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Red Ochre with stone, vegetation, Water & Earth cosmologies

Pigeon River

Newport TN

The Pigeon River was known for the abundance of Passenger Pigeons that made their homes and migratory flights along the river....

The flocks were so thick that hunting was easy—even waving a pole at the low-flying birds would kill some. Still, harvesting for subsistence didn’t threaten the species’ survival. But after the Civil War came two technological developments that set in motion the pigeon’s extinction: the national expansions of the telegraph and the railroad. They enabled a commercial pigeon industry to blossom, fueled by professional sportsmen who could learn quickly about new nestings and follow the flocks around the continent. “Hardly a train arrives that does not bring hunters or trappers,” reported Wisconsin’s Kilbourn City Mirror in 1871. “Hotels are full, coopers are busy making barrels, and men, women, and children are active in packing the birds or filling the barrels. They are shipped to all places on the railroad, and to Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.”

The professionals and amateurs together outflocked their quarry with brute force. They shot the pigeons and trapped them with nets, torched their roosts, and asphyxiated them with burning sulfur. They attacked the birds with rakes, pitchforks, and potatoes. They poisoned them with whiskey-soaked corn. Learning of some of these methods, Potawatomi leader Pokagon despaired. “These outlaws to all moral sense would touch a lighted match to the bark of the tree at the base, when with a flash—more like an explosion—the blast would reach every limb of the tree,” he wrote of an 1880 massacre, describing how the scorched adults would flee and the squabs would “burst open upon hitting the ground.” Witnessing this, Pokagon wondered what type of divine punishment might be “awaiting our white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our forests these wild pigeons, the most beautiful flowers of the animal creation of North America.”

Passenger Pigeon. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.  Photo: Photograph by Marc Schlossman/Panos Pictures

Ultimately, the pigeons’ survival strategy—flying in huge predator-proof flocks—proved their undoing. “If you’re unfortunate enough to be a species that concentrates in time and space, you make yourself very, very vulnerable,” says Stanley Temple, a professor emeritus of conservation at the University of Wisconsin. http://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct

Sun 12˚ Libra opp Full Moon with Aries 2:40 PM EDT, cj Mercury, qunx rNeptune 12˚ Pisces & sq Pluto 16˚ Capricorn… Full Moon  11˚ Aries (12:00 PM EDT) opp Sun and Mercury 12˚ & 10˚ Libra... Mercury 12˚ Libra cj Sun, opp Moon, qunx rNeptune & sq Pluto... Venus 19˚ Virgo exact cj Mars 19˚ Virgo, sq Saturn 22˚ and Black Moon Lilith 26˚ Sagittarius & trine Pluto 16˚ Cap… Mars 19˚ Virgo exact cj Venus,  sq Saturn 22˚ and Black Moon Lilith 26˚ Sagittarius & trine Pluto 16˚ Cap... Jupiter 28˚ Libra sextile Black Moon Lilith 26˚ Sagittarius, opp rUranus 27˚ Aries & qunx rChiron 26˚ Pisces… Saturn 22˚ cj Black Moon Lilith 26˚ Sagittarius & sq rChiron 26˚ Pisces… rUranus Aries 27˚ opp Jupiter & trine Saturn & Black Moon Lilith... rNeptune 12˚ Pisces opp Venus and Mars, qunx Sun and Mercury & opp Venus and Mars with Virgo... Pluto 16˚ Capricorn sq Sun & tr Mars and Venus with Virgo… rChiron 26˚ Pisces sq Saturn & Black Moon Lilith...

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