INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER.
Wa-sa-Kejic came over to the post early one October, and said his boy
had cut his foot, and that he had no one to steer his canoe on a
proposed beaver hunt. Now nice, fat beaver, just before the ice
takes, is one of the tidbits that come to the trader's table, and
having spare time just then I volunteered to accompany him, knowing I
would get a share of the game.
As we made our way over the several small portages between the large
lake on which the post is built and the one in which he had located
the beaver, he told me there were two lodges on the lake to which we
were making our way.
We pitched our tent on the last portage, so as not to make a fire
near the beaver. Beavers have very poor eyesight, but very acute
hearing and smell, and once they are frightened the sport for that
night at all events is finished.
We had something to eat and then started for the lake, leaving our
tent and things ready to return to after dark. Smoking and talking
are forbidden when one is in a beaver lake; care also must be taken
that the paddle does not rasp the side of the canoe.
The beavers had built an immense dam across the discharge of the
lake, and left a small cut in the middle for the overflow to pass.
Here Wa-sa-Kejic placed a No. 4 Newhouse trap in about 4 in. of
water. On a twig 9 in. high and set back about a foot from the trap
he placed a small piece of castorum. The smell of this attracts a
beaver. Then he lengthened the trap chain with three strands of No. 9
twine, tying it to a stout pole, which he planted very, very securely
in deep water, out from the dam.
The beaver, when he finds himself caught, springs backward into the
deep water and dives to the bottom; here he struggled to get away
until shortness of breath compels him to rise to the surface, and
this is repeated until the weight of the trap is too much for his
exhausted condition, and he died at the bottom, from whence he is
hauled up by the hunter when next visiting his traps.
After placing the trap on the dam Wa-sa-Kejic opened another ready
for setting, tied the poles, and had everything ready; then giving me
implicit injunctions not to make the least noise, told me to steer
the canoe quietly to the lodge, which was fixed in a small bay out in
the lake. When we reached the beaver's house, he carefully placed the
trap in the same depth of water as he had done the previous one, with
this difference, that he omitted the castorum, because, as he told me
afterward, the beavers went on top of the house every night, the
young ones to slide down into the water, and the old ones to do any
necessary plastering.
Another trap was set at the next house, and from there we paddled the
canoe a considerable distance from the beaver works, and figuratively
rested on our oars until sundown.
We were now going to try still-shooting them. Before night sets in
about sundown each fine evening in the fall the beavers leave their
lodge, first, to eat the young willows along the shore, and after
satisfying their hunger to patch the dam, plaster their houses and
cut young trees to store up for their next winter's food!
They come to the surface on leaving the lodge, and unless something
frightens them swim on the surface in and out along the borders of
the lake until they see a favorable spot to go ashore; and here they
set to nibbling the bark of young birch or popular, and if the hunter
is careful he may be shot at close range.
As I said before, talking while hunting beaver is forbidden; and the
hunter conveys his wishes to the steersman by signs, thus: To draw
his attention he oscillates the canoe slightly; to move the canoe
ahead the motion of paddling made by throwing the opening hand
inboard; to alter the course of the canoe is done by signing with the
hand either to the right or to the left, as desired; to stop the
canoe's headway when getting too close to the game is done by gentle
downward patting of the hand, etc.
Being already versed in this dumb language, we shoved away and took
up a position near the lodge, but to the leeward of it, and waited.
The sun having already gone down behind the forest, on the other side
of the lake, we had not long to wait until a beaver broke water and
swam away in a direction from us. Wa-sa-Kejic shook his head, as much
as to say, "We will go after that fellow later on." The first was
followed quickly by a second, a third and a fourth! Then, after
waiting for fully fifteen minutes and no other appearing, Wa-sa-Kejic
made signs to go ahead; this we did slowly, without taking the
sharp-bladed paddle from the water.
Presently we heard a noise as if a pig were supping up from a trough.
This was one of the beavers crunching up young twigs in the water.
The canoe was edged slowly toward the land, with Wa-sa-Kejic on the
alert, both dogheads full-cocked and ready for action. Presently the
downward motion of the hand was given, the gun brought deliberately
up to the shoulder, and the next instant the explosion, followed
almost as one shot by the second barrel! A thick smoke hung between
us and the shore, but we could hear kicking and splashing of the
water; that told the shot was true. The beaver had ceased to struggle
by the time we reached the shore. "But for what was the other shot?"
