Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 21

In _Recreation_ Magazine for May, 1909, Mr. Charles Askins published a most startling and illuminating article, ent.i.tled "The South's Problem in Game Protection." It brought together in concrete form and with eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had been gaining ground in the North. In order to give the testimony of a man who has seen what he describes, I shall now give numerous quotations from Mr. Askins' article, which certainly bears the stamp of truthfulness, without any "race prejudice" whatever. It is a calm, judicial, unemotional a.n.a.lysis of a very bad situation: and I particularly commend it alike to the farmers of the North and all the true sportsmen of the South.

In his opening paragraphs Mr. Askins describes game and hunting conditions in the South as they were down to twenty years ago, when the negroes were too poor to own guns, and shooting was not for them.

SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES.

It is all different now, says Mr. Askins, and the old days will only come back with the water that has gone down the stream. The master is with his fathers or he is whiling away his last days on the courthouse steps of the town. Perhaps a chimney or two remain of what was once the "big house" on the hill; possibly it is still standing, but as forlorn and lifeless as a dead tree. The muscadine grapes still grow in the swale and the persimmons in the pasture field, but neither 'possum nor 'c.o.o.n is left to eat them. The last deer vanished years ago, the rabbits died in their baby coats and the quail were killed in June. Old "Uncle Ike" has gone across the "Great River" with his master, and his grandson glances at you askance, nods sullenly, whistles to his half breed bird dog, shoulders his three dollar gun and leaves you. He is typical of the change and has caused it, this grandson of dear old Uncle Ike.

In the same way the white man is telling the black to abide upon the plantation raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing will be required of him. He can cheat a white man or a black, steal in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in marriage or out of it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly shoot every wild thing that can be eaten, if only he raises the cotton and the corn. But the white sportsmen of the South have never willingly granted the shooting privilege in its entirety, and hence this story. They have told him to trap the rabbits, pot the robins, slaughter the doves, kill the song birds, but to spare the white sportsman's game, the aristocratic little bobwhite quail.

In the beginning not so much damage to southern game interests could be accomplished by our colored man and brother, however decided his inclinations. He had no money, no ammunition and no gun. His weapons were an ax, a club, a trap, and a hound dog; possibly he might own an old war musket bored out for shot. Such an outfit was not adapted to quail shooting and especially to wing shooting, with which knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about with his hound dog and his war musket; he couldn't possibly kill the quail. And so Uncle Ike's grandson loafed and pottered about in the fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing so much harm to the quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on.

The negro belongs to a primitive race of people and all such races have keener eyes than white men whose fathers have pored over lines of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its form, the squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the gra.s.s.

The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a tree top he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge gra.s.s told him of a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all the skill of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white man was bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn when he might as well exact it all. And this he shortly did, as we shall see.

The time came when cotton went up to sixteen cents a pound and single breech-loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The negro had money now, and the merchants--these men who had said let the n.i.g.g.e.r alone so long as he raises cotton and corn--sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South.

Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The n.i.g.g.e.rs are killing our quail." They not only were killing them, but most of the birds were already dead. On the grounds of the Southern Field Club where sixty bevies were raised by the dogs in one day, within two years but three bevies could be found in a day by the hardest kind of hunting; and this story was repeated all over the South. Now the negro began to raise bird dogs in place of hounds, and he carried his new gun to church if services happened to be held on a week day.

Finally the negro had grown up and had compa.s.sed his ambition: he could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, was a white man except for a trifling difference in color; and he could kill more birds, too, three times as many. It was merely a change from the old order to the new in which a dark-skinned "sportsman"

had taken the place in plantation life of the dear old "Colonel" of loved memory. The negro had exacted his price for raising cotton and corn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SOUTHERN-NEGRO METHOD OF COMBING OUT THE WILD LIFE "Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of recreation. He may slouch about alone, and pot a bevy or two of quail when in actual need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for fun he wants to be with the 'gang'."--Charles Askins.

Reproduced from Recreation Magazine. By permission of the Outdoor World.]

Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of recreation. He may slouch about alone and pot a bevy or two of quail when in actual need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for fun he wants to be with the "gang." I have seen the darkies at Christmas time collect fifty in a drove with every man his dog, and spread out over the fields. Such a glorious time as he has then! A single cottontail will draw a half-dozen shots and perhaps a couple of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of pure deviltry and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental killing of a young negro on this kind of a foray. His companions loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in his mouth, and tried to pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink themselves as they rode back to town. This army of black hunters and their dogs cross field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that leave neither wild animal nor bird life behind.

