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Yellow Creek Stories

Robert W. SCHILLING

Chapter XVIII

The Painter Killed At Fourteen Mile Tree

If any person is interested in the map and topography of Jefferson County, he will soon note many things that bear a deeper significance by a thorough examination. Of the many that could be enumerated, the most striking one is the absence of villages, and even those that consisted of two or three houses, a century ago, with a name, now in many cases the name remains and the houses are gone. Why this condition?

Take for illustration that territory west of Knox and Saline townships, and here are fifty to seventy-five square miles that originally were in Knox township, without a town that was formally laid out. Note the imposing list of town names in this area: Owl Town, Brimstone, Circle Green, Zion, Shane, Moores Salt Works, Mitchells Salt Works, Holt, Tunnel Mill and Bethel—some town names with no houses, and few can point out even where the salt works were located.

Here is more than a half hundred sections of land all drained by Yellow Creek and its branches. Two-thirds of the entire area is still forested with hemlock and scrub oak, the ground floor matted with a growth of tangled shrubbery and bramble. The entire area is made up of long, irregular sprawling ridges, with steep rock ribbed flanks, while a shoe string shaped valley lies between, nestling a tiny meandering brook at its side. This land plainly does not lend itself to extensive agricultural needs, but like the balance of this territory it was settled by those first pioneers who chose to live by hunting, milling and salt boiling.

The names of these families embrace virtually all those first families found in the archives of the townships, and will be found warriors, Indian fighters, and explorers, but mighty hunters all. They were compelled to live by the flintlock—not the plow, because bears, wolves and panthers would destroy all their domestic animals, fowls and bees; while their crops were ruined by deer, raccoon, droves of migrating squirrels, wild turkeys, millions of pigeons, black birds and crows.

The Yellow Creek valley was for many years a hunter's Paradise—an area ideally fitted for wild game, as we have records left by those who were here in early days.

Rev. Johanus STOUCH, the missionary minister who founded "Good Hope" at Bowling Green, said "wild turkeys were so plentiful as to become a pest, especially when in flocks of a hundred or more, they found and soon destroyed a newly planted grain field—especially wheat. Another pest to farmers were the millions and millions of wild pigeons—they darkened the sun at times. I have known of many families who would kill two large, three bushel sacks of pigeons at a time, one-half of those injured were left for the wild animals to kill and eat."

In 1800, George EASTERDAY, living a mile west of Knoxville, said "that fires had to be built outside the cabin door to scare the "wood dogs" (wolves) away. That in times of food scarcity these woods dogs would pounce on the house dogs and eat them, so that it was difficult to keep a small dog."

In 1805, John RHINEHART, at Bowling Green said, "that the nights were made hideous by the howls and screams of wild animals, and that his German neighbors could keep no honey bees because the bears would tear the scaps [sic] to pieces."

In 1813, John KIRK living at the head waters of Long Run left record "that no domestic animals could be left run free and be safe from being killed by wolves or painters."

Even as late as 1815 Martin SALTSMAN, living on Pine Grove Ridge, said, "that he could kill fifty deer on one hunting trip on Yellow Creek."

It was little wonder that these brave men risked their lives in this wild untamed land and engaged in "boiling salt" at eight and twelve dollars a bushel (then weighing eighty pounds) or building water power mills to grind grain, and saw the forest giants into lumber.

Hunting, milling and salt boiling were the money making trades. The former occupation furnished food for the table, and if the game was deer, a doe skin was worth fifty cents, and a buck skin was worth a dollar; a raccoon pelt brought twenty-five cents, a fox one dollar, and a bear skin ten dollars. All men wore buckskin trousers and a "raccoon hat."

More sport and income could be made in collecting panther and wolf scalps. In 1800, fifty cents was paid for wolf and panther scalps under six months of age, and one dollar for all scalps from wolves over six months old. This was soon raised to $1.00 and $2.00 for wolves, while on June 3, 1803, the price was again raised to $1.50 and $3.00.

Squirrels were so numerous that in 1803, a law as passed requiring every taxpayer to present with the payment of his taxes, not less than thirty squirrel scalps for which he would be allowed one cent each to be deducted from his taxes, or if the full number was not present, the value of the lacking scalps was added to his taxes.

Hunting on Yellow Creek remained excellent for thirty years and the last wolf killed was in 1840 by David CALL.

Among the earliest settlers in the middle Yellow Creek country was Allen SPEEDY, a Revolutionary soldier, Thomas BAY, at the Gnadenhutten massacre, Philip SALTSMAN and Jno. KIRK, both in war of 1812. They were all hunters, for many years.

One late winter evening in 1810, John Kirk living at the very headwater of Long Run, heard screaming and squalling below his cabin. Some ferocious battle was in action among the wild denizens of the forest, and he surmised that some wolves were having a noisy demonstration among themselves, or perchance they were in a fight over the possession of something they had slain. He noted the noise came from a berry thicket a few rods below the cabin, so he opened the cabin door and ordered his dogs to go in and break up the noisy crowd. The dogs darted out of the cabin door, and were in the middle of the fracas in an instant. The din only increased with the yelps of his dogs, then they became blood curdling shrieks and finally ended by the sound of crunching bones and deep growls of satisfaction. The dogs never returned to the cabin. The next morning Kirk investigated the thicket, and except that it showed a terrible death struggle had taken place, he found no signs of what happened to his dogs. He could hardly think that his dogs had been "double teamed" by the wolves, for they were wicked hard biting brutes, whose main virtue was their ferocious courage to wade in and fight, and bite deeper and harder than their enemy, and do it first.

John Kirk soon ascertained that the wolves did not do all the damage, and he found this out by a quaint old axiom, "That a painter always follows his hunter," an adage that he later put into operation, because of a weird savage cry he heard from a thicket on a nearby hillside west of Long Run.

