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SHAGGYCOAT
The Biography of a Beaver
by CLARENCE HAWKES
_Author of Black Bruin, The Biography of a Bear_
_Shovelhorns, The Biography of a Moose, etc._
_Illustrations by
CHARLES COPELAND_
PHILADELPHIA
MACRAE SMITH COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1906,
BY GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Printed in U. S. A.
* * * * *
_Dedicated to my Little Brother, the Venetian, who, living in a
house that his hands have made, surrounded by a moat of his own
device, the head of a large family and a citizen in a goodly
community, is more like man in his mode of life, than any other of
God's creatures.
* * * * *
KING OF ALL THE BEAVERS
Till he came unto a streamlet
In the middle of the forest,
To a streamlet still and tranquil,
That had overflowed its margin,
To a dam made by the beavers,
To a pond of quiet water,
Where knee-deep the trees were standing,
Where the water-lilies floated,
Where the rushes waved and whispered.
On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
On the dam of trunks and branches,
Through whose chinks the water spouted,
O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet.
From the bottom rose the beaver,
Looked with two great eyes of wonder,
Eyes that seemed to ask a question,
At the stranger Pau-Puk-Keewis.
--LONGFELLOW.
* * * * *
[Illustration: REACHED DOWN AND GRIPPED HIS BROTHER]
_CONTENTS_
INTRODUCTION 11
I. THE FUGITIVES 23
II. ALONE IN THE WORLD 39
III. THE COURTSHIP OF SHAGGYCOAT 53
IV. HOW THE GREAT DAM WAS BUILT 67
V. A BEAVER LODGE 81
VI. HOW THE WINTER WENT 97
VII. LIFE IN THE WATER WORLD 111
VIII. A BIT OF TRAGEDY 125
IX. STRANGERS AT THE LAKE 141
X. A TROUBLESOME FELLOW 163
XI. A BANK BEAVER 181
XII. THE BUILDERS 195
XIII. BEAVER JOE 211
XIV. RUNNING-WATER 225
XV. KING OF BEAVERS 243
XVI. OLD SHAG 261
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
Reached down and gripped his brother _Frontispiece_
The final touches were put upon this curious
dome-shaped house _Facing page_ 86
Tearing at their house and filling the night
with awful sounds " 96
The buck gave a mighty leap and fell midway in
the stream " 122
There is where the hunter and hunted met " 193
A FOURFOOTED AMERICAN
INTRODUCTORY
Just how long the red man, in company with his wild brothers, the deer,
the bear, the wolf, the buffalo, and the beaver had inhabited the
continent of North America, before the white man came, is a problem for
speculation; but judging from all signs it was a very long time. The
Mound Builders of Ohio and the temple builders of Mexico speak to us out
of a dim prehistoric past, but the song and story of the red man and
many a quaint Indian tradition tell us how he lived, and something of
his life and religion.
If we look carefully into these quaint tales and folk-lore of the red
man, we shall find that he lived upon very intimate relations with all
his wild brothers and while he hunted them for meat and used their
skins for garments and their hides for bowstrings, yet he knew and
understood them and treated them with a reverence that his white brother
has never been able to feel.
Before the red man bent the bow he sought pardon from the deer or bear
for the act that he was about to commit. Often when he had slain the
wild creature, he made offerings to its departed spirit, and also wore
its likeness tattooed upon his skin as a totem. Thus we see that these
denizens of the wilderness were creatures of importance, playing their
part in the life of the red man, even before the white man came to these
shores. But that they should have continued to play a prominent part
after the advent of the white man is still more vital to us.
It was principally for beaver skins that the Hudson Bay Company unfurled
its ensign over the wilds of Labrador and upon the bleak shores of
Hudson Bay, during the seventeenth century. H. B. C. was the monogram
upon their flag. Their coat of arms had a beaver in each quarter of the
shield, and their motto was _Pro Pelle Cutem_, meaning skin for skin. An
official of the company once interpreted the H. B. C. as "here before
Christ," saying that the company was ahead of the missionaries with its
emblem of civilization.
For more than two hundred and twenty-five years this company has held
sway over a country larger than all the kingdoms of Europe, counting out
Russia. For the first one hundred years it was the only government and
held power of life and death over all living in its jurisdiction.
