Local News

The cult of the cat

By Paul Heller
For The Eagle Times
Vermonters have long harbored a secret wish that the catamount (in reality, the Eastern cougar) had not been rendered extinct by the clumsy predations of humans but, rather, continued to live a shadow existence in the remote woods of the Green Mountains.

With each passing year, the number of reported sightings of the legendary cat actually increases. While eyewitness accounts proliferate, there has been very little tangible evidence to support the claims of woodsmen, hunters, loggers and hikers.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared in 2015 that the eastern cougar was extinct. Yet a discovery in 1994 may well refute that government prognosis.

Origin story

While the desire to resurrect a relic of the forest primeval lurks within the hearts of the most civilized of us, it might surprise one to learn that this primitive urge has been part of the Vermonters’ core beliefs since at least the Great Depression. It was in 1934 that a scoutmaster from Chester, while leading his troops on a woodland outing, discovered the tracks of what he was certain was a catamount.

The romance of the feral cat is entwined with the origins of the Green Mountain State. One first thinks of Stephen Fay’s Catamount Tavern in Bennington, the home base of Ethan Allen’s fight against New Yorkers’ claims on the New Hampshire grants. We know from Hemenway’s Gazetteer that atop the sign post in front of the establishment was “a catamount skin stuffed, sitting upon the signpost 25 feet from the ground, with large teeth, looking and grinning toward New York.”

In Vermont, it was, from the very first, a symbol of independence and self-determination. It also was a beast with a fearsome reputation. Zadock Thompson’s early (1842) natural history: “This ferocious American animal has been known in different places under a great variety of different names. In the southern and western parts of the United States it is called the cougar, painter, or American lion; in New England it is known by the name of catamount or panther; while in Europe it has more commonly borne the name of puma. This is the largest and most formidable animal of the cat kind found in America.”

Thompson notes that “when the country was new” travelers took certain precautions – especially at night – when the nocturnal predator animal was known to pursue its prey. The men took care to be armed and would build a large fire to keep the large cats at a distance. Nevertheless “his peculiar cry has often sent a thrill of horror through the neighborhood.”

The catamount was systematically eliminated from Vermont forests through the 19th century by deforestation, bounties and organized “panther hunts.” With their extirpation, these large felines began to assume a mythical status.

Track found

According to Thomas Altherr’s “Will’s Panther Club,” the fortuitous discovery of panther tracks by a congregationalist minister and his Boy Scout troop while hiking in Chester, in late March 1934 caught the attention of amateur and professional naturalists across New England. Although Rev. W.J. Ballou had been born in Wallingford in 1871, as a young man he had for five years lived on his father’s ranch in Cheyanne, Wyoming, where he had developed a familiarity with cougars. Convinced that he had discovered evidence of the catamount in Chester, he set about making a plaster cast of the paw print, as proof of the cat’s existence. The site of the find was about 20 miles south of Downers, where a catamount had been famously shot in 1867.

A local historian and genealogist noted for the Rutland Herald: “Harold, Edwin and Roger Murray were three of the scouts with Rev. W.J. Ballou when the panther tracks were found on Stedman Hill. … Their Great grandfather Josephus Streeter was one of the men who helped kill the panther in Cavendish years ago. The stuffed carcass of this panther was long seen at Downers Hotel. … Mrs. Murray, grandmother of these boys, well remembers, as a school girl, the day the Downer panther was killed and shown to all the school children. … Doubtless, this was the grand-daddy of the Stedman panther.”

Renewed interest

Immediately, there was great interest in this discovery, perhaps because of the well-known story of the killing of the “last” catamount in Vermont in the town of Barnard in 1881. How it was determined that the Barnard cat was the last to roam the Green Mountains is not known, but the stuffed carcass of the beast was taken around the state to be viewed as a curiosity and finally found repose in the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier where it may be seen today.

While there were a few more claims to shooting catamounts subsequent to the one in Barnard, there are no relics or other evidence to substantiate these assertions, and state biologists and other wildlife experts seemed to agree that the animal was extinct in Vermont. So, the report of a Boy Scout troop finding Catamount spoor in Chester was, indeed, newsworthy. Ballou’s account was initially reported in the Rutland Herald.

“The renewed interest in panthers all came about from my finding some tracks left by a panther in the snow on Stedman Hill. I casually dropped a remark to a friend of mine that I had seen these tracks and he passed the information on to the Associated Press. A Boston newspaper had a very skeptical comment about it on its editorial page. I would just as soon have it broadcast through New England that I was a fool to have it intimated that I did not know the difference between a panther’s track and that of a bob-cat’s. A person who can’t tell the difference between 2 1/2 and 5 inches ought to be put in an asylum,” he wrote.

The Boston Herald had dismissed Ballou’s claims of finding panther tracks in the snow, suggesting that the hikers had most likely made a mistake. “The chances are that the Chester party saw tracks of a bobcat or bay lynx. The wild animals may be upon New England, but it is quite certain that they are two-legged ones not four-legged ones.”

