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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.