It was because the Indian knew that he could get so many knives or so
much cloth for a beaver skin, that he endured the terrible cold of the
Arctic winter, and hunted and trapped close to the sweep of the Arctic
Circle. For this valuable skin white trappers built their camp-fire and
slept upon ten feet of snow. It was a common day's work for a trapper to
drag his snow-shoes over twenty miles of frozen waste to visit his
traps.
For the pelts of the beaver, otter and mink, those bloody battles were
fought between the Hudson Bay Company men and the trappers of the
Northwest Company. The right to trap in disputed territory was held by
the rifle, and human life was not worth one beaver skin.
In those old days, so full of hardship and peril, the beaver skin was
the standard of value in all the Hudson Bay Company's transactions. Ten
muskrat skins, or two mink skins made a beaver skin, and the beaver skin
bought the trapper his food and blanket.
The first year of its existence the Hudson Bay Company paid seventy-five
per cent. upon all its investments, and for over two centuries it has
been rolling up wealth, while to-day it is pushing further and further
north and is more prosperous than ever, and all this at the expense of
the beaver and his warm-coated fellows.
Even the civilization of Manhattan comprising what is now New York and
Brooklyn was founded upon the beaver skin. It was a common thing in the
days of Wouter Van Twiller, for the colony of the Hudson to send home to
the Netherlands eighty thousand beaver skins a year.
John Jacob Astor, the head of the rich New York family laid the
foundations for his colossal wealth in beaver skins, and this is the
history of the frontier in nearly all parts of the country.
But there were other ways in which the beaver was advancing the white
man's civilization and making his pathway smooth, even before he came to
destroy his four-footed friend, for the beaver was the first woodsman
to fell the forest and clear broad acres of land that were afterward
used for tillage. He also was the first engineer to dam the streams and
rivers. To-day almost anywhere in New England you can see traces of his
industry. You may not recognize it, but it is there.
Nearly all the small meadows along our streams were made by the beavers
and acres of the best tillage that New England contains were cleared by
them.
They dammed the stream to protect their communities from their enemies,
and flowed large sections of territory. All the timber upon the flooded
district soon rotted and fell into the lake and in this way great
sections were cleared.
Each spring the freshets brought down mud and deposited it in the bottom
of the lake until it was rich with rotting vegetable matter and decaying
wood. Then the trapper came and caught the beaver, so that the dam fell
into disuse. Finally it was swept away entirely, and a broad fertile
meadow was left where there had been a woodland lake. Thus the beaver
has made meadowland for us all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
and we have shoved him further and further from his native haunts.
To-day he has entirely disappeared from New England, with the exception
of a few scattered colonies in Maine, where he is protected by his
neighbors who have become interested in his ways. There is also a
protected colony in Northern New York, and a few scattered beavers in
the mountains of Virginia, but this industrious prehistoric American has
largely disappeared from the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains.
His home, if he now has any in the land he once possessed, is in
Montana, where he lives in something of his old abandon. There he still
makes new meadow lands for the cattle men and rears his conical house in
his forest lake.
Like the red man he has been thrust further and further into the wild;
retreating before the shriek of the locomotive, and those ever advancing
steel rails. But the debt that we owe the beaver will remain as long as
we cut grass upon our meadow land, or appropriate the coat of this sleek
American for our own.
Thus the blazed trail is pushed on and on into the wilderness and the
old is succeeded by the new. Animals, birds, and trees disappear, and
brick blocks and telephone poles take their places.
Though he will ultimately disappear from the continent, we shall always
be heavily in debt to the beaver for the important part that he played
in the colonial history of America.
Like the red man he is a true American, for he was here before
Columbus, and his pelt was the prize for which the wilderness was
scoured. His only disqualification for citizenship in our great and
growing country is that he is a four-footed American, while we, his
masters, are bipeds.
CHAPTER I
FUGITIVES
At the time when our story begins, Shaggycoat was a two-year-old beaver,
fleeing with his grandfather from he knew not what. They had been so
happy in the woodland lake, which was their home before the terrible
intrusion, that the whole matter seemed more like a hideous dream than a
reality.
