University of Virginia Library

4. Israel Putnam and the Wolf
BY DAVID HUMPHREYS (ABOUT 1740)

IN the year 1739, he removed from Salem to Pomfret, an inland fertile town in Connecticut, forty miles east of Hartford. Having here purchased a considerable tract of land, he applied himself successfully to agriculture.

The first years on a new farm are not, however, exempt from disasters and disappointments, which can only be remedied by stubborn and patient industry. Our farmer was sufficiently occupied in building a house and barn, felling woods, making fences, sowing grain, planting orchards, and taking care of his stock.[7] He had to encounter, in turn, the calamities occasioned by drought in summer, blast in harvest, loss of cattle in winter, and the desolation of his sheepfold by wolves. In one night he had seventy fine sheep and goats killed, besides many lambs and kids wounded. This havoc was committed by a she wolf, which, with her whelps, had for several years infested the vicinity. The young were commonly destroyed by the vigilance of the hunters, but the old one was too wise to come within reach of gunshot. Upon being closely pursued, she would generally fly to the western woods, and return the next winter with another litter of whelps.

This wolf at length became such an intolerable nuisance that Mr. Putnam entered into a combination with five of his neighbors to hunt alternately until they could destroy her. Two of the six, taking turns, were to be constantly in pursuit. It was known, that, having lost the toes from one foot, by a steel trap, she made one track shorter than the other. By these

tracks the pursuers recognized, in a light snow, the route of this dangerous animal. Having followed her to the Connecticut river, and found she had turned back in a direct course towards Pomfret, they immediately returned. By ten o'clock the next morning the bloodhounds had driven her into a den, about three miles distant from the house of Mr. Putnam.

The people soon collected with dogs, guns, straw, fire, and sulphur, to attack the common enemy. With this apparatus, several unsuccessful efforts were made to force her from the den. The hounds came back badly wounded, and refused to return. The smoke of blazing straw had no effect. Nor did the fumes of burnt brimstone, with which the cavern was filled, compel her to quit the retirement.

Wearied with such fruitless attempts (which had brought the time to ten o'clock at night), Mr. Putnam tried once more to make his dog enter, but in vain. He proposed to his negro man to go down into the cavern and shoot the wolf: the negro declined the hazardous service. Then it was that the master, angry at the disappointment, and declaring that he was ashamed to have a coward in his family, resolved himself to destroy the ferocious beast, lest she should escape through some unknown fissure of the rock.

His neighbors strongly remonstrated against the perilous enterprise: but he knew that wild animals were frightened by fire, and provided several strips of birch bark, the only combustible material which he could obtain that would afford light in this deep and darksome cave. He prepared for his descent by taking off his coat end waistcoat, and fastening a long rope around his legs, by which he might be pulled back, at an agreed signal. He entered headforemost, with the blazing torch in his hand.

The opening of the den, on the east side of a very high ledge of rocks, is about two feet square. From thence it descends obliquely fifteen feet, then running horizontally about ten more, it ascends gradually sixteen feet towards its termination. The sides of this subterranean cavity are composed of smooth and solid rocks, which seem to have been divided from each other by some former earthquake. The top and bottom are also of stone. The entrance, in winter, is covered with ice, and exceedingly slippery. In no place is the cave high enough for a man to raise himself upright, nor in any part is it more than three feet in width.

After groping his passage to the horizontal part of

the den, the most terrifying darkness appeared in front of the dim circle of light afforded by his torch. It was silent as the house of death. None but monsters of the desert had ever before explored this solitary mansion of horror. Cautiously proceeding onward and coming to the ascent, he slowly mounted on his hands and knees, until he discovered the glaring eyeballs of the wolf, which was sitting at the extremity of the cavern.

Startled at the sight of fire, she gnashed her teeth, and gave a sudden growl. As soon as he had made the necessary discovery, he kicked the rope as a signal for pulling him out. The people at the mouth of the den had listened with painful anxiety. Hearing the growling of the wolf, and supposing their friend to be in the most imminent danger, they drew him forth with such celerity that his shirt was stripped over his head, and his skin severely lacerated. After he had adjusted his clothes, and loaded his gun with nine buckshot, holding a torch in one hand and the musket in the other, he descended the second time. When he drew nearer than before, the wolf assumed a still more fierce and terrible appearance. Howling, rolling her eyes, snapping her teeth, and dropping her head between her legs, she was evidently on the point of springing at him.

At the critical instant he levelled and fired at her head. Stunned with the shock, and suffocated with the smoke, he immediately found himself drawn out of the cave. After he had refreshed himself, and permitted the smoke to disappear, he went down the third time. Once more he came within sight of the wolf, which appeared very passive: he applied the torch to her nose, and perceiving that she was dead,

he took hold of her ears. Then he kicked the rope (still tied round his legs), and the people above, with small exultation, dragged them both out together.