Traditional information concerning the presence of the Moose in Pennsylvania is not lacking. Every old hunter can talk freely on the subject, and will relate what was told him by his father or his father's father on this subject. The gist of the evidence is convincing, as it all dove-tails together so nicely; it is not a heterogeneous collection of irreconcilable statements. Beginning with Seth Iredell Nelson there was not a single old-timer interrogated who had any doubts as to the presence of the animal in Pennsylvania or its identity. John Q. Dyce, probably the most intelligent and best informed of the older generation of Pennsylvania hunters, declared that the Moose had a "crossing" on the West Branch near Renovo, which they followed to Chickalacamoose and along the Allegheny summits to Somerset County. Clement F. Herlacher quotes Josiah Roush as saying to Lewis Dorman that the Moose in Pennsylvania was called the "Original" that it meant that the moose was the "ancestor" or "daddy" of the entire deer tribe. Roush, who was known as "The Terrible Hunter," trailed deer in the snow, using no weapons, killing them by running them to the water, and plunging in after them and drowning them in mid-stream.

In one of his solitary hunts he penetrated to Pike County where he met a redman named Tahment Swasen, probably the Indian hunter of that name who was so admired by the gifted Thoreau, and who told him the meaning of the word "Original." From constant exposure in icy waters Roush became "knotted with rheumatism," finally succumbing from an attack of pneumonia at his home near Woodward, Centre County, at the early age of 45 years. Merrill in his "Moose Book" conclusively proves that the name is not original but orignal, and is derived from a Basque word orenac meaning deer. This was corrupted by the French Canadians into orignac and then to Orignal. In Pennsylvania it was Original. Swasen claimed that as the moose was the only species of deer found on all continents it proved him to be the progenitor of the entire cervine race. No trustworthy information has come to the writer that the moose bred in Pennsylvania. John Q. Dyce said: "They probably bred in the State at one time." Other old hunters made the same guarded remark. Jesse Logan, grand-nephew of James Logan, "The Mingo Orator," who was born in 1809, and died on February 17 of last year, had heard of the presence of Moose in Pennsylvania during his father's lifetime, but said it was the scarcest of all the wild animals of the Commonwealth. He had heard that in the deep pools of the Moshannon, or "Moose Stream," the moose were in the habit of bathing, performing strange evolutions when the horns of the crescent moon were up-turned, that no Indian would kill a moose at that time, that Chickalacamoose (now Clearfield) meant "the meeting place of the moose." A Moose, one of the last killed in Pennsylvania, was shot at one of these pools, and Captain John Logan (Jesse's grandfather), who lived nearby, fastened the antlers over the door of his cabin to bring good luck. "But," added Jesse Logan reflectively, "Captain Logan had bad luck every day he lived under the moose horns, and was finally put out by a white man who claimed to own the ground on which the shack stood." Generally speaking, Moose horns above a door were supposed to bring good luck. Joshua Roush stated that the moose always crossed into Pennsylvania at one particular point, near Narrowsburg on the Delaware River, from there the path led southwesterly along the Allegheny highlands clear to the Maryland line. The Wind Gap in Northampton County was evidently an outlet for the Moose to Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Wind Gap is only ten miles as the crow flies to the mouth of Martin's Creek on the Delaware River. Very old people in that section can tell of the occasional appearance of Moose in the Wind Gap up to the last decade of the Eighteenth Century. There is a story of a moose being killed by Moravian Indians on Moose Run, Centre County, of another killed on Burgoon's Run, Blair County, and one or two driven South by dogs, slain near the Juniata in the vicinity of McVeytown, but the dates are uncertain. Jesse Logan stated that the Black Moose was not seen in Northwestern Pennsylvania in his day, but the finding of a comparatively fresh-looking set of Moose antlers at the salt-lick (now the centre of the City Park of Bradford, McKean County) in 1819, and the prevalence of the Moose-Wood or Leather-wood, show that they were present in that section probably a generation earlier. C. W. Dickinson, born in 1842, a great authority on wild life topics, who resides at Smethport, McKean County, states that when he was a boy he heard some of the old gray-haired men say that they had been told that there were Black Moose on the headwaters of Pine Creek (Tiadaghton) in an early day, but that he never heard anyone say that they saw one. That would establish the presence of Moose in Northern Potter and Tioga Counties, completing the evidence that they lived at one time along the entire "Northern Tier" of Pennsylvania Counties. It is stated that the early Scotch-Irish settlers along the Juniata River referred to the Moose as the Black Elk. It is understood that this name was sometimes applied in Ireland to the extinct "Irish Elk" (Megaceros hibernicus); it would seem that the pioneers from the Emerald Isle noted the resemblance between the palmated antlers of the extinct forest monarch dug up in their own bogs and the Black Moose of their new Pennsylvania home. There are some who claim that the Black Moose was a regular resident of Pennsylvania, breeding in the State up to the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. As names, dates and places are lacking, and in the face of documentary evidence, and the views of naturalists like Rhoads and others to the contrary, it must be regarded as the veriest tradition. According to Boyd's "Indian Local Names," Chickalacamoose, now Clearfield, Clearfield County, signifies "It comes together," or "The meeting place." As before noted, according to Jesse Logan, it meant "meeting place of the Moose," a far more plausible translation of this ancient name. In Daniel G. Brinton's "Dictionary of the Lenni Lenape," the Delaware word for Moose was "Mos." John C. French, speaking of Potter County (Northern Pennsylvania) says: "None of our oldest men ever saw a Pennsylvania Moose, though Edwin Grimes (born 1830) heard some of the old men, back about 1840, tell of having killed or hunted 'the Original' about 1770 and earlier; both in Pennsylvania and New York. Capt. John Titus, born about 1784, said in 1881—he was nearly 97 years of age—that there had been none since he could remember in Western New York or Northern Pennsylvania, except an occasional traveller from farther north. He called them 'Woodeater' and said they were also called 'original' by some, as they were the largest—seven feet high at shoulders—and were thought to be older than any other deer species, that their short necks and long legs fitted them only for feeding on trees and briars, or in water where plants floated on the surface, roots three or four feet below. My grandfather, William French, born in 1788, said they sometimes came south of the lakes in New York to the Chemung River, while he was a boy living there.

The following is a memorandum of what my father told me, as he remembered, his grandfathers told him about the 'brown elk' as they called them. My great-grandfather, John G. Martin, who came from Ireland in 1775, to join the Continentals against England, and resided in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, after the war ended, for nearly fifty years, always called the 'Original' or Black Moose a brown elk. My father, born in 1818, never saw one; but his father, born in 1788, saw a few of them in Steuben County, New York, and along the Pennsylvania line in Tioga County, while a boy and spoke of them as Originals, and very rare—some of them very large."