The departed predators, whole: wolf, panther, bear — with their last records and their conflicts

LAST RECORDS · COUNTY BASELINE AGAINST STATE EVIDENCE

Chapman's roll is the county's baseline: gone with or before the buffalo by 1880 — "the panther, black wolf and black bear" — and the catamount, his second name for the puma kind, already very rare beside them, the lynx rare with it. The state record, kept in Mumford and Whitaker's Mammals of Indiana (1982) and carried in the Department of Natural Resources' species histories, dates the ends the county history could only mourn. The wolf: Indiana's settlers, in the DNR's own summary, "eliminated wolves from the state by 1908" — the last timber-wolf report in the mammal record stands at 1908, with the standing caution of the mammalogists that late wolf reports shade into coyote confusion, the identification question printed in the Calumet-region review of the same record. Since then the state has exactly one confirmed wolf: a yearling male found dead in east-central Indiana in December 2003, determined on examination to have wandered from a Wisconsin pack — a disperser, not a population; Indiana holds no breeding wolves, and the DNR lists none. The panther — the mountain lion, cougar, catamount of Chapman's two names: last recorded in Indiana in 1830 in the Mammals of Indiana record, its identification likewise questioned by the reviewers; the state's modern file is a file of the unconfirmed, sighting reports investigated and none established as a resident animal. The bear carries this section's dated conflict, printed whole: the Calumet review of the mammal record gives "the last report of a bear living in Indiana was in 1850" and, in the same breath, bears present in the northern counties until about 1870; the DNR's own releases of 2015, citing Whitaker and Mumford, date the end otherwise — the last confirmed resident wild black bear in Indiana in 1871 — and the Department built its June 2015 announcement on that year: the young male confirmed in this county that summer was "the first verified presence of a bear in the state in more than 140 years." 1850 and 1871 stand here unreconciled, each with its carrier, as this build prints conflicts. The bear's own story belongs to the closing article; here it dates the predator roll's end. Of county machinery for the killing — scalp bounties, commissioners' payments — no St. Joseph County bounty record stands in Chapman, Howard or the atlas searches run for this section; the settling source is named for the record: the county commissioners' records, whose county archive (records 1829–1865 catalogued in the University of Notre Dame's Archives) is where a bounty payment, if one was ever made on this ground, would sit. Until that shelf is read, the county's predator story is Chapman's roll and the state's last-record dates, and the predators' absence is itself the dated fact: wolf gone by 1908, panther by 1830, bear by 1850 or 1871, all three gone from the county before Chapman bound his book.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), Chapter II: the panther, black wolf and black bear gone with or before the buffalo; catamount and lynx very rare.
2. Indiana DNR, gray wolf species record: wolves eliminated from Indiana by 1908; the single confirmed animal since, the December 2003 east-central yearling of Wisconsin-pack origin; no breeding population.
3. Mumford & Whitaker, Mammals of Indiana (1982), as carried in the Grand Calumet region mammal review: wolf last report 1908 (identification questioned); mountain lion last recorded 1830 (questioned); Canada lynx last state record 1880; bear — last report 1850, present until about 1870.
4. Indiana DNR releases, June 2015: the last confirmed resident wild black bear dated 1871; the 2015 St. Joseph County animal the first verified bear in the state in more than 140 years — the conflict with the 1850 figure printed whole.
5. University of Notre Dame Archives, ArchivesSpace: St. Joseph County Records, 1829–1865 — the named settling shelf for any county bounty record; not read.