When I can shoot my rifle clear,
To pigeons in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to pork and beans,
And live on pigeon pies.
—DITTY COMMON IN 1850S
Although Jacques Cartier was the first European to see passenger pigeons, he was not the first one known to have killed any. (Perhaps he and his crew were sated by the casks of great auks that they had collected and salted earlier.) That honor falls to Samuel de Champlain, who tarried a few days during July of 1605 in Goosefare Bay off southern Maine: “Upon these islands grow so many red currants that one can hardly see anything else; and there are also countless numbers of pigeons, whereof we take a goodly quantity.”1
The generations who came later would take ever more goodly amounts of pigeons. As amazing as was the abundance of the pigeons, the litany of slaughter dominates the history of this species. People killed them in virtually every way imaginable and for many reasons. And at times, seemingly for no reason at all.
The newly arrived Europeans looked at the masses of pigeons both with wonder and hunger. The new continent possessed fecundity beyond what they had ever seen, and the pigeons manifested the pullulation of life to the ultimate degree. They were easy to catch and were seemingly inexhaustible, albeit unavailable at any given location for months or even years at a time. But when they were in the vicinity, their presence provided a reliable source of food, the absence of which would have made some pioneering efforts even more difficult, if not impossible.
For example, a great crawling pestilence befell much of New Hampshire in 1781. The unidentified larvae “destroyed the principal grains that year,” eliminating both bread stuffs and silage for cattle and pigs. The lack of food became so severe the residents of several newer settlements considered pulling up stakes and leaving. But they were rescued by a bumper crop of pumpkins in Haverhill and Newbury, two of the older towns, and the arrival “of an immense number of passenger pigeons.” It would be nice to say that the pigeons arrived in the nick of time and devoured the offending arthropods like the California gulls that feasted on the locusts that plagued the Mormons decades later. But, in fact, the birds showed up “immediately upon the disappearance” of the insects. Although probably somewhat disappointed by the timing, the residents gave full credit to Providence nonetheless for sending the legions of pigeons in quantities that could not be exceeded, “unless [by] the worms which preceded them.” The Tyler family of Piermont took advantage of the new arrivals and in the next ten days caught over four hundred dozen. They invited their neighbors over for a picking bee. The helpers kept the meat of all the birds they stripped, and the Tylers acquired enough feathers to make four good beds. Pigeon meat preserved for the winter proved to be a critically important replacement for the lost cereal.2
Pigeons were important to many early settlers. An official report on the status of the Niagara Colony in 1785 credited wild pigeons and fish as being the principal food that sustained the residents through the summer until crops could be harvested. All the Crown needed to supply was a small amount of flour to each person. At Galt, Ontario, in 1832, when the combination of a summer-long drought and an August frost wiped out most of the crop, the locals were saved from starvation by netting or shooting hundreds of pigeons.3
The residents of the young Plymouth Colony came to see the pigeons as a double-edged sword, or, in the words of John Winthrop, “the Lord showed us, that He could make the same creature, which formerly had been a great chastisement, now to become a great blessing.” In 1643, unusually chilly and wet weather reduced the corn crop alarmingly. And to worsen the situation, just before harvest time, the pigeons arrived (“above 10,000 in one flock”) and consumed most of what there was. Five years later, the pigeons made another appearance, but this time after the harvest was completed. In this instance, Winthrop proclaimed the birds “a great blessing, it being incredible what multitudes of them were killed daily.”4
As the white presence in North America increased and no longer needed rescuing by hordes of passenger pigeons, the birds became less out-of-the-blue lifesavers and more a dietary mainstay. A traveler riding between Newport and Boston in September 1759 found that little other food was available and locals subsisted almost exclusively on pigeons. Masters fed servants pigeons with such frequency in places that the employees demanded clauses in their contracts restricting how often this sort of poultry was served. Alexander Wilson told of the times when passenger pigeons were not eaten merely once a day for days on end but were the starring ingredient for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over many days. At that point, he said, “the very name becomes sickening.”5
The territory around Wells and Kennebunk, Maine, in the mid-1700s was rich in whortleberries, which drew the pigeons in “innumerable numbers.” Gunning them down was an exercise in democracy, for the pastime attracted everyone, including wealthy men in their prime, the elderly, children, women, and slaves. An accomplished shooter could bring in three hundred in a day. But the only way one could give away the surplus was by offering the birds fully dressed.6
