The Intelligent Beaver, Chief of the Rodents—A Four-Footed
Engineer—A Builder of Houses, Artificial Canals, Dams, Ponds,
and Lakes—Beaver Meadows—A Masterful Woodchopper—A Tail for the
Epicure—Muskbogs—The Fatal Trap.
Several factors combined to break the wilderness to the uses of the
Americans into whose possession it eventually fell. One of these, and
it was one of the most important in its effect on primary exploration,
was the presence there in vast numbers of a comparatively small and
singularly intelligent animal called the beaver, belonging to the
order _Rodentia_. While not of great size it was, nevertheless, with
one exception, the largest of its kind, weighing thirty or forty
pounds and being about three and one-half feet long. In colour it was
chestnut brown and was endowed with a rich, thick fur, one-half to
three-quarters inch long, with coarse hair scattered through it about
one inch longer. It so happened that this particular quality of fur
was in great commercial demand in Europe for the making of hats. For
some time it had constituted an article of profitable export from the
eastern part of the continent, as the similar animal in Europe had
been exterminated. Finally the supply from America also diminished as
the trappers pursued their merciless task. Then followed the discovery
that the great wild region west of the Mississippi contained beaver in
immense numbers, and beaver trapping immediately became the principal
quest of many bold natures eager to stake their lives in a tilt with
Fortune, just as others later played a different game with the golden
gravels of California.
[Illustration: The Mountain Part of the Wilderness.
Relief map by E. E. Howell.]
[Illustration: No Place for Beaver.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
In their search for the most lucrative beaver grounds they crossed
the boundless prairies, and stimulated by the prospect of riches and
the excitement of new scenes they sought the innermost recesses of the
mountain wilderness, slaying what opposed their way, taking beaver by
thousands and tens of thousands, and sending pack upon pack by way of
St. Louis to the waiting markets of the Old World. The early returns
may be estimated from the success of one enterprising man who, having
employed a band of expert trappers, came out of the far regions on
one occasion with nearly two hundred packs, each worth in St. Louis
about one thousand dollars. In one period of two and one-half years,
over six hundred thousand beaver skins were sent out by one of the
great companies that were organised systematically to prosecute the
fur business in North America.[2] Thus it was that the beaver became
responsible for the first opening of the great western Unknown, and in
order fully to understand the interesting story of human endeavour,
it is necessary to glance at the characteristics of this remarkable
creature, which unwittingly performed such a prominent part in affairs
so momentous to the American Republic and to the world, and which in
consequence has become almost extinct. By it was the trapper and trader
led from the Mississippi to the Western Ocean, and from the Gila River
to and beyond the bounds of Canada.
With so great regularity was the daily life of the beaver ordered that
the hunters in their admiration ascribed to it mental qualities which
probably it did not actually possess, yet it certainly executed well
defined works with skill and precision, and performed many acts which
might easily have been the result of mental processes.[3] A house
builder and an engineer, it constructed for its occupation comfortable
lodges, it excavated canals for its convenience, and formed ponds and
lakes of considerable extent by means of dams made of trees, sticks,
mud, and stones. Moreover, the trees were felled by its own efforts,
and cut up into pieces suitable for the object desired. The mud and
stones were then combined with these pieces with a dexterity that was
astonishing and that will always command for this amphibious, burrowing
creature of the genus _Castor_ a high rank in the animal world. Its
paws were supplied with long, strong claws, the hind ones having an
extra claw peculiar to the beaver. The front pair were small and were
used deftly like human hands; and the animal could walk erect on its
hind feet carrying small stones and earth, pressed against the throat,
for house or dam building; it could drag poles and sticks in the same
manner. When necessary to move larger stones they pushed them along,
sometimes using the tail also, and stones of five or six pounds' weight
were moved in this way. All their works were of the same general
character, and in each class they did not vary their methods, which
were largely dictated by surrounding conditions. Being amphibious, they
naturally lived by and in water. Their food being tender bark and small
twigs of trees, they were forced to gnaw down woody growths to exist,