I asked Wa-sa-Kejic.
"For that," he answered, pointing to another beaver stone, dead on
the bank; and then he laughed, for there was no necessity of keeping
quiet any longer, for the shots had frightened any other beaver in
the vicinity.
"We may as well go to camp now," continued Wa-sa-Kejic, "and we will
see our traps in the morning."
From the fact of our having come ashore late, and perhaps more
because of the hearty supper we made off of roast beaver, we did not
awake until the sun was high. We immediately partook of a hasty
breakfast of tea Gallette and pork and went to see the traps.
"Fortunate?" Well, yes! We found one in each trap; and returned
during the afternoon to the post. The Indian gave me the meat of two
beavers for myself.
He left his traps set to visit at some future time, because there
were several animals yet in the lake. Describing the mode of killing
beaver would not be complete unless we explained that of "trenching."
This method of killing them is largely practiced by the Indians after
the lakes and rivers are frozen over. I cannot do better than to
describe a small lake that Wa-sa-Kejic and I went to trench in
December. This beaver lodge I had found the very last day of open
water, for that night the wind turned round north and froze up
everything! As it was close to the post, and I had found it, I simply
made a bargain with Wa-sa-Kejic to do the trenching for a pound of
tea. In those days tea was tea in the remote interior, and meant many
a cheering cup to the Indian.
Wa-sa-Kejic whistled his dogs after him when we left camp in the
morning. The lake lay in the hollow of a mountain of considerable
height, and could be compared to an inch of water in the bottom of a
teacup. Before we were half down the precipitous sides we saw the
dogs nosing around the shore, scenting for the beavers in their
"washes" or breathing holes. Wa-sa-Kejic, when he cast his eye around
the small body of water, said, "This is an easy lake, and the beaver
will soon all be dead."
He now produced an ordinary socket chisel of 1 1/2 in. point, and in
a few minutes had this handled with a young tamarak about 6 ft. long.
We each carried an axe, and the first order I got was to cut some dry
sticks that stood at the discharge, each stick to be about 4 ft.
long. These, as fast as cut, the Indian drove across the creek, after
he had cut a trench in the thin ice from shore to shore. This was to
prevent the beaver from going down the creek.
The next thing was to break open the lodge from the top. This was
done to scare the beavers out into the lake and make them resort to
the washes. The beaver washes have their entrances under water, and
go up sometimes a considerable distance from the shore, terminating
generally under the roots of a tree. The beavers flee from wash to
wash, as the hunter finds them out, and as each wash is discovered by
the dogs (which scent the beavers through the frozen surface) the
hunter stakes up the entrance to prevent them from returning.
Beaver washes vary in number according to the formation of the lake,
from two to three up to twenty. The practiced eye of the hunter tells
him at once if the lake has few or many. And this is why Wa-sa-Kejic
said we would soon kill the beaver. At last the three dogs remained
pointing and listening about 12 ft from the shore under a spruce of
considerable size. The Indian set to work to stake up the entrance,
which he did as fast as I could furnish the sticks.
On the shore of this barricade he cleared away the ice and snow,
making an opening about the size of a barrel head, and then he
paused, and pointing to the water, said, "See that! That's the beaver
breathing!" This was shown by the water's surface gently rising and
falling.
He now took off his coat, and baring his right arm up to the shoulder
he gave me the ice chisel and told me to pierce the ground where the
dogs were pointing. I had hardly given a blow or two before I saw
Wa-sa-Kejic stoop over the hole and plunge his naked arm into the
water. Instantly it was withdrawn, and a big fat beaver, securely
seized by the tail, was struggling in his grasp. A blow of his axe on
the spine finished him in quick order, and this was repeated from
time to time as I continued to enlarge the hole where the beavers
were huddled together under the roots.
We got six out of this wash, and two out of another, which
constituted all that were in the lake. Two each made a very good load
for us going home, and the next day I sent a man with a flat sled to
bring home the remaining four.
The three principal modes of killing beavers are by shooting,
trapping, trenching.
* * *
As a haunt and home of the muskrat, I venture to say that Cumberland,
on the Saskatchewan, is the banner producing post on this continent.
