The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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IT WAS A PANTHER
By S. C. Turnbo
Coon hunting was very common with the young men during the early settlements
along the streams. The dogs were trained to "coon hunts" of night
as well as chasing the deer. Many old people cherish the memory when they
used to go coon hunting and catch as many in one night as they could carry
home with them.
Mrs. Cassia King gives an amusing story of a lot of boys going out on a coon hunt one night and how it turned out.
Mrs. King said that her grandfather, Jimmie Adams, was among the first
settlers in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Big North Fork of White
River. He built the first mill in that section which was erected on a spring
branch on the south side of the river 5 miles below the mouth of Buffalo.
"My grandfather owned a few negroes, among them were three boys
named Mose, Wash and Bill. The last named was a tall, slim fellow and they
made his name double by calling him "Long Bill". These three negroes
were regular coon hunters of nights and as my grandfather was not hard on
his slaves he allowed them to hunt coons whenever they chose to do so if
he could spare them from their work if the weather admitted. My grandfather
had two sons named John and Matthew who were just large enough to go hunting
and they loved the sport of it as well as the three negroes did. One bright
moonlit night the two white boys and the three negroes took an axe and the
dogs and started off together on a big coon hunt. On making a large circuit
and capturing several coons which they carried with them to remove their
hides at home the dogs attacked something that was found to be bigger than
the kind they had been killing which resulted in a terrible fight between
it and the brave dogs. The boys all hurried up and surrounded the combatants
and hurrahed for the dogs, but after a hard battle the dogs were vanquished
and apparently the fierce creature got tired of fighting and went up a tree
and growled at the boys and dogs fearfully, but its size and noise did not
scare the boys for they believed it to be an unusually big coon. The tree
it was up was uncommonly large and it would take too long to chop it down.
They could see the mighty form of the "big coon"` as it lay crouched
on a limb some 25 feet above the ground. The tree was too large to climb
and the boys concluded that they could have to have help to capture the
monster, and the white boys and the other two negroes persuaded "Long
Bill" to take one of the dogs with him for company and protection and
go home and tell grandfather what they had treed. As soon as the negro arrived
there he told a monster tale by reporting that the dogs had met and fought
the biggest coon he ever heard of and that it "thrashed" the dogs
before it took a notion to climb a tree and that its "tail was as long
as a fence rail." My grandfather thinking that the negro was enlarging
on the description of the alleged coon told him If it was a coon that it
was a new kind of them that had come Into the country lately, but laying
jokes aside he told the negro that it might be something and he sent Josiah
Adams, an older son than John and Matthew, with "Long Bill" to
see if it was anything worth a load of powder and lead to kill it with.
Day was just abreaking when they left my grandfather’s house and it
was nearly sunup when they got to the boys where the dogs were treed. The
moment Josiah saw the big fellow lying on the limb of the tree he exclaimed,
"Boys, it’s a panther and a big one, too," and he shot and
killed it.
After this night’s experience the young hunters had learned how to distinguish a panther from a coon, said Aunt Cassia.
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