Antelope. Watercolor on paper, 1898. An ardent admirer of the Native Americans and frontiersmen of a West then passed away, Russell here portrays them as compatriots employing the customary method of still-hunting the everwatchful pronghorn.
Image courtesy the Oklahoma Publishing Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. }
Introduction | xvii
{ Photographer unknown. [Untitled]. Ninth-plate tintype, America, circa 1865. Armed with a fancy, half-stock percussion sporting rifle, this huntsman wears an outfit of lightweight, fringed buckskin. Such frontier garb became emblematic of civilians devoted to the western chase during the latter nineteenth century. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2005.278.1. }
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appears as a recurring theme in this book, other big-game species and hunting practices also receive ample attention. As will be seen, clear distinctions between subsistence and sport hunting sometimes prove difficult to make because the motivations, needs, and ultimate goals of their practitioners frequently were mixed. Wilderness subsistence hunters often realized adventure and exhilaration in the successful chase, while frontier sport hunters almost invariably sustained themselves in part from their trophies. Market hunters, too, survived off their kills in varying degree, but their goal in hunting had little to do with sustenance or sport and everything to do with profit. Certainly, though, the hunting practiced by all manner of natives, frontiersmen, professionals, and sportsmen proved, in varying measure, a blend of necessity and adventure. This work attempts to present an informative and entertaining history of big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century American West. Much of the narrative focuses on hunting on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains simply because that is where much of the harvest took place. Sport hunting commands a substantial portion of the book because its practitioners often proved more observant—and more literate—than did subsistence and market hunters. The participants, however, are countless—from Native Americans, mixed-race voyageurs, and Spanish and Mexican rancheros and ciboleros, to European aristocrats, remittance men, and gentlemen sportsmen; and from American frontiersmen, artists, naturalists, and military officers, to eastern patricians, Midwestern businessmen, and a smattering of daring women. For big-game hunters of all persuasions, the nineteenth century was one of astonishing abundance, unimpeded opportunity, and oftenextraordinary waste. The several economic and technological currents that influenced western big-game hunting are taken into account in the narrative, but this work does not presume to be a social or cultural treatise. Rather, for perhaps the first time, this book attempts to draw together a broad spectrum of original sources, voices, and images to provide a multifaceted accounting of the chase as it played out in the West more than a century ago. And, while seeking to present a balanced story, this synthesis makes no claim to comprehensiveness, for available source materials proved quite extensive and many fine hunting accounts had to be selected out in creating a manageable volume. •
{ William Robinson Leigh.
Looking for Sheep. Oil on canvas, 1941. Even forty years after the golden age of big-game hunting had passed, artists continued to immortalize the free, rugged, and adventuresome spirit of that bygone era in the American West.
William B. Ruger Collection; Wunderlich & Co. image; courtesy Adrienne Ruger Conzelman. }
Introduction | xix