and as these growths near streams usually incline toward the water they
naturally fell into or across the channel. Accumulations of driftwood
and of the discarded food sticks started dams, and the animal aided the
natural construction by adding mud and more sticks. Thus, perhaps, its
habits were begun in the remote past by what is called instinct rather
than any reasoning quality, yet there remains always the problem as to
where instinct stops and reason begins. At any rate there appears to
have been no very deep intellectuality about the beaver, notwithstanding
its dexterity and ingenuity. It was moulded by the laws of its life
exactly as the spider is when it spins a web; yet in the case of the
beaver there was a complexity of action that seems extraordinary,
although the action apparently was always that which beaver after beaver
had employed for an immense period. Where a stream was large and deep
or swift, the beaver could not build a dam, nor was it necessary, as
it could and did burrow into the banks, excavating a chamber above
the water-level, and the primary object of the dam was to supply deep
water to cover the lodge entrance. Where waters were continually swift
or turbulent and uncontrollable, and especially where they were not
bordered by an abundance of cottonwoods, willows, yellow birch, or
other favourite food wood, the beaver was absent. For these reasons
they were never found in deep canyons. The trappers, as soon as by some
bitter experience they discovered this, sought them no further in such
localities, hence while these men traversed almost every other foot
of the great wilderness, the huge canyons, particularly those of the
Colorado River series, were avoided. They continued, therefore, _terra
incognita_ long after the remainder of the region was broken; till, in
fact, the remarkable boat journey of Major Powell in 1869 fathomed their
mysteries. Thus the habits of the beaver controlled widely separated
events.
[Illustration: Beaver Country.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
Where brooks or creeks were small with the proper wood growths beaver
were abundant, as well as in natural lakes and on all the quieter
reaches of the large rivers. Across small streams trees were felled,
and with the aid of sticks, mud, and stones the beaver laid up a dam to
back up the water and form a basin wherein could be built their lodges
with entrances below the surface. On mountain streams these dams one
above another often transformed them for long distances into a series
of pools and ponds where great numbers of beaver made their homes. In
such places a trapper would reap a speedy reward, more particularly as
there was no thought of sparing any of the creatures for the future.
Often fifty or sixty beaver would be taken in a single night.
According to Morgan, dams were of two kinds, the "stick" and the "solid
bank." The former was made by a combination of sticks and poles on the
lower side, while the upper was built of sticks and earth. The sticks
were laid in the direction of the current with the butts up-stream, and
not across. This was probably due to the animal's inability to lay the
stick in any other way, the current itself determining the beaver's
conduct, though it is possible that experience had taught that this
was the best method, for by such arrangement the water was not wholly
obstructed and, percolating through the interstices, was less likely
to break away the structure. The other form of dam, the solid bank,
was merely a modification of the stick dam adapted to a deeper channel.
Large quantities of earth and stones were added to this to enable it to
withstand the greater force of water, and this seems to indicate some
degree of contemplation on the part of the builder; yet the result was
natural, as the animal, having placed earth on one form of dam, would
go on placing earth on the same form in deeper water as a matter of
instinct. But there was one touch in the construction of the solid-bank
dam which more than any other appeared to be the result of thought. This
was an opening left in the top of the dam, several inches lower than
the remainder, and three or four feet long, as a spillway for surplus
water. In the stick dam no spillway was provided because the surplus
was allowed to flow through the interstices, so that the construction
of this feature in the larger, more compact dams seems to have been an
example of pure invention to guard against possible disaster.
[Illustration: Great Beaver Dam—Grass Lake.
260 feet long.
From Morgan's _American Beaver_]
[Illustration: Red Canyon—Green River.
Where Ashley Went for Beaver in 1825.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, Colo. Riv. Exp.]
All dams were begun at the surface and no sticks or stakes were driven
down in beginning to hold in place the sticks that were to compose the
bulk of the structure. Earth and stones, the latter of as much as six
pounds each in weight, were brought to the spot and piled on the sticks.
