Buffalo Hunter's Camp Lighting, Redux

[Will Ketchum]

It surprises me to see the hides staked out so close to the camp.  I would have thought they would been a bit further.  I suppose the hunters stunk so bad that the smell didn't bother them and any vermin that resided in the hides probably already inflicted the hunters

Will Ketchum

[Delmonico]

One other thought Will, did they stake some down close to camp just for the picture.   The other reasons aside I would be afraid of stumbling over one in the dark in an emergency or even havin to go water the grass in the night
I am pretty sure that is just two angles of the same camp.  Note what apears to be one of them working the grindstone in the first picture.  Grindstones are meantioned a lot in lists of gear, but that is not surprising.

[Pitspitr]

Boy, them Tejas fellers sure did bring a lot of camp equipment and extras with them!

[Delmonico]

Well that is what that large freight wagon in the background of the first picture is for.  That's how they got that stove that shows in the left side of the second picture there and the grindstone that shows up so much in accounts of gear.

[Pitspitr]

...And all the canned goods, and the Keg table.

[Halfway Creek Charlie]

Yep and they's the ones what drove the steam engine over Delmonico's bridge. When you going to fire that baby up and drive it out of the gulch?
That is a neat picture.
I used to have antique tractors and have been to several Thresher shows in and around Iowa when i lived there. What were Buff Hunters doing in Iowa??? LOL

[Ol Gabe]

Sorry for the long post here, but I think you'll all garner new info from it...
Halfway Creek Charlie commented "What were Buff Hunters doing in Iowa??? LOL..."
Well, actually 'hunting' Buffalo, but not in the concept that we normally envision as on the Western Prairie. When the early Pioneers first crossed the Mississippi and settled in what we now know as Iowa, the vast grassy plains supported many localized herds of Buffalo, Elk and Deer in numbers large enough to support the appetites of the Settlers as well as the indigenous Tribes and itinerant Traders. As the rail lines moved West they generally utilized the available meat sources the same as the local Settlers, etc., this is a given and well-documented in our history, but we generally don't associate it with the settling of Iowa, per se, especialy 'hunting' of Buffalo.
What follows is an excerpt from an early Settler's journal I found in a quick Google search using 'buffalo hunting in Iowa' as the motif, spelling errs are in the original script, paren comments are mine:
"Hamilton Megonigle and Mary Barklay Roop were married in Juniata County, Pennsylvania in 1831...
The first child born to Hmilton and Mary was Bartimeus, born 22 December 1832. In those early times, children, especially boys, were named after close relatives, many times as many as four or five first cousins would all have the same name...
The next spring, 1833, Hamilton's family started west in search of cheaper land where they culd start farming...
The summer of 1838...was very dry, with long stifling weeks of drought, and there was much sickness. Perhaps this was the reason for the move further west that next spring...
(relatives) Charles and Jane, came from Pennsylvania to join them in the long journey to Iowa. The mode of travel was of curse the prairie schooner, making from fifteen to forty miles per day, depending on terrain and weather. The fording of the Mississippi River was quite an undertaking, and was still remembered by Veronica years later...