From the ruthless standpoint of the market, the ultimate manifestation of profligate slaughter is when the prey is killed in such quantities that the accumulated corpses are valueless. Two pence a dozen was the going price in Boston in August 1736, and many could not even be sold at that amount. About the same time, in Granby, Massachusetts, surplus birds were fed to pigs, a practice that was not uncommon at nestings and roosts. Of all the awful things that were done to passenger pigeons, the great passenger pigeon historian A. W. Schorger devoted a single sentence to this use of the bird: “The extensive feeding of pigeons to hogs is unworthy of comment.” At least those who did this relieved the hunger of their livestock. Not even that much could be said for what J. Benwell observed on his trip from Cleveland to the Ohio River in what was probably the 1840s: “We saw many carcasses of these birds outside the villages, such numbers having been destroyed, that the inhabitants could not consume them, and they were accordingly thrown out as refuse.”7
The problem of too many dead pigeons was solved slightly differently at a nesting in Pennsylvania. There the surplus was plowed into fields as fertilizer. In this area, a widely held belief was that burying dead passenger pigeons in the garden resulted in more colorful flowers.8
For those who could afford to be choosy about what they ate, questions arose as to the palatability of passenger pigeon flesh and how best to prepare it. G. W. Cunningham, writing in 1899, saw little culinary merit in the bird. He thought it was hardly better than a yellowhammer! Yellowhammer is an antiquated name for the northern flicker, a species of woodpecker that has a great fondness for ants. But the flicker did have its supporters, too, as expressed in that strange book of 1853 The Market Assistant, which is sort of a gustatory field guide to the birds. All the species that were stocked in the New York markets are discussed as to their suitability for the kitchen. Thomas DeVoe, the author, said that flickers were a seasonal specialty most often appearing in the fall, “when it is fat, and its flesh quite savory, but not so tender as the robin.”9
As for passenger pigeons, DeVoe had decided ambivalence. Adult birds shot on the wing were “very indifferent eating, even if well and properly cooked.” Much better were the adults caught live and fed grain in coops. But best of all were the squabs, most delectable “when fat and fresh.” William Byrd also was not impressed with birds killed during migration, “though good enough upon the march, when hunger is the sauce, and makes it go down better than truffles and morels would do.”10
A Kentucky author penned a memoir on passenger pigeons that eventually appeared in the Indianapolis Star newspaper. After two trials, he found the flesh “as tough as whit leather, about as juicy as a pith of a dried corn stalk, as digestible as rawhide and almost as hard to masticate as rubber.” This prompted a stout defense of the bird by C. G. M’Neill, who pointed out that one could say the same for beef or chicken if all you had tasted was an old bull and a four-year-old rooster. Another big fan of the bird as food was Etta Wilson, who averred that she “never ate a pigeon of any age that was not delicate and delicious.”11
Numerous dishes featured the birds. Pigeon pie was one favorite, and stewed pigeon another. An 1857 guide to help Canadian settlers offers this recipe: “To make a pot pie of them, line the bake-kettle with a good pie crust; lay out your birds, with a little butter on the breast of each, and a little pepper shaken over them, and pour in a tea cupful of water—do not fill your pan too full; lay in the crust, about half an inch thick, cover your lid with hot embers and put a few below. Keep your bake-kettle turned carefully, adding more hot coals to the top, till the crust is cooked.”12
Two recipes for stewed pigeon, one from Madison and the other from Chicago, are similar. In one the birds are stuffed with finely chopped bread and pork, while the other adds hard-boiled eggs to the mixture. Bard the birds with pork, place them in a tightly covered kettle with enough water to cover them, and put them into the oven until done. The real difference is in the sauces that finish the dishes. The Chicago ladies preferred mixing the pigeon gravy with the juice of one lemon, a tablespoon of currant jelly, and enough flour to thicken the boiled sauce. Perhaps in homage to one of her state’s principal industries, Mrs. Hobbins of Madison simply added butter and cream to her gravy.13
Although not especially fond of passenger pigeon, George Sears, writing as Messmuk, recognized that one might be out in the woods where there was little else to eat. To make the best of the situation he suggested boiling the birds until they were tender and then taking them from the pot. Remove the breast meat, dredge it in flour, and then panfry as you would squirrels. The giblets and rest of the carcass should be stewed for a later meal. A Canadian observer from the 1770s reported that the pigeons “furnish soups and fricassees, which are usually dressed with a cream sauce and small onions.” One unusual preparation was contributed by M. W. Althouse of Toronto: “Hunters and maple sugar makers often cooked adult pigeons by roughly drawing and then enclosing the un-plucked carcass in wet clay which was then covered with the hot embers and wood ashes. When cooked the meat was removed from the covering of baked clay which kept with it all the feathers and most of the skin of the bird.”14
