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Local Animals
Every other section of this record counts people. This one counts the other inhabitants: the buffalo that gave a stretch of the St. Joseph River its French name, the sturgeon speared at a paved fishing floor, the ducks of the Grand Kankakee Marsh sold by the dozen in Chicago, the deer and otters and prairie chickens that vanished from the county and the eagles and falcons that came back to nest in it. The record is kept the way the rest of this history is kept. An animal is said to be here when an account, a survey, or an agency list with a date says it was here. An animal is said to be gone when the record stops, and the record's own statements of going are printed with their dates and their makers, because last-animal stories are the easiest facts in local history to invent and the hardest to check. The Story of South Bend section of the file is the county's own first survey: the natural-history chapter of Chapman's 1880 county history, written when men who had seen the old abundance were still alive to be asked. Against that baseline the file sets the county's second history (Howard, 1907), the state geologist's and the market hunters' marsh record, and the modern agency record — the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Midwest Peregrine Society, and the press of record — down to the present season.
The county surveyed: Chapman's natural history, 1880
St. Joseph County, as its first county history records it in 1880
The baseline: The second chapter of Chapman's History of St. Joseph County (1880) is a natural history of the county — quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, botany — compiled within living memory of the first settlement, and it…
The Parkovash: buffalo on the river, and the ox-head of Portage Prairie
1679–1721 in the documents; the place-name carried into Howard's county history, 1907
The earliest dated animal record of the portage: When La Salle, lost on the portage in December 1679, finally came down the St. Joseph River to his party, the county history's account of the episode has him arriving "with the…
The bison question, tested on the record
The French era to 1880
The question: Whether buffalo ever stood in the St. Joseph valley in fact, or only in the valley's later storytelling, is the first question this section was sent to test, and the record answers it in the affirmative on two…
The paved fishing floor: sturgeon at Fort St. Joseph
The French and Miami era, as the county histories preserve it
The fishing place: The oldest engineered thing in this county's animal record is a fish trap. Howard's history, quoting Charles H. Bartlett's Tales of Kankakee Land , describes the river at Fort St. Joseph — the French post a…
Wolves, panthers, and bears: the departed predators
Chapman's list, 1880; the state's verdicts to 2003
The county's word: Chapman's 1880 chapter lists the black wolf and the black bear among the animals that went "with or before" the buffalo, and the panther with them; his rare-and-going list adds the catamount and the lynx. The…
The deer: from Chapman's rarity to the restored herd
1880 to the present
The going: The Virginia deer stands in Chapman's 1880 chapter among the animals already effectively gone from the county — "the beautiful Virginia deer" in his list of the departed and the rare. The state's own project history…
The wild turkey: gone by the new century, restored by release
1880 to the modern record
The going: Chapman in 1880 already writes the turkey in the past tense of habit: it "has almost entirely disappeared" from the county, though "in an early day they were in abundance." The state record completes the sentence…
The prairie chicken: Chapman's warning, and the last bird
1880 to 3 April 1972
The warning, 1880: Of the prairie chicken Chapman wrote the most prophetic sentence in his natural-history chapter: the bird remained, but "if not carefully protected, must ere long follow the wild turkey, never to return." The…
The passenger pigeon over the county
Chapman's account, 1880; extinct 1914
The county's word: The passenger pigeon is the one animal in this section that no return can ever follow, and its St. Joseph County record is Chapman's alone: the pigeons "continue to make their semi-annual visits, but not in…
The Grand Kankakee Marsh and the market gun
The 1870s to the drainage, 1882–1918
The marsh: The western edge of this county was the eastern edge of a sea of grass and water. The naturalist Alfred Meyer's 1936 account of the Grand Kankakee Marsh fixes its reach in one sentence: the marsh "stretched across…
Chapman's water birds, and what the ditches did
1880, against the modern record
The marsh birds in 1880: Chapman's bird list reads, in its water sections, like a manifest of the marsh world while the marsh still stood. Of the swimmers he writes that they "formerly frequented this county in large numbers" and…
The river's fish in 1880: Chapman's list
St. Joseph County waters, 1880
The list: "The waters of this county are quite prolific of the finny tribe." Chapman's fish chapter sorts the county's catch by the period's families. Among the game fish — his "sickle-backed family" — are the black bass, the…
The lake sturgeon: the river's great fish, between the dams
The French era to the modern status record
The documented presence: The lake sturgeon is the largest native fish of the Great Lakes and the oldest animal in this section — a fish of the spring shallows that the Fort St. Joseph archaeology record names among the notable…
The trout and salmon river: hatchery, ladders, and the 1992 count
1970s planning to the modern fishery
The project: The modern river's most famous fish are immigrants by design. In the late 1970s the Indiana and Michigan departments of natural resources, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, conceived the St. Joseph River Trout…
The otter: out by 1942, back by spread
1880 to the delisting, 2005
The going: The otter stands in Chapman's 1880 chapter in the rare-and-going company, and the state's scientific record fixes its Indiana ending: protected by law in 1921, the river otter nevertheless declined through the early…
The beaver: the trade's first casualty, the park's engineer
1880 to 2006
The going: In Chapman's departure list the beaver stands second, ahead of the elk: "With or before it went the beaver" — gone from the county, on the county history's word, by 1880, taken by the same fur trade that had made Fort…
The bald eagle's return: the county's first nests, 2015
1880 to the present
The going, and the long absence: Chapman gives the bald eagle one measured line in 1880: "once quite common, now scarce," with well-preserved specimens in the county — the bird already passing from neighbor to museum piece. The…
The osprey: the county's densest nesting ground
2009 to the present
The record: The osprey's South Bend record opens in the Tribune's 2009 outdoors pages, in a headline that pairs this entry with the next one — "Falcons AND ospreys, OH MY": three pairs of ospreys nesting at Potato Creek State…
The downtown falcons: peregrines on the towers
A nest box about 1993; the territory record 2003–2025
The box and the first perch: South Bend's peregrine story begins with a box. A South Bend Tribune photograph from 2002 — its caption preserved in the newspaper index — shows a peregrine falcon perched "next to the nesting box…
The counted birds: the South Bend Christmas Bird Count
The circle INSB, to the present
The instrument: The systematic bird record of this county is kept by volunteers with tally sheets. South Bend's circle in the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count carries the code INSB, and its geography is fixed by…
The herons, and the rookery that is not here
Chapman's list, 1880; the modern test
The test: This section was asked to find the Potawatomi Park rookery — a heronry in the park that holds the zoo — if the record documents one. It does not. No rookery or heronry at Potawatomi Park in South Bend appears in the…
The arrivals: zebra mussels in the river, carp at the gate
The agencies' standing as of 2026
Zebra mussels — present, on the state's own list: The Indiana Department of Natural Resources keeps an official list of the state's zebra mussel waters, and on that list — updated 12 January 2026 — St. Joseph County's entry is…
The record now: what stands where
The county's fauna as the assembled record leaves it, 2026
The standings: Read end to end, this section divides the county's animals into four companies. The gone, on the record's word: the bison and the elk of the Parkovash, the black wolf and the bear and the panther of Chapman's list…