By Richard Day and Paul Ingram

The Woods and Streams north of Jasper found a dubious honor in the natural history of Indiana a few weeks ago when two men who were canoeing a flooded stream spotted a large snake swimming uncomfortably close to them.

After whacking it into oblivion with a paddle they took it to a conservation officer who identified the 42-inch-long serpent as a western cottonmouth, so-called because of its white mouth. Indiana suddenly became identified as the home of a fourth species of poisonous snake.

The western cottonmouth joins the timber rattlesnake and copperhead of southern and central Indiana and the massasauga, found in northern Indiana swamps.

The western cottonmouth, or water moccasin, has long been suspected to inhabit southern Indiana. One was reported in Gibson County in 1887, but its existence wasn’t confirmed. Persons who want to look for cottonmouths might note its dark brown coloring under black markings, a triangular head and a heavy body. One way of telling it from the non-poisonous copperbelly is to look it in the eye. If the pupil is round the snake is safe. If it is slit-shaped like a cat’s, it is venomous.

Experts say that of the four poisonous Indiana snakes, only the rattlesnake’s bite is usually fatal. There is only one sure test of this rule of thumb.

Fortunately, or unfortunately--depending on your interest in snakes--residents of most of the Wabash Valley will have to go a ways to find one of the poisonous species. A recent issue of Outdoor Indiana reported that poisonous vipers seem to give Sullivan, Daviess, Knox, Pike and most of Gibson counties a wide birth.

A visitor to Vincennes in 1816 attributed the lack of snakes to the Indian custom of burning off the tall grass of the prairie each Fall to make spotting game easier. Also, the flat, rolling plain of Knox County is not the sort of topography rattlers prefer. They like hilly timbered land.

Then maybe the poisonous snakes have heard of the inglorious end of Big Jim.

A century ago stories of a giant rattlesnake were striking fear in the hearts of the area. Big Jim was reported as the terror of the Wabash, a monster rattler 10 feet long (or longer in some estimates). He made his home at Rattlesnake Bluff on the Little Wabash, 12 miles north of Carmi, Ill., although he reportedly ranged up and down the Wabash Valley.

The snake was first noticed in the spring of 1881 when loggers went to log the Skillet Fork bottoms.

According to the story of this confrontation, told with grand detail in 1908 by the Vincennes Commercial, the loggers were driven to shelter in rain to the bluff overhanging the river. A black man in the crew was sent for firewood, but he came back, terrified and empty-handed. The logger, who was named Big Jim, reported seeing a great demon prowling the bluff. Capt. Ed Ballard, in charge of the crew, angrily ordered the man back to his task.

Minutes later a scream was heard from the top of the bluff and Jim hurtled down the bluff and into the flooded river. He was never seen again, though an extensive search was made of the river the next day. More men ascended the bluff but heard what they said sounded like a thousand rattles. Rain or not, the survivors boated to the Illinois bank of the Wabash in record time.

The Commercial, looking back, said the logging business in the area was set back by stories of the giant snake. Also, other excursions of this of this monster rattler, now called Big Jim in honor of his victim, were reported in succeeding years. Near the bluff one farmer looked into his chicken yard and saw his best Plymouth Rock rooster staring eyeball to eyeball with a giant snake. He emptied a shotgun at the snake, and it disappeared. He said his rooster was never the same again.

Cattle and hogs were reported bitten in the area.

Then a group of turkey and squirrel hunters, including Knox County Sheriff Lee Staley, saw what they said was Big Jim on a log sunning himself. They blasted away at him, interrupting his nap but apparently not hurting him.

A country school four miles from Rattlesnake Bluff was the next site of a report. Big Jim was spotted nearby, and the frightened teacher gathered the students inside the school, shut the blinds and hid out until evening when parents came to see what the problem was. School was dismissed for the rest of the year.

One are farmer reported the snake’s love for his blackberry patch. The farmer, William Ude, said his bull tried to horn the critter and came out the loser to the snake’s fangs.

A large cage put over the hole to what was supposedly Big Jim’s lair was found bent and twisted. A price was put on the snake’s head, and fearful farmers began wearing high boots to ward off attacking snakes. A snake, Big Jim, of course, frightened a team of stagecoach horses near Centerville, Ill., sending one frightened traveler up a tree.

Dynamiters blew holes over Rattlesnake Bluff, maybe sending thousands of snakes to their deaths, but reportedly not Big Jim. In 1908, after more than a quarter of a century there still was a rattlesnake mania north of Carmi, and all reports of snakes were attributed to the legendary serpent.

Big Jim finally was put to rest, shortly after the latest account of his history had been told in the Commercial.

On the W.H. Thompson farm in southwestern Sullivan County, farm hand John Bascomb heard a commotion in the pigpen. A boar had a giant rattlesnake in his jaws, close enough to the head that the snake couldn’t get in a knock-out punch. By the time he had returned with a rifle the other hogs in the pen were in the fray, stomping and biting at the writhing snake. Bascomb finally got a clear shot, and the snake was finished.

Bascomb mounted the skin, which measured 12 feet five inches and had 29 rattles. Whether Big Jim or just a big rattler, the legend of the terror of the Wabash died in a Sullivan County pigpen.