Trappers asserted that they would load each other's backs with earth and
stones to be carried to the site, but this statement is not sufficiently
authenticated to receive much confidence. In form all dams were curved,
up stream in small dams and down in the larger. This was doubtless due
to the current, which in small streams, obstructed easily in the centre,
would become stronger on the sides and push the sticks down, while the
reverse would be the case in large streams. Ordinarily the dams would
support a man's weight. They seemed like masses of driftwood under the
foot. The older they were, the more compact. Within the ponds, formed
by these remarkable dams, sometimes covering more than fifty acres,
one or many lodges were built to furnish shelter and protection to the
beaver family. These houses were dome-shaped structures composed of
sticks and mud, the dome rising above the water-level between four or
five feet and extending along it about sixteen feet. The top of the
lodge was left rather loose, but below it was compact with earth. This
gave the interior sufficient ventilation. The floor, which was about two
inches above the water-line, was hard and clean with, in summer time,
fresh cut grass around the sides. Being so near the level the inmates
could tell, by the lowering of the surface, whether the dam had a break
in it, in which case they would sally forth to make repairs. Trappers
took advantage of this trait, breaking the dam and setting traps in
the break. The interiors were about two yards in diameter and twelve
to sixteen inches in height, the roof above being about three feet in
thickness, while the sides were four or five. There were several kinds
of entrances, ten to fifteen feet long, but one was always straight
with an inclined floor, to permit food sticks to be taken into the house
and out again when the bark on them had been consumed. Then the sticks
were used in construction work. Other entrances were more abrupt and
full of curves. The winter pile of food sticks was sunk alongside the
house where it was easily accessible under the ice. No animal could
successfully attack one of these lodges, so that the family within
it was perfectly safe, but men with axes could force an entrance from
above.
[Illustration: Beaver Canal.
From Morgan's _American Beaver_]
[Illustration: Lower Colorado River—Mouth of Gila on Right.
Where Pattie Trapped Beaver in 1826.
Photograph by Delancy Gill.]
In low ground the dams backing the water around trees killed them
and in course of time they would disappear, leaving in their place an
open, boggy space covered with a growth of rank vegetation. These were
called by the hunters "beaver meadows." The "beaver canals" were cut
through marshy places and were sometimes prominent features of the local
landscape, extending four or five hundred feet in length, and having a
breadth of three feet, with a depth of fifteen to thirty inches.
When in the water the beaver was far more graceful and active than when
on land, swimming powerfully by means of its large, strong, webbed hind
feet, aided, when speed was desired, by the broad, flat tail used like
the blade of a sculling oar, which, indeed, it much resembled, being
ten inches long by five wide, and smooth, hard, and scaly, and entirely
devoid of the soft fur which covered the body. Besides this use in
swimming, the tail served as a prop when the animal desired to sit up on
land, and also as a sort of trowel for beating down the mud-mortar used
in dam building. At night it was also struck sharply on the surface of
the water as a signal of alarm, giving a report which sounded, in the
stillness, like a pistol shot and could be heard for a long distance. In
regions frequented by man, or where in any way likely to be disturbed,
the beaver was nocturnal and did most of its work during the dark hours,
but where unmolested it spent much time out in the broad daylight. I
saw large numbers swimming about in daytime when on Green River in 1871,
in Wonsits Valley, where white men had rarely passed, and they gave no
indication of special alarm at sight of us. Perhaps they regarded our
boats as nothing more than drifting logs, just as the seal of Alaska
is deceived by the trick the natives there have of covering themselves
and their canoes with white cloth to resemble floating ice. At one
point where we were in camp a whole day within a few hundred yards of
a colony actively engaged in their various labours in the sunlight of
the river bank, they apparently did not notice our presence, and even a
rifle ball sent among them did not seem to derange their equanimity. In
this locality the banks were full of burrows, and as we passed along in
our boats we could see the beaver swimming around in every direction.
We shot at several, but as they immediately sink to the bottom when
killed, the gun is not successful in taking them, except in very shallow
streams. We would have failed altogether albeit we made no special
effort, had not one of the boats been able to head off a large fellow
that was wounded, just as he arrived at the opening of his burrow, which
happened, at that stage of river, to be a little above the water-level.