For miles and miles about this trading place there are immense grassy
marshes, cut up and intersected by waterways and lagoons in every
direction. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand musquash
skins was the usual returns from the post a few years ago. Three
times during the year the hunters made their harvest, first in
October, when the little animals were busy making their funny little
cone mud houses and cutting bunches of long grass for their winter's
food.
At that time the Indian would set his bunch of No. 1 steel traps
before sundown and then lay off in his canoe at a short distance from
the shore in some pond and shoot at those swimming past until it
became too dusk to fire. Then he would make to some place to dry
ground, haul up his canoe, make a fire and have his supper. When his
after-meal pipe was finished he would silently shove his canoe into
the water and make his first visit. When setting his traps he would
take the precaution to place on the end of the pole that the chain
was fastened to, a piece of paper, a bunch of grass or a piece of
birch bark. This enabled him to find his traps in the dark, as the
sign would show on the sky line as he paddled slowly along sitting
low down in his canoe. The looking at his traps and resetting of them
would take him an hour or two, then he would come back to his fire
place, throw the rats he had caught in a pile, replenish the fire and
stretch out for another smoke. About ten o'clock he would make
another visit and on his return make a lasting fire, roll himself in
his Hudson's Bay blanket and sleep till morning.
Often two visits were made in the morning, one just at the screech of
day, and the last one after he had had his breakfast. Traps were
taken up at this first visit to be set in some other locality that
afternoon, and the hunter would paddle away for his lodge, where he
would sleep all the forenoon while his wife and children were
skinning and stretching the pelts. The next and every night would be
spent in the same way until the ice took, and then another mode of
sport I wish to describe would take place.
Ice in one night on these shallow waters was sufficiently strong to
support the weight of one man. Armed with a long barbed spear a
couple of feet in length, lashed to a stout pole, a bag on his back
to put the rats in, and sometimes followed by a boy at a distance,
the Indian, with his bright steel skates firmly buckled on, would
glide down and in and out these skate lanes looking for rat houses.
Practice and experience taught him to get over the ice in the least
noisy way. Instead of striking out one foot after the other, he
skated as the people of Holland do by a motion of the hips. It is not
a graceful way, but it is easy on the skater of long distances on new
glare ice. Sliding, as it were, down to one of the mud cones with
spear firmly grasped, he would drive it down into the center, and
very rarely missed transfixing one and at times two of the highly
perfumed little animals.
The interior of a rat house is a saucer-like hollow in the center,
just a little above the level of the water. From the edge of this
there may be three or four slideways into deep water. At the least
alarm the rats tumble down these in a minute and only return when all
danger is past. When the inhabitants of a single house number eight,
ten or twelve and they huddle together for warmth, they are often one
on top of another, and thus the spear passes thru two at one thrust.
The yet unfrozen mud is torn away and the spear with the rats lifted
out, dispatched and placed in the bag, and the hunter bears down to
another house and so on thru the day. When the bag becomes too heavy
it is emptied out on the ice and the hunt continued. Towards night
the Indian retraces his road and picks up the piles he left earlier
in the day. His leather bag is converted into a sled, the ends of his
long waisted sash are tied to the bag, and with the loop over his
shoulder he strikes out a road straight for his camp, well pleased
with his day's sport and himself. Knowledge of the architecture of
the musquash's house (for they are all modeled in the same way)
enables a bush man to know just where the little family are huddled.
There is yet another way numbers are killed just after the ice takes,
and before the mud houses become too hard frozen; that is to skate
down on them shot gun in hand and fire right into the cone of mud.
The effect is not known till the earth is pulled away. The shot being
fired at such close range there is, not unfrequently, three or four
dead rats. One can not help to moralize how cruel it is for man to
destroy at a moment the labors of long nights of these industrious
little animals, and cause the remaining one to patch up the break at
a season when it can never be as good and warm as when the work is
done during open weather.
The hunter therefore sets his traps, so as to keep them employed, but
he kills the greater number with his gun. A very small charge of
powder and shot is required, and if the hunter keeps perfectly quiet
in his canoe, and is below the wind, he can call the rat to within
ten feet of his gun. I have pushed by canoe out from the shore of a
small lake and called, just about sundown, and have counted no fewer
than six rats coming from as many different directions. One waits
till they get so close that they sheer off, and then fire sideways at
the head.