When Shaggycoat thought of the old days and his family, he could
remember warm summer afternoons upon clean sand banks, where he and his
brothers and sisters frolicked together. Then there were such delightful
swims in the deep lake, where they played water-tag, and all sorts of
games, diving and plunging and swimming straight away, not to mention
deep plunges to the bottom of the lake where they vied with one another
in staying down. Then when they were hungry, the bulbs of the lily and a
cluster of wild hops made a dinner that would make a beaver's mouth
water; with perhaps some spicy bark added as a relish.
Then came the cold and the pond was covered with ice. They could still
see the sun by day and the stars by night, but they could not come to
the surface to breathe as they had done before. There were a great many
air holes, and places under the ice where the water did not reach it,
but for breathing space they had to depend largely upon the queer
conical houses in which they lived and their burrows along the bank.
There was still another way to breathe that I had nearly forgotten. A
beaver or any of these little Water Folks can come up to the surface and
breathe against the ice. A big flat bubble is at once formed and as it
strikes the ice it is purified and then the beaver breathes it in again
and it is almost as fresh as though it came from the upper air. This he
can do three or four times before having to find an air hole or going
into one of the houses or burrows.
The beavers were very snug under the ice which kept away the wind and
cold, and also their worst enemy, man.
The breath of the family made the houses warm, and as the walls were
frozen solid, and were two or three feet thick, they were very hard to
break into.
A store of wood had been laid up from which the bark was stripped for
food as fast as it was needed, so that Beaver City had been very snug
and comfortable, before the trouble came.
Then when they were sleeping through the short winter days, and prowling
about the lake in the night in search of fresh twigs or sticks that had
been frozen into the ice, the trouble began.
First there came the sound of pounding and soon there were holes in the
ice near their supply of wood. Then occasionally a beaver who was hungry
and had gone for breakfast was missed from the family or lodge where he
lived. At first they thought he had gone for a swim on the lake and
would soon come back, but when several had gone out to the winter's
store and had not returned, the truth dawned upon some of the older and
wiser beavers. Their forest lake had been invaded by some enemy,
probably man, and one by one the colony was being slaughtered.
There is but one thing to do at such a time and that is to take safety
in flight, for the beaver does not consider that he can match his
cunning against that of man.
While the beavers were still considering whether to go at once or wait
another day, there were sounds of heavy blows upon the tops of their
houses and then there was a loud explosion and the water began to fall.
Then they fled in every direction, some taking refuge in the burrows
that they had dug under the banks all along the lake for such an
emergency, while others sought to leave the lake altogether; some going
up stream and some down. But the destruction of Beaver City had been
planned very carefully by their cunning enemy, man, and most of them
perished while leaving the lake.
When the men who were watching on the ice above saw a beaver swimming in
the water under them, they would follow upon the ice, going just where
the beaver went. The beaver would stay near the bottom of the lake as
long as he could hold his breath, but finally he would have to come to
the surface for air when the trapper would strike a hard blow upon the
ice, stunning him, or perhaps killing him outright. Then he would cut a
hole in the ice and fish out his unfortunate victim.
It was from such perils as these, although they were not fully
understood by the beavers, that Shaggycoat and his grandfather fled the
second night of this reign of terror. They would gladly have gone in a
larger company, with Shaggycoat's brothers and sisters and with his
father and mother, but all the rest of their immediate family were
missing and they never saw them again.
They went in the inky night, before the moon had risen. Silently, like
dark shadows, they glided along the bottom of the lake, which was still
about half full of water, for the white man's thunder had not been able
to entirely destroy the beaver's strong dam.
Shaggycoat's grandfather, being very old, and wise according to his
years, took the lead, and the younger beaver followed, keeping close to
the tail of his guide. They swam near the bottom and were careful to
avoid the bright light of the great fires that men had built upon the
ice in many places to prevent their escape.
By the time the moon had risen they were near the upper end of the lake.
They at once took refuge in an old burrow that the trappers had
overlooked and lay still until the moon went under a cloud when they
came out and crept along the bank, still going under the ice. When the
moon appeared again they hid under the roots of a tree that made a sort
of natural burrow. There they lay for all the world like the ends of two
black logs, until a friendly cloud again obscured the moon when they
pushed on. Once the trappers came very near to them when they were
hiding behind some stones, waiting for a friendly cloud, and Shaggycoat
was about to dash away and betray their whereabouts, when his
grandfather nipped him severely in the shoulder which kept him still,
and alone saved his fine glossy coat.
