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Even the Indians were afraid of Scott County

NOTE: -This article was found in the 29 Jan 1932 issue of the SCOTT COUNTY NEWS,
page 3. It was written by Lloyd Lindsay.

Scott County today thinks far to little of outdoor life. Some of us know that our homeland was firsts settled by outdoor men. Few of us know that these open air pioneers rescued what is now Scott county from a pure wilderness. They have heard it perhaps but they don’t understand.
The first men ever to set foot in Scott county, so I am told, were white men who came over from the Elk Valley country to shoot buffaloes on Buffalo Creek. Indian were always afraid to live here, for on the Indian map Scott county as we now know it was a part of Kentucky and “Kentucky” to the red skins meant “a land of darkness and blood.” They were superstitious; believed that the whole region was guarded by an evil spirit. There being lots of buffaloes in these woods then, the white men decided to take a chance with the red warriors’ devil and come here hunting.
Over the mountain they came. Long squirrel rifles in their hands. Coon skin caps on their heads. They were the first men ever to walk upon Scott County soil. This small party coming single file through a dark and pathless wood had left their cabins and farms work for a little bunt over the mountain – but the hunting was too good! They never went back to their farms. They sent a scout back to bring their women folks over the mountain but they never went back themselves.
It was a good many years after the first men came here that I was shown a pair of deer antlers by a hunter living in the south end of the county. I had never seen horns before being at the time only five years old.
“Where did you get the antlers,” I asked him.
“Why, over there on that mountain,” he said, pointing off to the east. “I used to find lots of deer years ago.”
“When I am old enough,” I said thoughtfully, “I’m going on that mountain and shoot me a deer.”
The old man laughed, “I’m afraid you live too late for that,” he said. “There are no deers over there any more.”
“Where have they gone?” I asked. “Won’t they come back some day?”
“They have all been killed,” he said simply.
They have all been killed!”

Can you think of sadder words than that? Buffalos all killed. Deers all killed! Wild turkeys – well, there may be as many as twenty left in the whole county. What is our wild life coming to – or going to? Next year we will hear that turkeys are all killed. The quail will be next. Won’t we as a people do something to stop it?

H. C. SMITH says we will- -says we must. The builders of Scott county were hunters. Hunting was the basic industry on which every business we have, in an indirect sense, was founded. Today H. C. -SMITH is the sponsor of a movement to get the people to set aside some six thousand acres of land for a government game and bird reserve. This tract will be maintained under a government manager for the breeding purposes of game. If Mr. SMITH can get enough signers back of his movement why it goes over. If you own land in county west of Oneida why not add it to the reserve.