The bounty on hides that Putnam County eliminated in 1940 originated in pioneer days, when Hoosiers could actually pay their taxes with animal hides. While these creatures tried to avoid human beings, swamp fires sometimes drove them out onto the farms encroaching on the ragged edge of the marshland. Gray wolves, Canada lynxes and possibly even massive timber wolves also occasionally migrated down from the wilder parts of northern Michigan. In 1918, the Lake County Times reminded readers about their fanged and rarely-seen neighbors on the far outskirts of Chicagoland. Modern agriculture in some northern Indiana townships is less than a hundred years old.Īt the start of the Jazz Age, the Kankakee’s ancient but dying wilderness was still a hideout for wolves. Mary-of-the-Woods in the 1840s wrote that “wood is commoner than dust.” In northwest Indiana, parts of the Kankakee Swamp - formerly one of the biggest wetlands in North America - weren’t drained until the 1920s. Though fur-bearing animals had been the main lure for French explorers, one of the French nuns who founded St. (Abraham Lincoln wrote a ballad about a bear hunt.) Old-growth timber could still be found in most Hoosier counties at the time of the Civil War.
When Indiana became a state just two-hundred years ago, the area bounded by the Ohio River, Lake Michigan, and the Illinois prairies was one of the wildest spots on earth, full of buffalo, black bears, and cougars. The interesting story of animal bounties goes back deep into Indiana history - as do the wolf terror tales that go along with it. Surely this was avian revenge for the county commissioner’s bounties placed against their ancestors? For months, urban crows left the Monroe County courthouse, downtown parking meters, and city sidewalks soaked in bird droppings. In 2011, no less a paper than The New York Times reported on Terre Haute’s recurring crow problem - a major ornithological nightmare that migrated down to Bloomington early in 2015. (American hunters with wolf hides, Northern Rockies, circa 1920.) In 1911, crow heads and eggs were added to the list of outlaws, and a bounty was provided of 10 cents for each crow head and 5 cents for each crow egg, the eggs to be in lots of 10 or more. In a later law, a bounty was provided for wood chuck (or ground hog) scalps, and owl or hawk heads, but with screech owls and sparrow hawks excepted.
A year or two ago, Putnam County commissioners were called upon to pay a bounty for a wolf scalp.
The statutes of Indiana in 1875 provided that county commissioners “may” offer a bounty of $20 for wolf scalps, with a $3 bounty of wolves under 6 months of age also, $5 for each fox scalp or $1.50 when under 6 months. In recent years, the expenditure on such bounties has not amounted to much, but the bounty offer was still in effect and occasionally some claimant for such payments would go to the auditor’s office to file claims for payments, and would bring along tangible proof. In a meeting that week, Putnam County commissioners finally eliminated payment in cash for the hides of animals deemed “pests of economic life.” On the eve of World War II, this legal relic of pioneer days was still lingering around in the statute books. So begins an article in the Greencastle Daily Banner, September 11, 1940. That will pertain to the year 1941, at least.” “The aroma of woodchuck scalps, crow heads and wolf scalps will not be diffused throughout the sacred precincts of the Putnam County temple of justice, and of the office of the auditor, in particular.