A moment more and the animal would have been safe from us, but though
the bottom was invisible on account of the turbidity of the river, one
of our men quickly took the plunge and grasped the beaver from behind
firmly around the middle at the moment when its head was almost against
the steep high bank. The depth was no more than about three feet,
and though the beating of the heavy tail, and the fierce struggles,
made it anything but easy, the beaver was thrown into the boat, where
a blow from an oar finished him. The captor, drenched and covered
with mud, climbed triumphantly on board. Some of the meat was cooked
and suggested to me beef in flavour, though it was rather tough and
unappetising. The tail makes a soup which is the delight of the epicure,
or was, when beaver tails were procurable, but somehow that which our
cook concocted did not strike our palates favourably and we abandoned
it for the regulation bacon and beans. Beaver meat was often the only
food the trapper and frontiersman could obtain, and they considered it
quite a good article of diet. The one we tested was doubtless too old
a specimen, and we had no opportunity to secure another, for we passed
on into the great Canyon of Desolation and saw beaver no more.
[Illustration: Trees Cut by Beavers.
From Morgan's _American Beaver_.]
When at work cutting down a tree they stood on their hind legs,
supported also by the tail, two working at one time on the same
tree. They began eight or ten inches above the base and cut round and
round, making each successive cut wider and deeper, the chips thrown
off being some three inches in length by one and one-half wide, and
one-quarter thick, each showing the sharp, clean strokes of the teeth,
and resembling chips made with an axe. As the trees selected were always
soft wood, they were easily gnawed while green. A tree of considerable
size would be readily felled in two or three nights. Often they worked
in pairs at a number of trees at one time, and nineteen falls, says
Morgan, have been counted in a single night between the hours of seven
and twelve. Cottonwoods twenty-four inches in diameter were brought
down, though the more ordinary size was fourteen to sixteen inches.
Father de Smet saw a stump that was thirty inches in diameter.
At first glance a beaver stump looks almost as if it might have been
cut by an axe in the hands of an inexperienced chopper. Pine trees were
sometimes cut down, but the boughs were not used for food. Food branches
were cut up into lengths of one to two feet, for convenience in handling
and storing. Sometimes trees that fell with their tops in the deep water
were allowed to remain this way till winter, when the branches were cut
off under the ice. As the beaver was able to stay below the surface
comfortably from five to ten minutes, he could accomplish his work
there with ease. Both sexes possessed in two glands of the groin a musky
secretion called _castoreum_, which was used in medicine and also as a
bait for the animal itself. When at play they would void some of this
musk upon the ground, and their favourite playgrounds were consequently
called by the trappers "muskbogs."
Hunters sometimes found trees standing near a stream that were partly
cut, and they observed that in these cases the trees would not have
fallen into the water, from which they inferred that cutting these
trees had been started by young, inexperienced beavers who had finally
been stopped in the useless labour by their wise elders. Bradbury,
the English naturalist who was in the West with Wilson Price Hunt in
1809, thought he found some substantiation of this theory in trees
he carefully examined—at least, none of these trees would have fallen
across the neighbouring streams. Inasmuch as these animals, however,
were in constant need of food branches, there would seem to have been no
good reason for preventing the young beaver from completing the cutting
of any tree no matter where it might drop. That the beaver had gone
into the study of forestry and was endeavouring to preserve the woods is
not likely, nor is it probable that the time of the youthful beaver was
valuable. If all stumps in a given locality had been examined, doubtless
it would have been found that a considerable number of trees had not
fallen across the stream or even in its direction. A more probable
explanation of these half-cut trees would be that from time to time
some of those engaged in gnawing were interrupted during the operation,
perhaps killed, and prevented from resuming, and that the rest, having
their attention engaged on other trees or their branches, were not
impelled to take up the work. The tree being girdled soon died. Then
the fibre of the wood growing dry and hard, the tree would be avoided,
because there were always plenty of fresh, juicy ones to cut. The tops
of the old dead trees would also be of no use for food. So while the
young may have been regularly educated as the trappers believed, this
particular illustration of wise guidance does not appear convincing. It
was also believed that an old beaver which had once escaped a trap could
not again easily be caught, for the reason that thereafter it carried a
stick in its mouth with which to test suspicious places and spring any
trap that might be in its way.
Nevertheless the trap was fatal to these industrious and ingenious
animals, and by the year 1835 they had been reduced in numbers to such
a degree that they were no longer the chief lure and gain of the fur
hunter. The native, before the opening of the European market, not
having much use for such small skins and preferring the meat of other
game for food, the beaver for ages had been practically unmolested.