They were now getting well up into the river that had supplied their
lake, and it was not so easy to find breathing places as it had been in
the lake where the water was low. But they could usually find some crack
or crevice or some point where there were a few inches between the water
and the ice and where they could fill their lungs before they journeyed
on.
They had come so far and so fast that poor Shaggycoat's legs ached with
the ceaseless motion, but the older beaver gave him no rest, and led him
on and on, swimming with easy, steady strokes. Although his own legs
were weary and a bit rheumatic, he valued his life more than he did his
legs and so set his teeth and breasted the current bravely. They both
held their fore paws close up under them and used their hind legs
entirely for propelling themselves, so these had to do double duty,
plying away like the screw wheel on a great steamer.
When Shaggycoat remonstrated against going any farther, saying in beaver
language that his legs were ready to drop off, his senior reminded him
that his skin would drop off if they stopped, and, with a new wild
terror tugging at his heart, he fled on.
When daylight came, they had covered five good English miles up the
river, and were nearly eight miles from their dam and the beautiful
woodland lake that had been their home.
Then the old beaver began looking for some burrow or overhanging bank
where they might hide during the day and get some sleep, of which they
were in great need. Finally they found a suitable place where the bank
had shelved in, leaving a natural den, high and dry above the water.
Here they rested and passed the day, getting nothing better to eat than
a few frozen lily stems and some dead bark from a log that had been
frozen into the ice. The dry lifeless bark was not much like the tender
juicy bark that they were used to, but it helped a little to still the
gnawings of hunger, and in this retreat they soon fell asleep and slept
nearly the whole of the day.
But the older beaver was always watchful, sleeping with one eye open, as
you might say, and waking very easily.
Once, when he was awakened by a sense of danger, he saw a large otter
swim leisurely by their hiding-place and his heart beat hard and fast
until he was out of sight, for he knew that if the otter discovered
them, he would at once attack them and the battle would probably end in
his favor.
Shaggycoat would be of little help in a real fight for life and the old
beaver was far past his prime, his teeth being dull and broken. When the
otter was out of sight, the watchman lay down and resumed his nap.
When Shaggycoat awoke, he knew it was evening for he could plainly see
the stars shining through the ice.
His legs were cramped and stiff and there was a gnawing sensation in the
region of his stomach, but there was nothing in sight to eat. His
grandfather informed him in beaver language that there were weary miles
to cover before they could rest again.
As soon as it was fairly dark, they came out from under the overhanging
bank that had shielded them so nicely during the day and resumed their
journey, swimming like two ocean liners, on and on. Their track was not
as straight as that of the boats would have been, for they dodged in and
out, going where the darker ice and projecting banks gave them cover,
and stopping when they scented danger.
When they had gone about a mile, they found a spot where the river had
set back over the bank, freezing in some alder bushes. Upon the stems of
these they made a scant meal and went on feeling a bit better. This
night seemed longer and wearier to Shaggycoat than the first had. He was
not so fresh and the first excitement was over, but the old beaver would
not let him rest as he knew their only safety lay in putting a long
distance between them and their destroyers.
They were not so fortunate in finding a hiding-place as they had been
the day before, but they finally took refuge in a deserted otter's
burrow, which made them a very good nest, although it was possible that
some wandering otter might happen in, and dispossess them.
When night again came round, they made a light supper on frozen lily
stems and pushed on. They covered less distance that night than they had
done before, for both were feeling the strain of the long flight, and so
they rested frequently and took more time to hunt for food.
About daybreak of this third night of their journey, they found an open
place in the ice where the stream was rapid and went ashore; here they
soon satisfied their hunger upon the bark of the poplar and birch.
When they had made a good meal, the prudent old beaver, assisted by
Shaggycoat, felled several small poplars and cutting them in pieces
about three feet long dragged them under the ice to a protected bank and
hid them against the time of need, for he had decided to spend a few
days where they were, getting the rest and sleep which they both
needed.