Four-and-a-Half Months’ Stay in New Harmony
Description of the region – Natural history – Messrs. Say, Lesueur, and Owen – Hunting excursions in Indiana and Illinois – Wabash, Fox River – Illinois prairies – Albion – Black River – Mr. Bodmer’s trip to New Orleans
February 3, 1833
Early in the morning, beautiful, clear sky. A second steamboat arrived. At seven thirty, sunshine and −3 1/4°R [24.7°F, −4.1°C]. With regard to conversations we had last evening about the Indians, this morning I should note in addition that Mr. Maclure, a very sensible man and a cool, calm observer, told me that, when he came here in the 1790s, he had seen many different tribes of Indians and had noted very diverse facial features. This observation is interesting and conforms with what I saw in Brazil. We also talked about the Indian burial mounds from former times. Mr. Say said he had stood opposite St. Louis on the highest one, which was overgrown with blackberries and other thorn bushes and had several floors or levels. From there one could count eighteen such hills in the vicinity. They exist in very many places: at Harmony, Economy, along Grave Creek near Wheeling, near St. Louis, etc. (About this see David Thomas and other books.)
Unfortunately, the Indians have now been driven so far back that anyone who is reluctant to travel very far can hardly see any of them. Yesterday Mr. Maclure said, and very rightly, that because of the settlements here in America, it is just as impossible for the original inhabitants to maintain themselves as it is for native wildlife, for the first undertaking of the colonists is always to destroy everything within reach.
Thus the Indians disappeared. Big-game animals are so depleted that in ten years neither deer, wolves, nor wild turkeys will be found here. The elk, bear, and beaver have already disappeared; the remaining animals will soon follow them. The government deserves to be severely reprimanded for not putting an end to these excesses. If one part of the year were set aside when no one was allowed to hunt, and if hunting rights were more restricted, then at least some of the animals would still be preserved.
This holds true also for forest trees. Soon there will be no usable trees and only completely devastated forests in the inhabited parts of North America; this has already been brought about through forest fires, even in the rugged mountains in the Alleghenies.
One can feel only disgust and revulsion at the sight of such a coarse population streaming in with its notions of freedom, which an impotent government is unable to restrain, when one considers that these people show neither feelings of humanity nor moderation in their treatment of the Indians, as well as in their mistreatment of the animal creation.
It became an extremely warm and beautiful day. Large flies were flying about. At noon Dreidoppel returned from his hunting excursion. He had shot several kinds of birds, including cardinals and Fringilla hyemalis, birds that will soon migrate from here. At twelve o’clock, temperature of 5°R [43.3°F, 6.3°C] in the shade, where there was still frost; very warm in the sun. At noon I took a short walk after Mr. Owen had paid a visit and invited me to lunch tomorrow.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Say and I went to dine at Mr. Maclure’s, where Mr. Lesueur had also been invited. We had some interesting discussions, including one about the great American sea serpent, which no sensible zoologist believes in. On the other hand, Mr. Say cited a very strange animal, which is depicted in the first volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, which resembles the plesiosaur and ichthyosaur and could easily have given rise to the fable of this snake. Mr. Lesueur told me how he had once sketched an ordinary black snake that had been found dried up on the beach of Long Island near New York and which the finder pretended was a young sea serpent. This is amusing enough but is easily excusable in the case of an uneducated person unfamiliar with natural history, because this snake was discovered dried up in a curved line and hence resembled woodcuts of the great sea serpent. But it is far more astonishing when an American naturalist creates a new genus (Scoliophis) from an animal he has never seen, as did Rafinesque, who has established several similar genera, including one for a fish that an inhabitant of the Ohio region had described for him. On the whole, this prolific writer has described numerous animals as new species and in such a brief, superficial, and uncertain manner that Mr. Say and other very conscientious and precise observers want to hear absolutely nothing about his work.