Little Falls weekly transcript. (Little Falls, Morrison Co., Minn.) 1894-19??, 1899-12-26
MAMMOTH BATTLE AT BIG BONE SPRINGS

MAMMOTH BATTLE AT BIG BONE SPRINGS.
testants were huge mammoths and mas
todons on one side, lightning and the
wrath of an Indian deity on the other.
All that is left to tell the terrible story
is the huge bones that have been exca-
waited near Big Bone Springs, Boone
county, Ky.
The story, as told by the old Indian
chief, is thrilling one. When General
William. Henry Harrison, grandfather Of
the present ex-President Harrison, had
concluded the treaty with the Indians
for the great Northwest Territories, he
asked the Indian chiefs if they could in
in any way account for the numberless
mighty bones Of mastodons and ele
plants that lay in such marvellous COL
lections within the small valley at Big
Bone Springs. An old chief, gray with
many winters, rose and answered the
question thus:
MANY moons ago, ere the white man
came and while the hunting was yet
good, the elk, the buffalo and the deer
went often to the valley of springs to
drink the smelling waters. But many
and mighty mammoths also came from
afar to drink, and as the days went on
they killed or frightened away the elk,
the buffalo and the deer, so that the In
dams could hunt no longer. Then the
Great Spirit was angry at the man.
moths. and he came down from the sky,
and from a high hill he hurled his thun-
derbolts among the great animals and
slew them in countless numbers within
the valley. Mad with terror, they tore
through the pathways of the valley, and
the deer and buffalo that remained fed
into the forests. but the Great Spirits
thunderbolts were more terrible and
more destructive to the mammoths than
they had been to the game. All save one
was killed before they could rush from
the valley. This great bull, the father
of the herd, had only his long tusks
broken off by the lightning. He was old
and cunning, and he went screaming
across the hills, sweeping trees out Of his
path as an Indian would bit of grass.
until be came to the great river. Here
he paused only long enough to gather
himself for a mighty bound. Then, leap
ing, he cleared the wide Ohio and tore
on through the forest to the great lakes
and across them into the cold northeast.
Here he disappeared and was seen no
more, and here he lives to this day. his
tusks gone, shaggy and gray with age,
but still terrible 20 behold"
Such was the answer that General
Harrison received, but whatever of truth
there is, or is not, in the Indian legend
accounting for the bones found and to be
found in the valley at Big Bone Springs,
at least the strange discovery made by
fishermen on the coast Of Labrador in
1887 lends weird FEASIBILITY to the
old chiefs story.
The fisherman in question saw, while
tramping the beach one day, huge body
frozen in the ice cliff above him., AS the
ice melted the body sank to the ground.
and he, procuring aid, skinned it. The
skin was put aboard Russian, vessel
and taken to Russia. It proved to be the
skin of an arctic elephant, "a feet long
and 16 feet high, and the Royal Zoolog-.
ical society of Russia has it now. The
Smithsonian institution at Washington
heard of the. matter and has since had
an exact reproduction Of the skin made
and mounted for its museum. Now it
does not take much imagination to read
in this find Of the fisherman sequel to
the Indian legend. Indeed when one
Indian was told Of it he said the great
mammoth, which had escaped into the
northeast, had been found at last.
The hamlet Of Big Bone Springs, while
many years old, is still but little clus
ter Of houses, lying in secluded, out of
the way valley in the Kentucky hills,
some % or more miles southwest of, Gin.
cinnati Once famous for it's mineral
waters and the remains of prehistoric