There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail season is over when the average rural darky is "between hay and gra.s.s." The merchants on whom he has depended for supplies make it a practice to refuse credit between January first and crop time. The black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his winter's pork, and all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat his gun can secure. He is hunting in grim earnest now, using all the cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He eats woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, jaybirds, hawks and skunks, drawing the line only at crows and buzzards. At this season of the year I have carried chicken hawks up to the cabins for the sake of watching the delight of the piccaninnies who with glowing eyes would declare, "Them's mos' as good as chicken." What happens to the robins, doves, larks, red birds, mocking birds and all songsters in this hungry season needs hardly to be stated.

It is also a time between hay and gra.s.s for the rabbits and the quail. The corn fields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A spring cold spell pinches, they lose their vitality, become thin and quite lack their ordinary wariness. Then the figure-four trap springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge while the work of decimation goes more rapidly along. The rabbits can no longer escape the half-starved dogs, the thinning cover fails to hide the quail and the song birds betray themselves by singing of the coming spring.

With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge and field burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for spring plowing, but really to destroy the last refuge of the quail and rabbits so that they can be bagged with certainty. All the negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all their dogs, and of course all the boys from six years old up. They surround the field and set it on fire in many places, leaving small openings for the game to dash out among the motley a.s.sembly. I have seen quail fly out of the burning gra.s.s with flaming particles still attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground too bewildered to fly again and the boys and dogs pick them up. Crazed rabbits try the gauntlet amidst the barking curs, shouting negroes and popping guns, but death is sure and quick. The few quail that may escape have no refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every battue of this kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity; and the next day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere.

At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting in some of their one hundred working days while the single breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. Surely the few birds that have escaped the foray of the "gang," lived through the hungry days, and survived their burned homes can now call "Bob White" and mate in peace. But school is out and the summer sun is putting new life into the bare feet of the half-grown boys, and the halfbreed bird dogs are busier than they were even in winter. The young rabbits are killed before they get out of the nest, and the quail eggs must be hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the noses of the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three bevies remained of the sixty. Doubtless they would not, except that nature is very kind to her own in the sunny South.

Not every white man in the South is a sportsman or even a shooter; many are purely business men who have said let the "n.i.g.g.e.r" do as he likes so long as he raises cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has her full share of true men of the out-of-doors and they have sworn in downright Southern fashion that this thing has got to end.

Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they made an effort and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every man to obtain written permission before entering the lands of another to hunt and shoot; they asked for a resident license law taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year; for a shortened season, a bag limit, and a complete system of State wardens.

Unfortunately, a lot of white farmers were in the same range as the blacks, and being hit, too, they raised a great outcry. The result was that the Alabama sportsmen got everything they asked for except the foundation of the structure they were trying to build, the high resident license or gun tax which alone could have shut out three dollar guns and saved the remnant of the game. Under the new law the sale of game was forbidden, neither could it be shipped out of the State alive or dead; the ever popular non-resident license was provided for; the season was shortened and the bag limited; the office of State game warden was created with deputies to be paid from fines; hunting upon the lands of another without written permission became a misdemeanor; and then the whole thing was nullified by reducing the resident license to nothing where a man shot upon his own land, one dollar in his own county, and two dollars outside of it. In its practical workings the new law amounts to this: A few northern gunners have paid the non-resident license fee, and enough resident licenses have been taken out by the city sportsmen to make up the handsome salary of the State warden. The negro still hunts upon his own land _or upon the land of the man who wants corn and cotton raised_, with perfect indifference to the whole thing. Who was to enforce the law against him? Not the one disgusted deputy with three big counties to patrol who depended for his salary upon the fines collected from the negroes. It would take one man to every three miles square to protect the game in the South.

The one effective way of dealing with the situation in Alabama was to have legislated three dollar guns out of existence with a five dollar tax, adding to this nearly a like amount on dogs. Hardly a sportsman in the South will disagree with this conclusion. But sportsmen never had a majority vote either in the South or in the North, and the South's grave problem is yet unsolved.

