MOHAWK - Discovering the Valley of the Crystals Copyright 2003
Chapter 16
Hunting Heritage
History of Hunting in the Mohawk
Valley
The history of hunting in the Mohawk Valley is fascinating. Men
(and a few women) hunted here for survival, subsistence, market, sport
and family tradition. They revered, feared and/or hated the animals they
hunted. They hunted some species to extinction and saved others from extinction.
Hunters witnessed dramatic changes in the use
and misuse of the land and its resources, and the subsequent passage of
laws and regulations that restricted individual and property rights; controlled
the use of the land; set hunting seasons, bag limits and hunting methods,
and caused wildlife populations to increase in some areas and decrease
in others.
Hunters came to the Mohawk Valley in all sizes,
nationalities, races, religions and from all walks of life. They're still
coming.
Man the Consummate Hunter
Ten
thousand years ago as glaciers receded northward and grasses and shrubs
covered the landscape, an amazing variety of large prey animals moved into
the Mohawk Valley. These behemoths were followed by an equally amazing
variety of predators. Bears, wolves and big cats hunted mastodons, mammoths,
moose-elk and giant beaver.
Man hunted behemoths like this Mastadon to extinction --- with spears.
Nine thousand years ago another predator came on
the scene. Like all the others, its eyes faced forward, it had teeth to
tear and chew meat and a digestive system to break down protein fiber.
Unlike all the others, it walked upright on two feet, had a highly-developed
brain, and hunted so effectively it decimated the population of giant animals.
That predator, that hunter, was Homo-sapiens---man.
Long before migrating to this area man had "hunting in his genes"---a million
or more years of surviving in the wild had seen to that. That genetic component
made man the consummate hunter.
In
the Mohawk Valley as grasses and shrubs were replaced by trees, animals
and man adapted to the change. Some animals were hunted to extinction,
some moved on, others moved in, but the vast herds of food-on-the-hoof
were gone forever. Following these diminishing food sources,
which often led to a feast and famine existence, man developed a deep appreciation---a
reverence---for the animals that provided the necessities of life: meat
for food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bones for tools.
Animals like deer, elk, moose, bear, turkey, beaver, rabbits, ducks,
herons, and the forest itself, became an integral part of Homo-sapiens
culture and religion.
The towering, forested wilderness was not ideal
habitat for many of these animals. There was, quite simply, very little
they could eat in the shaded wilderness. In the isolated areas where
fires or blowdowns opened the forest canopy to the sun, animal
populations increased dramatically. Man learned to burn the forest to create
such habitat.
When Iroquoian people moved into
the valley, they cleared the forest near their villages to plant corn,
beans and squash. As these garden plots were abondoned---soil became fallow
or villages moved---more and more of the forest was opened up, creating
more and more wildlife habitat.
The earliest hunters used spears tipped with large
fluted flint or chert points to kill the giant mammals that roamed the
area. As the size and number of animals diminished, spears with smaller
stone points were used, followed by even smaller spears that were
propelled with a thrower. The spear thrower---or atlatl---allowed
hunters to carry more than one projectile and effectively kill the warier
and faster animals that populated the region.
When the first Europeans came to this area,
the Iroquois Indians hunted here with bows and arrows. Arrows were
tipped with small flint points (too small to be legal today). In time European
steel replaced flint for arrows, spears, knives and axes.
While stealth, cunning and skill were required
to kill a deer with a bow and arrow most of the year, during the winter
months---when food meant survival---whitetails were killed where they were
concentrated and bogged down in the snow. Hunters on snowshoes killed
them with spears, knives and axes.
When Europeans came to the Mohawk Valley, the Indians hunted with bows and arrows.
Arrows and spears were seldom wasted on smaller animals (except by youngsters);
they were taken in snares. 
Deadfalls
were very effective for killing black bear. In time European steel traps
replaced or supplemented snares and deadfalls for taking such animals as
rabbits, beaver, wolves and black bear.
The Europeans who came to this area in
the 1600s and hunted with the Mohawk and Oneida Indians, adopted
their methods and their respect for wild animals. They introduced the Indians
to firearms, and the black powder, flintlock musket became the hunting
weapon of choice. Loaded with small shot it downed small game and birds.
Buck shot was the preferred load for deer and a solid lead ball could stop
a black bear, elk or moose.
The Dutch were the first to live and hunt with the Indians that lived along the Mohawk River. The first written account was the Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert. As he and two companions traveled the length of the valley in the winter of 1634-35, they were given or served venison, turkey and beaver at Indian villages and hunter's huts along the way.
