?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(ILLINOIS.) Letter describing a circular wolf hunt on the prairie, undertaken jointly by white settlers and American Indians. Autograph Letter Signed (name illegible) to Hannah Elizabeth Bowell (1837-1916) of Jefferson, PA. 4 pages, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches, on one folding sheet; minimal wear. With original stamped envelope bearing an Ottawa, IL postmark. Ottawa, IL, 17 March 1857
"I went to Grundy County on the 15th of Jan'y to participate in a little western life in the way of witnessing a grand circular wolf hunt. I . . . camped out in an old log house out on the prairie, and . . . we came to where they circled into, and you better believe it was the prettiest sight you ever saw. We circled in until the circle was about two miles wide with about 11 hundred horsemen with the Stars & Stripes in the center, with some fifteen or twenty Indians in the center to shoot the game with their bows & arrows. . . . After we got the ring formed, the gun was fired as the signal for the Indians to commence their sport while we look on, and anything that was to be captured dead or alive. Well, there was a wolf broke through our side of the ring. Well, I had as good a horse, I thought, as any person else, or could run as fast as any of them. I took after it with the intention of overtaking it if possible. . . . My horse jumped into a hole on the prairies and my horse fell on my foot & sprained it so bad that I thought it was broken."