People used pigeon flesh in all kinds of ways. As food for long voyages, roasted pigeons were kept wholesome by cramming them into barrels where they were covered with melted lard and mutton fat that would congeal to form an airtight seal. Most surplus pigeon meat, though, was salted, smoked, or pickled. A fancy variation on the last technique was employed by the mother of Charles Belknap when they lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By her hand, numerous pigeons wound up in earthen jars, where they were preserved with spiced apple cider and served to special guests: “The minister never had to eat woodchuck in our house.” A couple from Illinois preferred to age and cure their meat, as a guest discovered when he was led to their attic, where many hundreds of dried pigeon breasts hung from the rafters on hooks.15
From their pedestrian beginnings as food for fearless explorers and struggling pioneers, passenger pigeons followed their human predators up the social ladder to become important components of some of the fanciest meals served in nineteenth-century America. Charles Dickens had just turned thirty years old in February 1842, but his literary success, embodied by such novels as Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby, earned him accolades everywhere he traveled on his tour of the United States. When New Yorkers had the chance to fete the celebrated author, they staged a banquet that was “the finest civic pride could produce.” The meal was held in the venerated City Hotel, the grande dame of local hotels since it was built in 1793, and catered by one Mr. Gardener at the cost of $2,500. Sitting at the head chair was Washington Irving, just one of the many luminaries present. After working their way through the first course of soup and/or fish, and a second course of eighteen items (mostly meats labeled either cold, roasted, or boiled), they had the chance to explore nineteen more selections denoted as entrées. Sharing the spotlight with such dishes as Larded Sweet Bread with Sorrel and Stewed Terrapin were three pigeon creations: Stewed Pigeons with Peas, Stewed Pigeons with Mushrooms, and Pigeon Patties with Truffles.16
Still a part of the gastronomic life of New York’s bourgeoisie, the pigeons soared to even loftier heights with the opening of what was arguably the country’s first truly great restaurant, Delmonico’s. When Rear Admiral Lessoffsky steered his fleet into New York Harbor in November of 1862, Secretary of State Seward wanted to show the administration’s heartfelt appreciation, for Russia was then the only major European nation publicly supporting the Union cause. It was also meant to impress Britain and France, who had not yet chosen a side in the war. While the venue was the Academy of Music, the food was Delmonico’s. As one of the many entrées, the Russian officers and their hosts could have enjoyed côtelette de pigeons à la macédoine, pigeon cutlets served with a medley of diced vegetables laced with butter. Lately Thomas comments that this meal demonstrates how “gastronomy can be made to serve two purposes simultaneously: in this case, to give delight to friends and to give potential enemies indigestion.” Four years later, President Andrew Johnson came to visit. From City Hall, where he was hailed by the mayor, Johnson and his party (which included his successor, General Grant) formed a parade that moved on to Delmonico’s through throngs of cheering New Yorkers. Each of the dinner courses was paired with a wine, and for the entrées the selected libation was Château Margaux ’48, which presumably went well with each of the six offerings, including ballotines de pigeons Lucullus, an amazingly rich dish of boned pigeon stuffed with foie gras and truffles coated in aspic and garnished with cock’s combs, cock’s kidneys, and more truffles.17
Meat was not the only part of the bird that was valued. Fat and feathers were coveted as well. The fat was used as shortening and even in the making of soap. Two visitors to a large nesting on the Susquehanna River in northern Pennsylvania in 1810 said that millions of chubby squabs were reduced to oil, which was then packed in barrels and sent downstream on boats. Generally feathers were collected from birds killed for the meat, but sometimes the feathers were the primary product and the carcasses were discarded or fed to swine. Most of those who picked the feathers were women and children. In Coudersport, Pennsylvania, after one particularly large nesting, mother pluck-ers were hired at the rate of five cents for every dozen pigeons they processed. The greatest reward to the participants, though, was social, as it took on the air of a picnic where folks could gossip while earning a little money.18
Beds and pillows stuffed with pigeon feathers enjoyed broad popularity. In the early years of Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, an acceptable wedding dowry had to include a pigeon mattress and pillows. Many people in various parts of pigeon range believed that these sleep articles provided eternal life. One critically ill lady in Ontario was moved from her bed of pigeon feathers to one of more mundane stuffing to hasten her end. In 1936, Alvin McKnight of Augusta, Wisconsin, related how he and his wife continued to sleep on a bed that they received in 1877 filled with the feathers of 144 dozen passenger pigeons. They were both in excellent health despite his age of eighty-four and hers of seventy-seven. They were beginning to believe that such beds would repel death and were prepared to test the proposition. The pigeon feathers, however, were no more able to grant immortality to the McKnights than they were to the species itself.19