Would a Dutchman Tell a Tall Tale or Stretch a Snake?
Ten years later Johannes Megapolenis, Jr. noted the abundance of wildlife and hunting practices in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys.
"In the forests is plenty of deer, which in autumn and early winter are as fat as any Holland cow can be. I have had them with fat more than two fingers thick on the ribs, so that they were nothing else than almost clear fat and could hardly be eaten. There are also many turkies, as large as in Holland, but in some years less than in others. The year before I came here, there were so many turkies and deer that they came to feed by the houses and hog pens, and were taken by the Indians in such numbers that a deer was sold to the Dutch for a loaf of bread, or a knife, or even for a tobacco pipe; but now one commonly has to give for a good deer six or seven guilders. In the forests here there are also many partridges, heath-hens and pigeons that fly together in thousands, and sometimes ten, twenty, thirty and even forty or fifty are killed at one shot. We have here, too, a great many of all kinds of fowl, swans, geese, ducks, widgeons, teal, brant, which sport upon the river in the thousands in the spring of the year, and again in autumn fly away in flocks, so that in the morning and evening any one may stand ready with his gun before his house and shoot them as they fly past. I have also eaten here several times of elks, which are very fat and tasted much like venison; and besides these profitable beasts we have also in this country lions, bears, wolves, foxes and particularly very many snakes, which are large and as long as eight, ten, and twelve feet. Among others, there is a sort of snake, which we call rattlesnake, from a certain object which it has back upon its tail, two or three fingers' breadth long, and has ten or twelve joints, and with it makes a noise like the crickets. Its color is variegated much like our brindled bulls. These snakes have very sharp teeth in their mouth, and dare to bite at dogs; they make way for neither man nor beast, but fall on an bite them, and their bits is very poisonous, and commonly even deadly too."
They Have a Passion for Hunting
Adriean van der Donck did the same in 1653.
An illustration in Trappers of New York State by
Jeptha R. Simms - 1871
seems to depict the animal trap described by Adriean van der Donck
in 1653.
"They have a passion for hunting and fishing,
and observe set times of the year for it. Spring and part of summer are
given over to fishing, but when the game begins to increase in the woods
and the early hunting season approaches, many young men quit fishing. The
elderly go on longer, until winter and the main hunting season, but do
in the meantime take part to the extent of setting snares."
"Youths and fit men often go out hunting bears,
wolves, fishers, otters, and beavers. Deer are hunted and killed in great
numbers in the coastal areas and near river banks, where most of the Christians
live. They used to catch deer only in traps or shoot them with arrows;
now they also use guns. What they enjoy most is to form a team of one or
two hundred, storm across a broad field and bag much game. They also know
how to construct game traps of thick poles joined together, having two
wide wings in front and narrowing to a throat at the end. Into this they
drive a horde of game and slaughter them. In a word, they are clever hunters,
well trained to capture all kinds of game in various ways. "
In Mohawk Country - Snow, Gehring & Starna - 1996
How Many Deer Were There in the
Mohawk Valley?
Dean Snow is an Anthropologist who has developed widely accepted methods
of determining native populations from evidence gathered at archaeological
sites. Using information garnered while researching his books Mohawk
Valley Archaeology: The Sites and The Iroquois, he
provided the following analysis of the deer population in the early 1600s.
"The European trade made profound changes in the
everyday lives of the Iroquois. Deer had been a key resource for centuries,
for their hides were critical for survival. Iroquois women made nearly
all of the clothing their families required from deer hides. A family of
five needed about seventeen hides every year just to clothe itself. The
meat was a bonus, for the family could have survived without it. If there
were 7, 740 Mohawks around this time (1630), they would have needed 26,000
deer hides per year. The Mohawk River drainage, which is a reasonable estimate
of Mohawk hunting territory, covers about 10,000 square kilometers. This
area would have supported about 76,000 deer, about a third of which could
have been culled every year without endangering the herd. Not surpassingly,
the number of Mohawks in the first quarter of the seventeenth century was
very close to the maximum that could be sustained by the resident deer
population. Had there been more people, either the Mohawk would have had
to enlarge their hunting territories at the expense of their neighbors,
or some portion would have had to move to a region where deer were more
plentiful.
"The Dutch trade ended the forced relationship of humans and
deer populations by allowing the substitution of cloth for hides, Hunters
could turn their attention to beavers, which would be hunted rather than
trapped in the winter until the introduction of iron traps a century and
a half century later."
. . . much more to come including the demise
of the Passenger Pigeon.