1693-1790 Fauna – the war on predatorsi
i 1693-1790 Fauna – the war on predators
Modern discussions about the conservation of South Carolina’s natural wildlife tend to focus on the protection of animals and habitats that have declined over the generations as a result of human encroachment. In contrast, we hear less about the conservation of indigenous predators because so few now inhabit our fields and forests. The scarcity of wolves, panthers, bears, and bobcats in the Palmetto State is not a recent development, however. Their absence is due to a century-long campaign of violence launched in the early days of the colony, when Carolina’s provincial government declared war against “beasts of prey.”
To understand the historical context for South Carolina’s sustained campaign against indigenous predators, it’s important to recall the invasive nature of the settlement that commenced here in 1670. European colonists found on this shore a landscape rich in natural resources and teaming with animal life. Rather than observing the lifestyles of the indigenous peoples and adapting to local conditions, however, the incoming settlers chose to disrupt the existing ecosystem by transplanting a new world order. European ideas about land use began to reshape the landscape, and the introduction of foreign crops and new domesticated animals disrupted delicate natural balances. As this invasive process spread and matured, the indigenous populations of people and animals either fled, adapted, or perished. Those that resisted or thwarted the expansion of colonial settlement faced dire consequences. In this context, South Carolina’s natural predators found themselves in the crosshairs of history.
In an effort to secure the natural landscape for colonial settlement, South Carolina’s early government enacted a series of laws between 1693 and 1790 to encourage the destruction of what they called “beasts of prey.” These laws offered cash bounties for the heads of “lions,” “tygers,” wolves, bears, and wildcats that menaced the spread of colonial habitations, animal husbandry, and plantation agriculture. The hunters participating in this activity included white settlers and Native American allies, as well as enslaved men of African descent. Their efforts commenced within the earliest European settlements along the Atlantic coastline and gradually spread westward to the Piedmont. By the end of the eighteenth century, hunters had successfully rid the state of its indigenous predators, who were hunted to extirpation, or local extinction.
South Carolina’s protracted war on wild predators targeted indigenous animals that preyed on imported domesticated livestock and whose presence in the wilderness discouraged planters from pushing westward into the interior of the colony and state. Although colonial-era planters sustained losses from a variety of native species, they consistently identified panthers, wolves, bears, and bobcats as the principal and most dangerous offenders. The vernacular terminology used to describe these beasts in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not as precise as modern biological taxonomy, however, and therefore leaves some room for interpretation.
Colonial-era descriptions of bears and wildcats in South Carolina, for example, no doubt point to the American black bear (Ursus americanus) and the common bobcat (Lynx rufus), while the identification of the wolf in question is less certain.
None of the extant government records include descriptors that might facilitate a distinction between the common gray wolf (Canis lupus) and the southeastern red wolf (Canis lupus rufus). A Swiss immigrant living at New Windsor on the Savannah River in 1753 described the native wolf as being “not as large and strong as those in Europe,” which might point to the latter subspecies. The lack of physical remains of these eighteenth-century animals, combined with their successful extirpation from the state before the nineteenth century, now render it difficult to settle the question conclusively.
More problematic is the identification of the larger member of the feline family. Between 1693 and 1744, the government of South Carolina consistently used the Old-World terms “lion” and “tiger” (also “tyger”) interchangeably to describe a New-World counterpart that we would now call a cougar or panther. The state’s final campaign against beasts of prey, enacted in 1786, employed the more accurate term “panther,” but the precise identity of the species in question remains unclear. As with the wolf, the lack of extant remains from the period before the nineteenth century renders it difficult to discern whether it was the common North American cougar (Puma concolor couguar) or perhaps a distinct and now forgotten subspecies, like the Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi).
South Carolina’s colonial campaign to drive natural predators away from domestic farming was shaped by a unique set of local conditions, but the concept behind it was not new. The practice of systematically hunting beasts of prey to extirpation was part of an ancient defensive strategy extending back to the dawn of civilization. From the Classical world of ancient Greece and Rome to the Middle Ages across Europe, a number of principalities and kingdoms offered hunters bounty money to destroy wolves that harassed flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. Driven by incentives offered in statute laws, hunters eradicated wolves from England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, respectively.
[Butler estimates based on the surviving financial records of annual appropriations that South Carolina hunters destroyed at least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000 beasts of prey over the course of the eighteenth century, largely removing them from the colony permanantly. The law said that if you showed up with the head of a proscribed predator, you would earn a payment from the state of x amount – said amount being 2x for whites and their slaves, x for Indians.]
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The preamble to the new statute noted that “it is become necessary to give some encouragement to have beasts of prey destroyed, which of late have been very destructive to the stocks of cattle, sheep and hogs, in this province.” For the first time since the beginning of the war on native predators, the 1744 bounty statute specified the geographic range of the hunting in question. It offered bounties to “all and every person and persons whoever, that shall hereafter kill in this province, within one hundred and fifty miles of Charlestown, or within the Welsh Tract upon Pedee [sic], any of the beasts of prey hereinafter mentioned.” A revised schedule of bounties, again rendered in “proclamation money,” more clearly articulated the government’s priorities. For a “tiger,” the government offered eight shillings (6 shillings sterling, or £2.2.0 S.C. currency); for a wolf, six shillings (£.0.4.6 sterling, or £1.11.6 S.C. currency); and for a bear or wild cat, four shillings (£0.3.0 sterling, or £1.1.0 S.C. currency). Like the previous statute, the 1744 law directed hunters to “carry the scalp with the two ears of such beast of prey, fresh,” to a justice of the peace and “give sufficient proof” that the said animals were “killed within the limits aforesaid.” The magistrates were empowered to give hunters the customary certificate to be presented to the public treasurer in Charleston, who would provide payment.
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After the American Revolution, planters and farmers across South Carolina repaired their property and continued the state’s westward expansion into the Piedmont region that was formerly reserved to the Cherokee Nation. The incursion of natural predators into settlements new and old soon inspired the revival of the colonial bounty system. On March 11th, 1786, the state legislature ratified a new version of the familiar statute “to encourage the destroying beasts of prey.” Its preamble explained that such encouragement was necessary because the customary predators had recently “been very mischievous to some of the interior parts of the state.” To address their unwelcome predations, the state government offered to “every person and persons whatever” ten shillings (sterling) for each wolf and each “panther or tiger,” but only five shillings for a “wildcat.” For reasons not explained at the time, bears no longer appeared on the bounty list.
The method of paying the bounty in 1786 was similar to that prescribed in 1733 and 1744, but now less geographically restrictive. It required hunters to present “the scalp with the two ears of such beasts of prey fresh” to “any one justice of the peace within the state” and to provide sufficient proof “that such beast was killed within this state.” As customary, the magistrate was empowered to create a certificate that the hunter could present to the state treasurer. As a new feature, the statue of 1786 stated that such certificate for bounty money “shall be discountable for the public taxes of this state with the collector thereof.” In other words, hunters could pay some or all of their annual state taxes by destroying beasts of prey anywhere within the state.
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South Carolina’s long campaign against beasts of prey reached a quiet conclusion near the end of the eighteenth century. The intermittent war had commenced within the swamps and savannas of the coastal plain at the beginning of the century, migrated to the new interior townships during the 1730s and 1740s, and finally concluded on the rolling hills of the western Piedmont. By 1790, wolves, panthers, bears, and bobcats were effectively extirpated from the Palmetto State.
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