In the eyes of some, passenger pigeon parts held one more valuable property: medicinal. Dr. John Brickell, writing on the natural history of North Carolina in 1737, stated that the blood was effective in the treatment of the eyes and, when swallowed, “cures bloody fluxes.” He also had a good word for the dung, saying it could relieve most anything that ails, including headaches, pleurisy, apoplexy, and lethargy. How the physician administered the dung is left obscure. A Native healer from Quebec, on the other hand, treasured the gizzards, stringing them up to dry so she could use them to treat gallstones. The logic here was that the pigeons would at times ingest small stones, yet suffered no ill effect because the gizzard had the power to dissolve them. Therefore, if ingested, the gizzard would come in contact with the patients’ stones and make them likewise disappear.20
Even in areas not yet converted to crops, some landowners feared that the pigeons would jeopardize their timber holdings and took measures to keep the birds away. The Niles (MI) Republican of April 25, 1850, published this singular report by a local settler: “I am completely warn down. The pigeons are roosting throughout our woods and the roost extends for miles. Our neighbors and ourselves have for several days had to build large fires and keep up reports of fire arms to scare them off. While I write, within a quarter of a mile, there are thirty guns firing. The pigeons come in such large quantities to destroy a great deal of timber, break limbs off of large trees, and even tear up some by the roots.”
Alexander Wilson calculated that two billion passenger pigeons would consume almost 17.5 million bushels of mast a day. The vast amount of food that the species would need to sustain itself prompted one British ornithologist to wonder why “any farmer should ever dare to migrate to America.” The literature is mixed on whether the pigeons were a serious threat to agriculture. Farms in proximity to natural forage often escaped pigeon depredations. This would seem to be the case, for example, in the Wilderness District of Nicholas County, West Virginia, where “a vast multitude” of birds roosted in the fall of 1876. It has been suggested that heavy baiting by hunters at a nesting in New York might also have relieved the pressure on farmers. (Given the numbers of birds and how much they ate, this scenario becomes plausible only when accompanied by pigeon killing on a fantastic scale.) But things were apt to be different where hungry birds found themselves remote from native food sources. Then it was open warfare.21
A Jesuit traveling up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal during 1662–63 commented on the huge numbers of pigeons: “This season they attacked the grain fields where they made great havoc, after stripping the woods and fields of strawberries and raspberries which grow here everywhere under foot.” But it was at a great cost to the pigeons, which were killed in such abundance that many corpses remained even after home consumption and the provision of servants. This surplus was either salted in barrels for winter use or given to dogs and pigs. Not long after, Baron de La Hontan reported, probably facetiously, that the pigeons were so loathsome in Canada, the bishop “has been forced to excommunicate ’em oftener than once, upon the account of the Damage they do to the Product of the Earth.”22
Du Page County, Illinois, is just west of Chicago. It is today a place of suburban sprawl (which would have to include the older subdivision where I live), broken up by twenty-five thousand acres of forest-preserve land, plus assorted other tracts of open space. In February of 1852, the pigeons, called “pernicious varmints,” arrived in Du Page and harvested every seed many unfortunate farmers planted. An article describing the events compares blackbirds with passenger pigeons. They conclude that blackbirds, “as evil and dark-hearted as they are,” are still preferable to the pigeons.23
Pigeons in southwestern Michigan would descend on the corn and wheat fields to consume acres of produce. In Pennsylvania the birds were particularly partial to buckwheat. So many pigeons foraged on grain in Eden, Wisconsin, in 1869 they forced the farmers to abandon their fields to seek shelter in their homes. The farmers of western Iowa had no better success in their struggles against the pigeons in the mid-1860s. A detailed account of their woes refers to the pigeons as “a perfect scourge [that] lit upon the fields of new-sown grain, and rolling over and over like the waves of the sea, picked up every kernel of grain in sight.” So the farmers tried again, but before they could harrow the freshly seeded soil, the pigeons would already have worked the ground. Some farmers were forced to try yet a third time. Nothing they did could keep the birds away, be it the shooting of guns, throwing of rocks, shouting, running to drive them off, barking dogs, or even killing vast numbers with poles.24
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
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
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 was 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
