THE BEAVER HUNT
If Bruce and Ray had ever had the idea that Indians in camp led a lazy
life, they now found out their mistake.
Ganawa had made two chisels out of the big bones of a moose, and these
chisels the lads learned to use in peeling spruce and cedar bark for a
winter bark-house. They also secured some pieces of birch-bark, but
most of the birches would no longer peel. However, with the aid of
their bone chisels they soon secured enough spruce and cedar bark to
build a round hut of poles and bark, such as the Chippewa Indians have
built for many centuries. No nails were used in the construction of the
house, the pieces of bark being tied in place with watap, rawhide, or
thongs of willow bark.
“We need this house if our tepee gets too cold, and if we live in the
tepee we need it to keep our meat and other things so we do not lose
them in the deep snow,” Ganawa told the lads.
When the bark-house was finished, he told the boys that they must
secure some kind of skins to make themselves a robe for winter. “Our
women make very warm blankets,” he explained, “by weaving together many
strips of rabbit skins, but rabbits are very scarce around here. The
hide of a moose is too heavy, so we must try to get some beavers. But
we have no traps and we cannot wait till the ponds freeze over; we must
try to catch them when they are cutting trees. I think in this country
the beaver have not been hunted much, and we may find them working in
the daytime.”
A few days later, the Chippewa returned to camp and told that he had
found a beaver pond not far away, and on the following afternoon the
three campers started out to try their luck on the shy and wary
beavers. Tawny was also allowed to go along, for he was a good hunting
dog, and never broke until he was told to go. The hunters approached
with the utmost care, against the wind, the place where the beavers
were cutting their winter food supply of poplars. The pond had been
occupied for several years, the trees near the pond had all been cut,
and as a result the animals had to work more than fifty yards from
water.
In the water and in his house surrounded by water, a beaver can laugh
at all his enemies with the possible exception of the otter. But even
the otter, although like the beaver, he is an expert swimmer and diver,
probably has to be content with catching a careless young beaver now
and then. However, on land the beaver is less at home than any old-time
sailor ever was; he can neither put up a good fight nor make a good run
for safety.
When the hunters carefully peeped over a ridge to the beavers’
lumber-yard, the hearts of the white boys almost stopped beating. Close
by, within twenty yards they saw eight or ten beavers. “They are
working like beavers,” Ray whispered. And so they were. Some sitting on
their haunches were cutting down trees, others were busy cutting felled
trees into sections four or five feet long, and still others seemed to
be lopping off the smaller branches.
But there was not much time to watch a scene which very few white men
have ever been lucky enough to observe. When Ganawa gave the signal to
fire, four beavers toppled over, and Tawny caught and killed two more
before the frightened animals could scamper to the safety of their
pond.
Ray let out a shout and was going to run over to the game, but Ganawa
reminded him that a good hunter always reloads his gun before he does
anything else.
Neither of the lads had ever closely examined a beaver, and they had
many questions to ask about its peculiar structures. They were curious
about the flat hairless tail, which looks as if it were covered with
black scales; the short and stubby forelegs, the powerful hindlegs with
webbed feet, and the sharp front teeth with which the beaver people can
cut down trees much faster than any Indians with primitive stone axes.
But Ganawa fingered fondly the dense woolly fur under the long dark
brown hair. “The fur is good,” he remarked. “It will make a good warm
robe for my sons.”
On the way to camp, the lads received another jolt to their former idea
about the lazy life of an Indian hunter. Ganawa carried three beavers,
Bruce took two and Ray carried one. An adult beaver weighs from thirty
to fifty pounds, and when Ray dropped his game at the end of a
three-mile walk through brush and timber, he felt sure that his beaver
weighed a hundred pounds.
Ganawa quickly skinned the smallest beaver, cut up the best of the meat
and put it in the kettle. Then he scalded the black tail over the fire,
and the skin blistered and came off easily. He cut the tail into
several pieces and added them to the meat in the kettle.
“My sons,” he spoke, “put a little salt in the kettle and some of the
wild onions you have gathered. And when the meat is almost done, you
must add a little of the wild rice I have in my pack. To-night we shall
make a big feast. We shall have beaver meat and beaver-tail soup. Some
white hunters say they do not care much for beaver meat, but all are
very fond of beaver-tail soup. I have cut up the meat of a young beaver
and you will find it very good.”
The lads had grown accustomed by this time to a diet of fish and meat,
but they were glad of any change and both of them said that beaver meat
and beaver-tail soup were the best foods they had ever eaten. The meat
was dark and tasted much like the dark meat of a chicken.
The tail of a beaver does not consist of muscle, but of a peculiar
white, fatty, and gristly texture. When boiled it looks and tastes like
very young fat pork, and the boys left none of it in the kettle. It is
this part of the beaver which furnishes the beaver-tail soup, highly
praised in many old journals but never described in detail. The writer
of this story has cooked beaver meat and beaver-tail soup and can
testify to the fact that both are good.
If any of my readers ever have a chance to make a beaver stew, or
beaver-tail soup, I would advise that they boil the meat with a liberal
pinch of “mixed spices”—the kind one buys in paper boxes. Beaver-tail
soup with wild rice thus properly seasoned is much too good for a king,
but just the food for a tired and hungry camper.
Bruce and Ray could not get enough of the soup and when the feast was
over there was nothing left but some bones and scraps for Tawny. It had
been a real feast, and when the few dishes were washed, the lads built
a camp-fire and asked Ganawa to tell them of his own boyhood of long
ago.