Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1879 — The Indiana Pigeon Boost. [ARTICLE]

The Indiana Pigeon Boost.

A special from New Albany on Friday to the Cincinnati Gazette stated that a party of hunters had left that city for the celebrated pigeon roost in Scott county, were it is said, acres of timber are covered nightly with wild pigeons. For the past seventy-five years this noted locality has b*«n a roosting place for pipeonA, and millions of these birds congregate there nightly during the seasons of their visits of this section of the country. They fly away of mornings to their feeding places in the woods and fields of ludiana and Kentucky, distant from the roost in many instances from 100 to 300 miles, returning again at night, the arrivals often continuing up to midnight. The timber on thousands of acres covered by this roost is broken down badly, large limbs being snapped off like reeds by tne accumulated weight of the birds upon them. Throughout the entire night there is heard the cracking and orashing of limbs, the hum and flurry and drumming of wings, the explosion of firearms and the confusion and bediamic thrashing sounds caused by people beating the birds from the trees with long poles. Thousands of pigeons are killed nightly; but all this slaughter seems to make no diminution in the vast flocks that congregate at this roost. This Scott county pigeon roost is historic ground. It was in this neighborhood that the most barbarous slaughter that darkened the pioneer days of Southern Indiana occurred. In September, 1812. a party of thirty Pottawattomie Indians made an invasion in this section of the State. In the Pigeon Boost neighborhood was a settlement, with a total population of thirty souls. The Indians attacked this settlement, killing and scalping twenty-four of the thirty settlers, most of them women and children, and then burning the bodies of their victims in the cabins, which thev fired, Mrs. Beedle and her two children, and three members of a family .named Collins, were all that escaped. Mrs. Beadle carried the news to the settlers iu Clark county, and tbe next day a large company of the militia started in pursuit of tbe savages, coming up with them just as they had reached the north bank of the Muscatitac river in their canoes. Tbe river was at high flood, and the pursuers, having no boats, were compelled to give up the pursuit. This was the last incursion of Indians made into Southwestern Indiana. In the local history of the State this savage slaughter has ever eince been designated the Pigeon Boost massacre.

A cellar that is cool, dry and dark, and yet well ventilated, is the best place for preserving potatoes in large quantities. When smaller quantities are to be preserved, there is nothing like dry sand. The same may be said of fruits and roots of all sorts.