Introductory discourse delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, on the fourth of May, 1814 / By De Witt Clinton.

  • DeWitt Clinton
Date:
1815
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory discourse delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, on the fourth of May, 1814 / By De Witt Clinton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Indians were surprised at the sight of it; and when they were asked what they thought it was, they answered that it must be the chief or father of all the’ beavers. It was of prodigious bulk, and had thick white teeth about ten inches long. -Jt was looked upon ag the skeleton of an elephant. A french lieutenant in the fort, who had seen it, assured me that the figure of the whole snout was yet to be seen though it was half mouldered. He added that he had not obser- ved that any of the bones were taken away, but thought the skeleton lay quite.- perfect there. -I have heard people talk of this monstrous skeleton in severe! other parts of Canada.” Kalm’s Travels, vol. 3. During the revolution a delegation of warriors from the Delaware tribe told the zovernor of Virginia that it was a tradition handed down from their fathers, ‘that, in ancient times, a herd of these tremendous animals came to the big bone licks and began an universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffaloes, and other animals which had been created for the use of the Indians; that the (reat Man ahove, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged, that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring moun- ; fain, on a rock of which his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell ; but mis- sing one at length, it wounded him in the side ; whereon springing round, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day. ” Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. In the year 1748, M. Fabri, who had made great excursions into the northern parts of Louisiana and the southern regions of Canada, informed Buffon that he had seen beads and skeletons of an enormous quadrupod, called by the savages “the father of oxen ; and that the thigh bones of these animals were from five to six feet in length. Buffin’s Natural History, translated by Smellie, vol. 9. In Siberia a similar animal was supposed to exist under ground, and many fables were related respecting it under the russian name of mammoth. N otwith- standing these traditions and reports, the attention of the philosophers of Europe was not fully drawn to this subject until 1765, when mr. George Croghan saw, in the vicinityof a large salt marsh, on the country bordering on the Ohio, immense hones and teeth, and he sent some of them to England, where they immediately became the subject of speculation and discussion ; before this similar bones were discovered in the russian dominions. Dr. Hunter, a celebrated anatomist, from an examination of the teeth, pronounced them to belong to a carnivorous non- descript anima]. Daubenton declared, at one time, that this animal was an ele- phant, and at another time thought that the teeth were those of an hippopota- mus, and conceived that the animal partook of both those species, and was a real mule. Muller supposed that they belong to certain unknown quadnupeds, denomi-