Leon Bolster of Chester, one of Ballou’s correspondents, was offended by the Herald’s hauteur: “Just why we should be placed on trial as to our ‘truth and veracity’ is a question not yet answered to my full satisfaction; just why our word should be doubted by Boston editors who sit in their swivel chairs and smile wisely about something they know nothing about, and contradict many reliable people, is another phase of the case we fail to understand.”

The bounty

In spite of the skepticism of the Boston Herald, Ballou redoubled his efforts to receive acknowledgement for his discovery, even delivering a lecture at a Rotary meeting at the Fullerton Inn, a new hotel in Chester. The Rutland Herald offered a $100 reward for a panther, dead or alive, further stoking the feline fervor. Riding the wave of panther excitement, Ballou convened a gathering of acolytes on May 18, 1934, in Chester at the Fullerton Inn.

An announcement in the Rutland Herald declared, “All them as has saw the light, step forward and give their testimonials – so will it be at the ‘panther club’ banquet.” With the published reports of Ballou’s discovery, others stepped forward with accounts of their sightings of the big cats – enough to fill a banquet hall in Chester. The Rutland Herald for May 8 announced the gathering, “In the midst of the area most pregnant with panther stories, this village is to be the scene of a strange gathering of persons who have killed a panther, seen a panther, or trailed a panther. The exchange of panther stories and information will be the prime purpose of the meeting. It is thought possible that a large hunting party might be organized to drive out a panther in this territory, if there be any.”

Amazingly, 100 people attended and, of the congregants, according to Thomas Altherr, “twenty-six maintained they had seen a catamount, another sixteen claimed they had heard one, and yet another eleven vowed they had seen panther tracks.” Altherr notes, “to swing the crowd into a jubilant mood, Ethel Creaser led the singing of a fight ditty, ‘The Pantherites Song,’ she had written to the tune of “Soloman Levi.” To solemnize the occasion, Rev. Harry Farrar of Chester said a prayer that “asked that the integrity of the pantherites be guarded and that disbelievers be shown the light.” Determined to be a rousing success, the gathering steeled the resolve of those who believed in the big cats’ existence. In his closing remarks, Ballou asked the attendees to write down the accounts of their sightings and send them to him. He soon amassed a retrospective archive of panther sightings.

Then something remarkable happened. New catamount sightings – those reported since the meeting — were suddenly reported in greater numbers. While no tangible evidence was ever produced, the number of encounters skyrocketed, especially in Windsor County. A plaster cast of a paw print had received authentication from the Museum of Natural History in New York, obviating a negative assessment the previous year from a Boston museum.

To add popular cachet to the controversy, the legendary Frank “Bring ‘em Back Alive” Buck announced that he would enter the fray. Buck was a world-famous hunter whose expeditions to capture wild animals for zoos had riveted public attention. But, somehow, other commitments always seemed to keep him away. Despite this flurry of interest and positive identification, local hunters had no success in killing a panther.

Pantherites unite

A second gathering of faithful was organized for April 1935.

They christened themselves “The Irrepressible and Uncompromising Order of Pantherites” and installed Ballou as the Grand Puma. Their purpose, of course, was to prove that the catamount existed in Vermont and “to silence, once and for all, the up-the-sleeve giggles of allegedly pseudo-naturalists who have been pooh-poohing the idea for months.” Despite the intense interest in the endeavor, forays into the woods around Chester yielded no proof of the catamount’s existence.

Notwithstanding the fervid enthusiasm of the faithful, the ardor of the Pantherites began to wane, just as the criticisms of the skeptics began to wax. A few posited their suspicions that the panther sightings seemed to be concurrent with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Others scorned the certitude of amateurs in the face of cynical wildlife biologists who were not shy about discrediting the claims of Vermont witnesses. And then there was the relentless scorn of the Boston press, whose editorial writers found great amusement in lampooning a strange cult to the north.

With no catamount carcass to show for their efforts the Pantherites soon disintegrated. When Ballou died in 1943 much of the resolve ebbed from the panther cause.

But then …

A 50-year reunion in 1984 was the last gasp of the panther partisans. Although they promised renewed vigor and a stout defense of their core beliefs, they still were unable to provide tangible evidence of the return of the great cat.

And then, 10 years later their faith was rewarded.

A sighting of three catamounts near Lake Eligo in April 1994 resulted in proof-positive of the existence of the big cats in Vermont.

Mark Walker, a one-time resident of Craftsbury, saw the trio walking in the snow-covered woodlands surrounding the lake. According to a report in the Rutland Herald, “he described the animals as golden brown, about 2½ to 3 feet long with dark-tipped 3 foot tails.”

State wildlife biologists followed the tracks until they found droppings (or scat), which they collected and sent to a laboratory for analysis. It contained the DNA of the catamount, but it could not be determined whether the sample was from a catamount or a coyote that had fed on a catamount carcass.

In any case, one researcher concluded that there was evidence enough of the endangered species in Vermont. Or, as the researcher concluded, “whether the original scat was deposited by a cougar or a canid that had fed on a cougar carcass, there was at least one cougar in Vermont.”

Somewhere, a Pantherite is smiling.

Paul Heller is a writer and historian who lives in Barre. His historical research appears regularly in The Times Argus.

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