I do not favor depriving the black man of his natural human right to hunt and shoot. If he is the owner of land, or if he leases or rents it, or if he does not, he should have exactly the same privilege of hunting that the white man has. That is not the question now, however, but how to restrict him to legal shooting, to make him amenable to the law that governs the white man, to deprive him of the absolute license he now enjoys to kill throughout the year without mercy, without discrimination, without restraint. If only for selfish reasons, we of the North should reach to southern sportsmen a helping hand, for by and by the last of our migratory song birds will go down into Dixie and never return.

Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The remedy must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the South must stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory game birds. As a matter of comity between states, the gentlemen of the South must pa.s.s laws to stop the killing of northern song-birds and all crop-protecting birds, for food. Finally, all men, North and South, East and West, must unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate enactment by Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds.

CHAPTER XIII

EXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS[D]

[Footnote D: In the preparation of this chapter and its ill.u.s.trations, I have had much valuable a.s.sistance from Mr. C. William Beebe, who recently has probed the London feather trade almost to the bottom.]

It is high time for the whole civilized world to know that many of the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being _exterminated_ to furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The ma.s.s of new information that we have recently secured on this traffic from the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I had not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are.

It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a message to London. New York is almost a Spotless Town in plume-free millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blood of the slaughtered innocents is no longer upon our skirts, and on the subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical as we choose.

Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own for sale or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird belonging to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America can be sold here! There are only a few kinds of improper "millinery" feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and arduous campaign of the National a.s.sociation of Audubon Societies, founded and for ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plumage save that from game birds.

It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off aigrettes of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand.

At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and ladies-maid aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for everything save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained by a bunko game), in Ma.s.sachusetts, and in many other of our States, the wild-birds'-plumage millinery business is dead. Two years ago, when the New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery a.s.sociation a.s.serted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of operatives out of employment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE--(I) Belted Kingfisher Victoria Crowned Pigeon Superb Calliste Greater Bird of Paradise Common Tern c.o.c.k of the Rock]

The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state.

Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We have heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty hat ornaments of silk and ribbons, and gauze and lace; and "_They_ are wearing them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1600 HUMMINGBIRD SKINS AT 2 CENTS EACH!

Part of Lot Purchased by the Zoological Society at the Regular Quarterly London Millinery Feather Sale, August, 1912.]

But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly in the ointment. The store-window of E. &. S. Meyers, 688 Broadway, New York, contains about _six hundred plumes and skins of birds of paradise for sale for millinery purposes_. No wonder the great bird of paradise is now almost extinct! Their sale here is possible because the Dutcher law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country and sold; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign birds, so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the universal enactment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as ornaments of the plumage, feathers or skins of _any_ wild bird that is not a legitimate game bird.

London is now the head of the giant octopus of the "feather trade" that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins" and "plumes" and "quills" of the most beautiful and most interesting _unprotected_ birds of the world. The extent of this cold-blooded industry, supported by vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing center of feather tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to a certain numbers of French factory operatives.

All over the world where they have real estate possessions, the men of England know how to protect game from extermination. The English are good at protecting game--when they decide to set about it.

Why should London be the Mecca of the feather-killers of the world?

It is easily explained:

(1) London has the greatest feather market in the world; (2) the feather industry "wants the money"; and (3) the London feather industry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its strangle-hold on the unprotected birds of the world.

Let us run through a small portion of the ma.s.s of fresh evidence before us. It will be easier for the friends of birds to read these details here than to procure them at first hand, as we have done.

The first thing that strikes one is the fact that the feather-hunters are scattered _all over the world where bird life is plentiful_ and there are no laws to hinder their work. I commend to every friend of birds this list of the species whose plumage is to-day being bought and sold in large quant.i.ties every year in London. To the birds of the world this list is of deadly import, for it spells extermination.

The reader will notice that it is the way of the millinery octopus to reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth, and take everything that it can use. From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are being _exterminated_ to swell the annual profits of the millinery trade. The case is _far_ more serious than the world at large knows, or even suspects. But for the profits, the birds would be safe; and no unprotected wild species can long escape the hounds of Commerce.

But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are today in grave peril:

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE--(II) Lyre Bird White Ibis Golden Eagle Resplendent Trogan Silver Pheasant Toco Toucan]

LIST OF BIRDS NOW BEING EXTERMINATED FOR THE LONDON AND CONTINENTAL FEATHER MARKETS:

_Species_. _Locality._ American Egret Venezuela, S. America, Mexico, etc.