Odd Old News: Sam’s Story of Snaking, Snakers, and Snakeries

Den of Rattle Snakes Siskiyou Co, Cal. Retrieved December 4, 2020 [Photo by Henry Jervie Eastman. (1937)] 

A few weeks ago, a commenter on an Odd Old News post emphasized the importance of not interrupting, or correcting elders when listening to them tell their stories. We may call this Oral history 101, Interview Rule# 1. The topic triggered laudable suggestions that the current time era would be a great time for families to listen to and record their elder’s histories for posterity.

As most know there is often a difference in what may be reported and what actually happened. What we call the early Euro-American history of the North Coast is by necessity a blend of first hand oral accounts that then get written down and become what is considered the factual historical narrative. We assume that, back then, people were usually trying to be truthful when reporting to Humboldt Bay newspapers. But what we view as history is always evolving as new information comes forth, and the historical narrative becomes subject to the process of ‘re-visioning”.

As well as those who strive to be accurate in the telling of a story, there are also… the storytellers. It was assumed in “pioneer” society that creative liberty would be taken with a storyline as part of the art of storytelling. In this way numerous versions of oral “facts” were passed down, in an ongoing “re-versionist” process. To some degree, in the Western tradition the storyteller is almost a Coyote/Trickster figure. As historians know, parsing out any kernels of truth from an oft-told story can be a challenging task.

This week Odd Old News shares a classic illustration of several violations of Oral History interview rules, using an 1882 Humboldt Times article about man who lived in the Sierras where he practiced his a little known “snaker” profession. Humorless Ophidiophobes may wish to click elsewhere.

Humboldt Times
August 31, 1882
SNAKING.
Very talkative people always seemed to me to be divided into two classes those who lie for a purpose, and those who lie for the love of lying, and Sam Baxter belonged, with broad impartiality to both. With him falsehood was not more frequently a means than an end; nor he would not only lie without a purpose, but at a sacrifice. I heard him once reading a newspaper to a blind aunt and deliberately falsifying the market reports. The good old lady took it all in with a trustful faith, until he quoted dried apples at fifty cents a yard for unbolted sides; then she arose and disinherited him. Sam seemed to regard the fountain of truth as a stagnant pool, and himself as an angel whose business it was to stand by and trouble the waters.

“You know Ben Dean,” said Sam to me one day; “I’m down on that fellow and I’ll tell you why. In the winter of ‘68, he and I were snaking together in the mountains north of the Big Sandy.”

“What do you mean by snaking, Sam?”’

“Well, I like that! Why, gathering snakes, to be sure—rattlesnakes for zoological gardens and side shows to circuses. This is how it is done: A party of snakers go up to the mountains in the early Autumn, with provisions for all Winter, and putting up a snakery a very at some central point, get to work as soon as the torpid season sets in, and before there is much snow. As you know that when the nights begin to get cold the snakes go in under big flat stones, snuggle together, and lie frozen still until the warm days of Spring limber them up for business. “We go about, raise up the rocks, to pack worms into convenient bundles and carry them to the snakery, when, during the snow season they are assorted, labeled according to quality, and packed away for transportation. Sometimes a single showman will have as many as a dozen snakers in the mountains all Winter.

“Ben and I were out one day, and had gathered a few sheaves of prime ones, when we discovered a broad stone that showed good indications, but we couldn’t raise it. The whole upper part of the mountain seemed to be built upon this one stone. There was nothing to be done, but to mole it– dig under, you know; so taking the spade, l soon widened this hole that the creatures had got in at, until it would admit my body.

Crawling in, I found a kind of cell in the solid rock, stowed nearly full of the beautiful serpents, one of them as long as a man. You would have reveled in those worms! They were neatly disposed of about the sides of the cave, an even dozen in each berth, and some odd ones swinging from the ceiling in hammocks, like sailors.

By the time I had counted them roughly as they lay, it was dark, and snowing like the mischief. There was no getting back to headquarters later that night, and there was room for but one of us inside.”

“Inside what, Sam?”

“See here, have you been listening to what I’m telling you or not? There’s no use telling you anything. Perhaps you won’t mind waiting until I get done, and then you can tell something of your own.

We drew stakes to see who should sleep inside, and it fell to me, but even inside it was coldish, and I was more than an hour getting sleep. Towards morning, though, I awoke, feeling very warm and peaceful. The moon was at full, just rising in the valley, below, and shining in the hole I’d entered at, it made everything as light is day.”

“But, Sam, according to my astronomy, a full moon never rises toward morning.

“Now, who said anything about your astronomy? I’d like to know who is telling this—you or I? Always think you know more than I do and always swearing it isn’t so —and always taking the words out of my mouth, and but what’s the use of arguing with you.

As I was saying, the snakes began waking about the time that I did; I could hear them turn over on their other sides and sigh. Presently one raised himseIf up and yawned. He meant well, but it was not the regular thing for an ophidian to do at that season, by and by they began to poke their heads up all around, nodding good-morning to one another around the room; and pretty soon one saw me lying there, and called attention to the fact. They all began to crowd to the front and hang out over the sides of the beds in a fringe to study my habits.

I can’t describe the strange spectacle; you would have supposed it was the middle of March, and a forward season! There were more worms than I had сounted, and they were larger ones than I had thought; and the more they got awake, the more they yawned and the longer they stretched. The fat fellows in the hammocks above me were in danger of toppling out and breaking their necks every minute.

“Then it went through my mind like a flash what was the matter. Finding it was cold outside, Ben had made a roaring fire on the top of the rock, and the heat had deceived the worms into the belief that it was late Spring. As I lay there and thought of a full grown man who hadn’t any better sense than to do such a thing as that, I lost confidence in mankind. If I had not stopped up the entrance, before lying down, with a big round stone, which the heat had swollen so that a hydraulic ram couldn’t have butted it loose, I should have put on my clothes and gone straight home.”

“But, Sam, you said the entrance was open, and the moon shining in.

”There you go again —always contradicting and insinuating that the moon must remain for hours in one position—and saying you’ve heard it told better by some one else —and wanting to fight! I’ve told this story to your brother over to Milk River more than a hundred million times, and he never said a word against it.”

“I believe you, Samuel, for he is deaf as a tombstone.”

“Tell you what to do for him! I know a fellow in —— Valley that will cure him in a minute. That fellow has cleaned all the deafness out of Calaveras County a dozen times. I never knew a case of it that could stand up against him ten seconds! Take three parts of snake-root to a gallon of wagon-grease, and I’ll go and see if I can’t find the prescription.”

And Sam was off like a rocket.

As a postscript, there was an young man in Georgia who shared his insights on snakes and snake stories:

ATLANTA. Ga.. Aug. 11.—A Georgia youngster turns in this ‘‘composition on Snakes.” “Snakes is all over —but mostly in spring an’ summer. A snake can swaller a bird, but it is hard for a grown man to swaller a snake story. They live most everywhere snakes do, but Ma says you find more of ’em where the whisky distilleries is. Pa sees ’em often, but mostly in the winter season, but Ma says he is talented for seein’ snakes. I think all the snakes should be killed.”(Humboldt Times, 8/22/1908).

Earlier Odd and Old News:

There are many, but here are the most recent:

• Odd Old News: The Advent of ‘Gasoline Boats’ for Fishing and a Stream Report From 1907
• Odd Old News: The 1906 Chinese Expulsion
• Odd Old News: Bicycling—The Exciting New Mode Of Travel and the Evolution of the Bicycle Saddle
• The Bicycle Bandit of Humboldt County
• The Hansell Ranch Orchard at Camp Grant
• Mountain Children
• More Caves of Mystery