On 4 July 1839, the two families arrived in Linn County, Iowa, stopping, as most of the very early people did, at the edge of the woods. The section of the grove where they made their home projected out on the prairie in a point-like fashion...so from the beginning the frove (grove) was known as "McGonigle's Point". The site soon became a busy place as other pioneers came to the area and made it their headquarters. Alva Megonigle was born in 1840 and Calmanda in 1841...
At first, fur from deer was carded and spun for much of the clothing and shoes were fashioned from the skin of the hind legs of the deer and stuffed with deer hair to keep the feet dry. Later flax was grown and spun into clothing and blankets, and when sheep became available, the wool was washed, spun, wound, knitted and woven into cloth. Most of the wool yarn was dyed brown with the liquid made from the bark of walnut or butternut trees. Flax could be dyed several colors, red from sumac berrries, purple from oak or maple bark, yellow from peach or hickory bark, or gray from cedar berries.
(ATTENTION GW, Del, James, etc. re: candle making follows) Candles were made by moulding beeswax and vension tallow...
The men cleared the land, plowed and planted, hunted for meat, and made much of the furniture and utensils...boys learned early how to hunt and trap, and there was always firewood needed...
Corn was the main food, used nearly every meal, as mush, pone, johnny-cake, hoecake or cornbread. Wild gave was plentiful, prairie chicken, woodcock, partiridge, snipe, quail, wild goose, wild turkey, swan, pelican and ducks. There were many fur animals...otter, beaver, mink, raccoon, muskrat, wolf, fox badger, also wildcats and , occasionally, a panther. The men hunted deer and bear, and there were (ATTENTION H.W.C.) buffalo and elk on the prairie. Honey was used for sweetening and put up in barrels for the winter. Fish were abundant and so large that, tied together by the gills and thrown across a small horse, their caudal fins touched he ground on each side...some weighed twenty four pounds...
Bartimeus was a Judge at Michael Green's house...in 1841 and was one of the first Linn County commissioners during 1842-2...
Mail to McGonigle's Point came by way of horseback from Marion, Iowa."
I did this verifier search to help lock-in another old story read in the Cedar Rapids Gazette's historical section a few years back, that of seeing a Buffalo on the South side of the RR tracks East of Marion, Iowa in the late 1800's. As the story went, a railcar full of travelers and itinerant salesmen was heading West into Marion, someone looked out the window and said "What is that?" Another said "Why, its a Buffalo!" The news of the sighting was printed in the local papers and caused quite a stir as everyone thought they were all 'gone'. The spot where it was seen was a huge swampy and wooded area that is now used for the commercial sale of peat. What is interesting here is that the Buffalo was seen a few miles West of the area the McGonigle's settled in the 1840's. No doubt small family herds of Buffalo and Elk were still surviving along the deep river bottoms, in this case the (Red) Cedar River and (American) Wapsipincon River, and were occasionally seen and harvested as late as the 1890's in eastern Iowa.
So, H.W.C., the Buffalo were 'hunted' in Iowa, and Candles were made from Deer tallow and Beeswax, sooooo, perhaps we can put a 'completion stamp of approval' on this thread by simply saying that the 'Buffalo Hunters' did use candles made from beeswax and tallow to light there camp at night? Hmmmmm?
Best regards and good researching!
'Ol Gabe