But the footsteps of the American trapper sounded his death knell. At
the same time they sounded the same knell for every living thing in the
whole vast wilderness, and now, a century after, not only is it next to
impossible to find a beaver colony in that immense array of mountain and
plain, but all wild animals have become more or less of a curiosity,
only preserved from absolute extermination by the most rigorous game
laws. Killing for fun is even more destructive than killing for profit.
The principal contrivance employed in taking beaver was the common steel
trap, a couple of jaws so arranged that they could be spread and set on
a trigger which was connected with a treadle in the centre. When the
animal stepped on this treadle, the powerful jaws were freed and were
brought fiercely together by a spring, clamping the leg of the victim
securely. The trap being fastened to a strong chain and this to a stake,
the captive could not escape, unless it gnawed its own leg off, and it
is said beaver sometimes did this. The trap was set in the line of a
runway or trail or near the entrance to a burrow, with a stick leaning
over it on the extremity of which was the bait, a small quantity of
castoreum, of gum camphor, oil of juniper, cinnamon, or cloves. The last
two were dissolved in alcohol and made into a paste. In reaching for
the bait, the beaver stepped on the treadle of the trap. The hunter made
his rounds regularly to gather in the pelts of the captives, resetting
the traps for another catch if the locality was promising, or, if the
contrary, taking them up and pushing on in search of better ground.
In the very beginning those first in a rich spot of course reaped the
best harvest, and it was the desire to obtain large and quick returns
that induced trappers constantly to enter farther and farther into the
unfathomed places. The move was not always a wise one. Frequently they
left comparatively good ground and came to that which was lean, or
perhaps entirely devoid of the animal sought.
[Illustration: Beaver Trap.]
[Illustration: The Beaver.
Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co.]
Sometimes the trap was set so that the ring attached to the end of the
chain, as soon as the captive dived, would slide down to the small end
of a pole planted in the water, preventing the ascent of the beaver
and consequently drowning it. At the lodge, rows of strong stakes were
driven in such a way as to form alleys leading to the entrances through
which the members of the family would have to pass to reach the house,
the trap being cunningly concealed on the bottom. In winter, as it
was easy to discover the lodges because the snow was melted away from
above by the rising warm air, the tops were chopped in, and the beaver
taken in this way. The store of winter food sticks being placed in a
pile beside the lodge, the trappers often staked around it to compel
the beaver to enter for food at points where traps were set. When it
was driven to its bank burrows, the entrances were closed and then
the occupants were dug out from above. The setting of steel traps,
however, and visiting them at regular intervals was the easiest and
most profitable method, for one man could take care of fifty traps or
more, without great difficulty. One peculiarity of the animal was of
great service to its pursuers,—it never stepped backwards. Altogether
the poor creature was an easy prey to the keen hunter, and the capture
of it amounted to wholesale slaughter.
In disposition the beaver was gentle and shy. When caught very young,
they became perfectly tame and contented. Native women sometimes nursed
young captives as they would a child, till, in a few weeks, they were
old enough to eat bark, when they would wean themselves. Their cry
resembled that of a human infant, and their affectionate natures made
them attractive and satisfactory pets. Full growth was attained at two
and one-half years, and they died of old age at about fifteen. A beaver
family consisted of the two parents and the several offspring under two
years of age, all living in one lodge or burrow. Occasionally a male
refused to pair, and then after the second season he was driven from the
colony and became an outcast. Their interesting social organisation and
general sagacity placed them in the very top rank among animals.
This small creature, then, that offered its life as a bait to entice
the white man into the depths of the wilderness, was one of the most
remarkable on the continent, and its likeness, as the emblem of the
American Republic, would be far more appropriate than the carrion eagle,
which has little to commend it, as compared with the beaver, the model
of gentleness, industry, ingenuity, and painstaking skill, and which
formed a stepping-stone to the power and greatness of the Union of
States now spreading from ocean to ocean.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] For an admirable account of the fur trade see _The American
Fur Trade of the Far West_, by H. M. Chittenden.
[3] See _The American Beaver and his Works_, by Lewis H. Morgan.
[Illustration]