Traditional information concerning the presence of the Moose in
Pennsylvania is not lacking. Every old hunter can talk freely on
the subject, and will relate what was told him by his father or
his father's father on this subject. The gist of the evidence is
convincing, as it all _dove-tails together_ so nicely; it is not a
heterogeneous collection of irreconcilable statements. Beginning with
Seth Iredell Nelson there was not a single old-timer interrogated who
had any doubts as to the presence of the animal in Pennsylvania or
its identity. John Q. Dyce, probably the most intelligent and best
informed of the older generation of Pennsylvania hunters, declared that
the Moose had a "crossing" on the West Branch near Renovo, which they
followed to Chickalacamoose and along the Allegheny summits to Somerset
County. Clement F. Herlacher quotes Josiah Roush as saying to Lewis
Dorman that the Moose in Pennsylvania was called the "Original" that it
meant that the moose was the "ancestor" or "daddy" of the entire deer
tribe. Roush, who was known as "The Terrible Hunter," trailed deer in
the snow, using no weapons, killing them by running them to the water,
and plunging in after them and drowning them in mid-stream.
[Illustration: JIM JACOBS (1790-1880)
"The Seneca Bear Hunter," Who Found a Set of Moose Antlers in McKean
County in 1819.]
In one of his solitary hunts he penetrated to Pike County where he
met a redman named Tahment Swasen, probably the Indian hunter of that
name who was so admired by the gifted Thoreau, and who told him the
meaning of the word "Original." From constant exposure in icy waters
Roush became "knotted with rheumatism," finally succumbing from an
attack of pneumonia at his home near Woodward, Centre County, at the
early age of 45 years. Merrill in his "Moose Book" conclusively proves
that the name is not _original_ but _orignal_, and is derived from a
Basque word _orenac_ meaning deer. This was corrupted by the French
Canadians into _orignac_ and then to _Orignal_. In Pennsylvania it was
_Original_. Swasen claimed that as the moose was the only species of
deer found on all continents it proved him to be the progenitor of the
entire cervine race. No trustworthy information has come to the writer
that the moose bred in Pennsylvania. John Q. Dyce said: "They probably
bred in the State at one time." Other old hunters made the same
guarded remark. Jesse Logan, grand-nephew of James Logan, "The Mingo
Orator," who was born in 1809, and died on February 17 of last year,
had heard of the presence of Moose in Pennsylvania during his father's
lifetime, but said it was the scarcest of all the wild animals of the
Commonwealth. He had heard that in the deep pools of the Moshannon,
or "Moose Stream," the moose were in the habit of bathing, performing
strange evolutions when the horns of the crescent moon were up-turned,
that no Indian would kill a moose at that time, that Chickalacamoose
(now Clearfield) meant "the meeting place of the moose." A Moose, one
of the last killed in Pennsylvania, was shot at one of these pools, and
Captain John Logan (Jesse's grandfather), who lived nearby, fastened
the antlers over the door of his cabin to bring good luck. "But," added
Jesse Logan reflectively, "Captain Logan had bad luck every day he
lived under the moose horns, and was finally put out by a white man
who claimed to own the ground on which the shack stood." Generally
speaking, Moose horns above a door were supposed to bring good luck.
Joshua Roush stated that the moose always crossed into Pennsylvania
at one particular point, near Narrowsburg on the Delaware River, from
there the path led southwesterly along the Allegheny highlands clear
to the Maryland line. The Wind Gap in Northampton County was evidently
an outlet for the Moose to Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Wind Gap is only ten miles as the crow flies to the mouth of Martin's
Creek on the Delaware River. Very old people in that section can tell
of the occasional appearance of Moose in the Wind Gap up to the last
decade of the Eighteenth Century. There is a story of a moose being
killed by Moravian Indians on Moose Run, Centre County, of another
killed on Burgoon's Run, Blair County, and one or two driven South by
dogs, slain near the Juniata in the vicinity of McVeytown, but the
dates are uncertain. Jesse Logan stated that the Black Moose was not
seen in Northwestern Pennsylvania in his day, but the finding of a
comparatively fresh-looking set of Moose antlers at the salt-lick
(now the centre of the City Park of Bradford, McKean County) in 1819,
and the prevalence of the Moose-Wood or Leather-wood, show that they
were present in that section probably a generation earlier. C. W.
Dickinson, born in 1842, a great authority on wild life topics, who
resides at Smethport, McKean County, states that when he was a boy he
heard some of the old gray-haired men say that they had been told that
there were Black Moose on the headwaters of Pine Creek (Tiadaghton) in
an early day, but that he never heard anyone say that they saw one.
That would establish the presence of Moose in Northern Potter and Tioga
Counties, completing the evidence that they lived at one time along
the entire "Northern Tier" of Pennsylvania Counties. It is stated
that the early Scotch-Irish settlers along the Juniata River referred
to the Moose as the _Black Elk_. It is understood that this name was
sometimes applied in Ireland to the extinct "Irish Elk" (_Megaceros
hibernicus_); it would seem that the pioneers from the Emerald Isle
noted the resemblance between the palmated antlers of the extinct
forest monarch dug up in their own bogs and the Black Moose of their
new Pennsylvania home. There are some who claim that the Black Moose
was a regular resident of Pennsylvania, breeding in the State up to
the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. As names, dates
and places are lacking, and in the face of documentary evidence, and
the views of naturalists like Rhoads and others to the contrary, it
must be regarded as the veriest tradition. According to Boyd's "Indian
Local Names," Chickalacamoose, now Clearfield, Clearfield County,
signifies "It comes together," or "The meeting place." As before noted,
according to Jesse Logan, it meant "meeting place of the Moose," a
far more plausible translation of this ancient name. In Daniel G.
Brinton's "Dictionary of the Lenni Lenape," the Delaware word for
Moose was "Mos." John C. French, speaking of Potter County (Northern
Pennsylvania) says: "None of our oldest men ever saw a Pennsylvania
Moose, though Edwin Grimes (born 1830) heard some of the old men, back
about 1840, tell of having killed or hunted 'the Original' about 1770
and earlier; both in Pennsylvania and New York. Capt. John Titus, born
about 1784, said in 1881--he was nearly 97 years of age--that there
had been none since he could remember in Western New York or Northern
Pennsylvania, except an occasional traveller from farther north. He
called them 'Woodeater' and said they were also called 'original' by
some, as they were the largest--seven feet high at shoulders--and were
thought to be older than any other deer species, that their short
necks and long legs fitted them only for feeding on trees and briars,
or in water where plants floated on the surface, roots three or four
feet below. My grandfather, William French, born in 1788, said they
sometimes came south of the lakes in New York to the Chemung River,
while he was a boy living there.
[Illustration: Birthplace of Jim Jacobs. (Oldest House in Cornplanter
Reservation, Warren County.)]
The following is a memorandum of what my father told me, as he
remembered, his grandfathers told him about the 'brown elk' as they
called them. My great-grandfather, John G. Martin, who came from
Ireland in 1775, to join the Continentals against England, and resided
in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, after the war ended, for nearly fifty
years, always called the 'Original' or Black Moose a _brown elk_. My
father, born in 1818, never saw one; but his father, born in 1788, saw
a few of them in Steuben County, New York, and along the Pennsylvania
line in Tioga County, while a boy and spoke of them as Originals, and
very rare--some of them very large."
[Illustration of fox]