John Moring - Early American Naturalists: Exploring the American West, 1804-1900

Exploring the American West, 18041900

John Moring

Copyright 2002 by John Moring
Originally published in 2002 by Cooper Square Press
First Taylor Trade Publishing edition published in 2005

This Taylor Trade Publishing paperback edition of Early American Naturalists is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moring, John, 19462002.

Early American naturalists: Exploring the American West, 18041900 / John Moring:

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-58979-183-1

1. NaturalistsUnited StatesBiography. 2. Natural HistoryWest (U.S.)History. I. Title.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

To Walter Moring,
who first showed me a track in the woods
and told me
how to tell it was made by a deer.

When I read David Douglass entry in his journal for January 9, 1825, I realized how lucky I have been.

Stopping in the Galapagos Islands on his way to the Pacific coast of North America, a decade before the arrival of Charles Darwin, Douglas was amazed by the local birds. Unafraid of humans and unaccustomed to their presence, some of the small birds calmly sat on the brim of Douglass hat. Others rested on the barrel of his shotgun. Few people back in Douglass home in Scotland would have witnessed such an incident.

I did once. While hunting on an abandoned logging road in the woods of Maine, I stopped by a large bush that was filled with black-capped chickadees. They were singing and moving about and, suddenly, one flew over and perched on the brim of my hat. Another landed on the end of my shotgun barrel. They were unafraid and had every confidence that I posed no threat.

They were right.

I didnt dare move, hoping that the chickadees would stay where they were. Maybe others would join them.

I feel fortunate because I saw the chickadees that day. Ive also been able to witness other wondrous sights of nature: flushing hundreds of quail as I walked through a wilderness meadow in northern California; staring at a pronghorn antelope as it picked its way across open plains in South Dakota; gazing at miles of colorful wildflowers that emerged from the Arizona desert following spring rains; talking to a young moose that came over to visit me along a Maine stream; staring wide-eyed at a small, brown octopus that swam below me while scuba diving off Baja California; watching in wonder as hundreds of mule deer grazed in a mountain meadow in California; and watching an eagle soar above spawning sockeye salmon in Alaska, as white beluga whales bobbed at the surface in the distance.

But, on that day when I met the chickadees, it dawned on me that every plant, every tree, every animal that I encountered that day had been discovered long before my visit to the woods. Every species was known, every organism classified. Every biological form that I saw already could be identified by any competent naturalist. There was little new under the sun, except for the subtle nuances of chickadee behavior. Given time, there still were mysteries of science, even among the familiar speciesbut not the initial thrill of discovering new forms of life.

But, it wasnt always so. There were times when a naturalist could enter wild country in the West and encounter new forms of life almost everywhere. It was a feeling that most people of modern timesno matter what wonders they have witnessedwill never experience. This is an account of those naturalists who were lucky to be in the West at a time when the excitement of discovery was almost beyond our understanding today.

I want to thank my wife, Kathleen, for always making sure that I had the time to do the research, synthesize the many primary and secondary accounts, blend it together, and do the writing. Thanks also to Elizabeth Frost-Knappman, who liked this concept from the beginning and offered continual encouragement, and Bill Krohn, who has now caught the naturalist history bug, and passed on records of eastern and western naturalists. I also appreciate the assistance of staff archivists at the U.S. Military Academy, Peabody Museum at Yale University, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Colorado Historical Society, Smith College Library, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the National Archives branch in College Park, Maryland, and the Harvard University Botanical Museums.

It was Meriwether Lewis who first coined the term barking squirrel to describe the black-tailed prairie dog. Lewiss friend and co-leader of the famous Corps of Discovery Expedition, William Clark, called the curious animal a ground rat, because of its extensive burrows and tunnels. But it was one of the other members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sergeant John Ordway, who first used the term prairie dog.

In a sense, all three terms were partly accurate. This was an animal of the prairies. It lived in extensive prairie-dog towns constructed of elaborate burrow systems. The creature was about the size of the common gray squirrel of the East, and it barked like a dog.

But the name that eventually stuckblack-tailed prairie dogconfused scientists in the East. This small mammal was not a dog, nor a rat, nor a squirrel. It was a species new to science, and it was Lewis and Clark who first recognized the sociable, curious animals as being unique. The explorers even sent a live barking squirrel back to President Thomas Jefferson in the spring of 1805, and the animal (still very much alive) became the star attraction at Peales Museum in Philadelphia.

What swayed eastern scientists concerning this animal discovery was not just a vague description of a curious animal. Rather, it was the detailed notes that Lewis and Clark kept of their encounters and their examination of the prairie dog, skins that the explorers sent back east, and the live specimen that was viewed by scientists when it was placed on display in Philadelphia.