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Howdy!

Ol Gabe, PLEASE don't apologize for a long post, especially when it's as informative and interesting as this! 

Happy Trails!

[Dr. Bob]

Yea, what Steel Horse said.  Great info.

[Delmonico]

Good information Gabe.  There was some buffalo east during the early settlement, and of course hunted long before the "hide only" era.  I did some quick looking now that I found Gards book and will reread it after I finish the one I am reading right now.  A lot of stuff on camps including many in the south and the north working out of dugouts and even up in Montana one group finding a vein of liginite (lousy coal) and doing what could only be called surface mining and using it mixed with suet for burning.  Now that had to smell worse than chips.

(Anyone up to hijacking a coal train from Wyoming headed to some power plant? )

[gw]

   James H. Cook was born in southern Michigan on Aug. 26, 1857. In the late 1860's, he and a friend arrived in Leavenworth Kansas and met some cattlemen who advised they look for work as cowboys in Sedgwick or Sumner counties. They did, and in 1870, Cook went to Texas and cowboyed in the Frio and Nueces river areas and later in the San Antonio area until 1878. Of one trip north with a herd of cattle, he related the following anecdote: "We had seen quite a number of buffalo on our way north and I had killed several that came near the herds, but they were fast being exterminated by the hide hunters. At Fort Griffin, when we past it,I saw a pile of buffalo hides near the sutler's store at least fifty yards square and ten feet high. The buffalo were now being killed by the thousands all over the buffalo range."
    Cook was never a hide hunter and often remarked that he was proud of the fact. He is listed as a Meat Hunter in the Encyclopedia of Buffalo Hunters and Skinners. However, like the hide hunters, Cook was quick to condemn those who accused the hunters of wanton waste and large scale butchery. "When, now, I hear the oldtime hunters spoken of as game butchers or game hogs, I cannot help resenting the accusation. I take pride in knowing that I never was a hide hunter-that I never took pleasure in killing game that I could not use, and I derive some consulation from knowing the game that I killed never had been anybody's pets. The wild animals had never depended upon mankind to furnish them with food or put their trust in creatures who, for either pleasure or profit, would deprive them of their lives."
    "Hunting to us meant no pleasure outing or play spell. Constant work during all daylight hours was required. The horse had to be cared for, all hides stretched, fleshed and baled after being dried. Meat and furs had to be well cared for. Reloading cartridges and cooking meals took up a portion of our time. Our only light at night was that of the moon, our campfire, a coal oil lantern or candles. We did our own laundry work and mending,and moved our camp quite frequently, this later being the simplest method of house cleaning, as well as taking us to hunting grounds where the game was undisturbed."
   James H. Cook died at his ranch home in Agate Springs, on the Niobrara River in Sioux County, Nebraska on January 27, 1942, at eighty-four years of age.
     Now, taking that the above statements were certainly true, one might surmise that the answer has been provided and all is well and good and that this chapter on buffalo camp lighting is concluded.That would be a conclusion for some. Myself, I believe that at the time this was actually recorded for posterity, Cook had seen many decades of hunting and that it is just possible, that while  every method he used to light his camp was of course  accurate, it might  not have been accurate for every period during his long career. It's like trying to remember when the first time you used a flashlite was, or what you cooked for breakfast at your very first camping trip 50 odd years ago. All I am saying about this is that many of the recorded histories by actual buffalo hunters were taken 30, 40, 50 or more years after the real events had occured and memories were starting to fade. It is remarkable that there is as much information about the actual participants in this era as there is, given the demands of the time and the rough and tumble lifestyle they endured. So what we garner from the above passage about buffalo camp lighting is up to us, we can take as much or as little as we want to believe, and be content that we're doing it right.

[Delmonico]

Yes you are right GW, but with coal oil Lanterns being both cheap and common in the era as well as the coal oil, it can't be dissmissed out of hand that they were not used on the buffalo ranges just because only one so far seemed to bother to write it down.

Anyone can do what they want, based of what they find or don't find, but with camps being hauled out in sometimes several wagons why would those not be brought along considering the cost and availbility of them since it seems that every trail herd had at least one.  Not that they were the only form of lighting but a damned good one in case you needed a good reliable portable light.  Been many a time I've camped when not doing period camping that big 6 Cell Mag-lite has been along but never used because it wasn't needed, but still there.

I do see going back over this that a typical buffalo hunters camp was not a small minimal camp, but a large affair meant for serious bussiness.  Heck out where there was not a lot of wood to find to make pegs out of they must of hauled most a wagon full of them along.  Hum, perhaps another mystry, did they take pegs or did the scrounge wood and make pegs?  So much reseach, so little time and the durn folks didn't bother writing down everything we want to know or some damned fool lost it.

['Monterrey' Jack Brass]

GW - Thanks for the thoughtful and supported information. It is a fitting closure to this topic. Your insights are much appreciated...!

Brass

[Halfway Creek Charlie]

Yep I figured my offhand comment would get me.
I should have known that Buffalo was hunted in Iowa, Shoot there were even buffalo in Indiana. Our state seal shows one jumping a fallen log along with the rising sun. I have read of hunters in early Indiana hunting everything including buffalo, but they haven't been there in the wild for many, many years. I remember reading about a Dan'l Boone type character from Ridgeville Indiana by the name of Jesse Grey I believe, he was quite the hunter explorer.

[James Hunt]

GW: you have found a small nugget of gold in a sea of grass. Your comments are thought provoking and we should keep our eyes open for further source material, but this is a fitting closure to this long, long, question we have been asking. My hat is off to you for your efforts, thanks.

By the way - if any are interested in a GREAT source of buffalo hunting information east of the Mississippi during the colonial period I would strongly recommend The Long Hunt Death of the Buffalo East of the Mississippi, by Ted Franklin Belue, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA, 1996. It is a great read stuffed full of primary source information. Mandatory reading for the 18th century hunter! Buffalo made it allot farther east than Iowa and Indiana, would you believe the Carolina's, Georgia, Florida and Alabama! (did not mean to start a new topic within this long running thread - start a new one if you want to pursue this)