One early spring day, Kirk had been in St. Clair (now East Liverpool), selling some of his winter catch of furs and doing some trading for household necessities. It was late in the afternoon when as he turned into the mouth of Long Run he heard a loud wailing scream. The first thought was that this penetrating noise came from the throat of a painter—an animal he had never seen or kIlled in all his hunting experience, but older hunters had told him that they were the most blood thirsty and ferocious; but too cowardly to attack a man, and that they invariably trailed the hunter's footsteps.

Unfortunately he was unarmed, an unusual predicament in those days, so he concluded to put the old saying of the "hunted following the hunter" into operation, for he knew where about a mile further, stood a hollow willow tree in which formerly a bear hibernated in the winter. It would be an ideal place to secrete himself and await developments. He hurriedly made it to the hollow willow, walked a few rods beyond it, then retraced his steps to this tree and stood inside anxiously awaiting the results, and thankful that his retreat would be on the windward from the painter's path.

The old saying proved true, for soon this great furtive cat came slinking into view, nervously switching his tail, sniffing each foot track and passed by him not over ten feet away—a sight that few hunters see. The solitary beast with the velvet paws was allowed to pass on, until hearing some noise behind he slunk away into the gloom of a deep thicket and no longer seen. Kirk passed the word about of having seen this extra large male "painter" in the Long Run valley. This mystical animal of stealth and rapine, that prefers to live his solitary life in deep tangled thickets and only moves about in the evening gloom.

For some time the painter must have changed his hunting ground or was seeking a mate, for he was not seen or heard in the Long Run territory until the following year.

In the year 1810 on a snowy February morning, Thomas Bay, living at the headwaters of Long Run, heard a terrible commotion down at his log stable where he kept his pack mare and colt. Both of these faithful animals were making frightful outcries as if in great fear and agony.

Bay, an old Indian fighter, quickly dressed and ran to the stable, to find that the colt had been killed and the mare soundly mauled and terribly gored by the claws of some beast, not a wolf.

"This has been John Kirk's catamount," said he to himself, "and here in the new fallen snow is its round foot tracks. This must stop, and this murderous beast followed to its den."

Bay made for his nearest neighbor several miles away and explained this loss, and his ideas how to stop this nuisance.

The neighbor happened to be, Allen Speedy, an old Revolutionary soldier, who was the owner of three dogs, all of doubtful ancestry—but when they came to fighting on equal terms, they bore not a cowardly white hair. Their ears had been frayed to ribbons in many wolf encounters and their faces seamed with a mat of scars made by vise like wolf jaws.

The two men started back to Tom Bay's cabin, when the anxious dogs were put to the hottest trail, and soon went bounding through the valley thickets skirting the hillsides, to the head waters of Long Run.

The two men followed with their flintlocks, keeping to the ridge tops and staying in touch with the dogs, by both sound and tracks. After a four or five mile flight, apparently, by the terrible commotion for a few minutes, the painter must have "treed," indicating that it had been a hot and close chase, and instinctively knew its age old habit that rendered the best method of getting rid of its foe—and escaping safely.

Although it took the two hunters sometime to reach this location, when they did arrive it was plainly evident by the markings and signs in the snow as to what happened.

The savage cat had "treed," and when the most vicious of the dogs was in the right position on the hillside below him, it sprang out of the tree on this dog's back, and still while surprised and its flesh pierced with a dozen sharp claws, at the same instant he crunched the dog's neck, and was again in flight. This great cat, like all the cat family puts great faith in its claws—a wolf in its jaws.

The two remaining dogs were again hot on the trail leading to the head of Keyhole Valley where the painter had "treed" again, with more success than the first time, for a pack of hungry wolves were just cleaning and crunching the dog's bones, when the two hunters arrived to survey the devastation.

As nothing more could be done, the two hunters started back towards Bay's cabin, the painter still at large, but Kirk telling the story of how he first saw this "big cat" and his story that this animal was the only one that always was "hunter as well as hunted."

Bay quickly suggested,

"In 1783 I stood behind this tree and shot an Indian behind that oak on the other side of this ravine. Do you see that groove, about five feet above the root, in the bark?

"I do," returned Speedy, "but what's that to do with the killin' of this painter, but go on an tell your story."

"While I was standing by this tree, while out on an Indian scouting expedition, a flock of wild turkeys flew to this side of the hill, and I knew something had scared them, so I stood here quietly to see the cause. An Indian's head appeared from behind the oak. I fired. He fell. That was a case of the 'hunter being the hunted' also, and right here is a good place to try it again. You go across the ravine and get behind that tree and we'll wait awhile."

Each of these old warriors stood at his self-appointed station for nearly an hour. The short winter day was approaching its end. The forest was deathly quiet, except the distance yowl of a hungry wolf. At length Speedy saw the hunted cat, the glare of its two eyes as it was passing under a laurel thicket. He signalled Bay to keep silent, and by the direction Speedy had his flintlock directed gave Bay the trail on which the catamount was approaching. With head lower than shoulders, it slouched into view, when both men fired at the same instant. With a savage bloodcurdling squall the stealthy beast sprung into the air and rolled down into the ravine dead—the last catamount killed in Jefferson County. The scalp was presented to the county commissioners for payment in the spring of 1810 by Thomas Bay—then living near Fourteen Mile Tree—now, Section One, near Circle Green, in Springfield township, then in Knox township. In the two previous years over forty wolf scalps were taken in this area, according to the county records. Their names at this late date is an index to who were the early hunters in this noted happy hunting ground that the red man held so long.


 

 

Janice Garlock Donley
700 Tenth Street • Oakmont, PA 15139 USA

412-828-6557• jdonley@garlock-elliott.org


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