Cass County, Missouri - Chapter 12: Game, 1917

THE BUFFALO, BEAR AND DEER - SMALLER ANIMALS - WATER FOWL AND OTHER BIRDS - WILD TURKEYS WERE NUMEROUS - WANTON DESTRUCTION BY THE WHITE MAN - LAND OF BEAUTY - ABUNDANCE OF FISH - BEAVER, MARTEN AND OTHER FUR-BEARING ANIMALS.

Under this head, for brevity's sake, we will class the buffalo, bear, deer, wildcats, wolves, wild turkeys, the wild goose, the wild duck, the prairie chicken, quail, pheasant, and the four-legged as well as the feath¬ ered tribe. If we could imagine ourselves back to a time before the advent of the white man to Cass County, probably we would see the aboriginal inhabitant fighting his way for existence, with his crude im¬ plements, with the wild beasts. Then animals and birds, freed from the white man, fearless and undisturbed, on our prairies and among the forest, propagated and filled this land with this numberless broods. The swan, the goose, the duck and the pigeon, each in their season would cloud the earth with their shadow and fill the air with their trumpeting as they took their migratory flights. The Indians killed with sticks and clubs and caught them in their snares and pens. The writer can remem¬ ber when flocks of wild pigions, fully a mile wide and many miles long, flew across the county, obscuring the sunlight, and in their swift motion created a rushing, startling sound.

These birds lighting upon trees, covering the trees from top to bot¬ tom, and many times their weight breaking branches and trees. So also, the wild turkey was numerous when our early settlers came to the county. Within the memory of persons now living the wild turkey was seen in flocks of several hundreds within a mile of the town of Harrisonville. This is also true relative to all other towns in the county. Deer in herds of half a hundred and more was a common sight even after the organization of our county. The raccoon and opossum had his home here and a few of their descendants still remain. The buffalo, the deer, the wild turkey has disappeared on the coming of the white man. Many have gone to satisfy the hunger of man, but, alas, too many of these friends of man have been ruthlessly and wantonly slaughtered for the mere purpose of sport.

What an economical loss to the present day. Extinct! Yes, these masters and proud birds and animals who occupied our county are no more. The sight of one is a curiosity. More gratifying to the man of today than was this wanton destruction of days agone. We need scarcely men¬ tion the millions of prairie chickens, quails and lesser birds, which, too, have disappeared from before the awful tread of the white man. And it is surprising such prodigious quantities of wild fowls disported them¬ selves on the streams and pools of this interior county and that the air was filled with the whirring and croaking of the cranes and wild geese. This was the very haven of both fowl and animal.

In those early days this inland part of the country, in its state of nature, was a land of beauty. Before the white man's touch defaced this work of God, the land now composing Cass County was a veritable terrestial paradise. Indeed "nature had done everything to make the landscape one of ravishing beauty." Nowhere else did nature "lavish more prodigally her charms, excelling all that the highest art of man could create, and a scale magnificent and stupendous, soaring knobs, in high, grassy plateaus" through which ran crystal streams, mirroring the varied sky, lined with odorous flowers and trees. Here the wild fruits were abundant, and walnut, hickory nut, pecan and hazel nut covered the ground in their maturing seasons. The prairies, by their luxur¬ iance, seemed to mock labor.

We cannot imagine the natural beauty of this virgin landscape. The outline of which remains the swelling hills, the valleys, the rocks and streams, but the picturesque clumps of trees, the narrow line of wood¬ land here and there, along creek or isolated hill tops are gone; then, too, bordering the prairies the immense thickets of wild plum and crab apple and copses matted with grapevines, have likewise disappeared. From the open oak woods, crowning here and there a hill top, the emerald prairie then gleamed to the far-away horizon. In the summer a green carpet covered the landscape. The high wild grass undulated in the breeze like the billows of the sea. Here the prairie flowers, some in purple, some creamy, some in golden yellow lillies, some in white, others tossing and swaying their red cups in the breeze. Here the gorgeous sunflower, the lobelias, all fragrant when in full blossom in the sum¬ mer's sun. Here, too, the wild rose bloomed and blossomed. "When summer was past, autumn followed with its mellow sunshine stealing through the hazy atmosphere, with trees and woods panoplied with a thousand varied colors, with a golden glory unparalleled at any other season of the year or in any other land.

Is it strange that in this favored park-like land all animal life lived, feasted and flourished, or that the clear pure waters were literally alive with fish, or the air and grounds full of birds, or that the woods and prairies were the haunts of wild and ferocious beasts, or that the lordly bison delighted to roam herein. Nor can we wonder at this prolific life. Could it be otherwise. There were practically ages no one disturbed its increase. The scant population in those remote days had no firearms and their bows and arrows were not destructive to the bird, the deer, elk or buffalo, and the form of enticing the fish and bird by net or snare was cruel. The beaver, the marten and other fur bearing animals had their haunts along Grand River and Big Creek and their tributaries. Time came, however, on the advent of the white man - our early settler, when all this changed, and we see now but the scarred form of this erstwhile scene of beauty, plenty and peace.