The morning news., 1889-03-29
THE TRUTH ABOUT BEAVERS.
Trapping Them no Longer Profit
ahla
From The Nelo York Times.

In days gone by much money was made at
this business by bold frontiersmen who
risked their lives by penetrating the red
mans country, but like the buffalo and
Indian, the beaver has been slowly disap-
pearing before the encroachment of civili-
zation, until now he is almost rarity.
The Indians of the west, from the Sas-
katchewan plains to the Rio Grande,
trapped and shared beavers by the thou
sands, and by means Of these peltries or
skins millionaires have been made by the
wholesale
1t would be hard to estimate the number
OF beaver skins that have been handled by
the famous Hudson's Bay and American
Fur Companies. Since the Venendrye
brothers first sailed up the St. Lawrence
and opened the unexplored wilderness Of
the Canadian northwest, as far back as
l743, beaver batting has bsen the most lu-
crative OF all frontier pursuits because the
hides were very valuable and commanded
high prices in eastern markets.
Indians never trapped or shared beavers
until white men taught them the trick. The
aboriginal method of beaver catching was
to sit by creek on bright moonlight
nights, watch for the "castor canadensis"
to show himself in shallow water and then
to plug" him with long feathered arrow.
This was tedious job, attended with little
fun, (for the Indian, as rule, hunts for
business and not pleasure), and 10 red man
has ever had sufficient ingenuity TO design
a trap with which to snare or catch the
smooth-haired little animals. Il remained
for white men TO teach them how to do it,
and after once learning they never re-
verted to the old custom of shooting with
arrows.
Beavers are mainly nocturnal animals.
That is, they are shy of daylight, doing all
their labor after nightfal and if possible
by the bright light of the moon.
when the beaver builds his cache high,
then look out for cold weather"
This is az old and true saying that has be-
come a sort of unwritten warning il the
great west. The Indians always read this
to De sign of early and cold weather. and
seldom are the industrious little rodents
mistaken in tie matter. When winter
begins early and is protracted. there is usu-
ally heavy snowfall, and the fiaky cover
ing piles to greater deDth than if there
were alternate spells of freezing and thaw-
ing In the spring when the snow is con-
verted into water and goes rushing out to
the sea, the torrents, swollen and enlarged
by heavy accommodations of ow, would
break down AID smash up the bsaver caches
unless the latter were built high enough to
escape the disaster.
Seldom, if ever, is a beavers home de-
stroyed by such means. The wisdom and
sagacity of these little creatures provide
for such emerge ces, for they seem to fore
tell the weather with an accuracy that far
eclipses the best eff rts of our own scientific
weather bureau al Washington. So wary
and cautious ara thew, too, that one may
tramp all around their houses, peer inside,
set traps and snares, aud devise all sorts of
schemes for their capture, and yet never even
see beaver. Nevertheless, beaver may be
there.
AL along the Yellowstone river in Mon
tana are numerous evidences of vast beaver
colonies At one point whore the Ciark's
Fork of the Yellowstone tumbles into the
main stream, the water has so far washed
away the bank that it shows he abandoued
homes OF one colony that must have con-
tained at least 500 members. Others are
near by in proportion.
Here in Texas, along the Colorado river,
are stumps OF trees glawed OF belted in that
peculiar stYle waicd shows that beavers
built their dams here once upon a time. In
one thinly settled country there still lives
an old, antiquat d ind vidual who came to
Texas "befo' the wah.n He trapped beaver
in those early times, but saws the river wa
subject to such deep and strong floods that
no permanent dam could ba built in its
waters; and as there are no smaller streams
flowing into the mother current near by,
the poor animals had TO make the most OF
they could. Beaver were there, for the
young saplings lining the bank had been
cut away, and the style of the job pro-
claimed beavers to have been the mechanics.
But where were the workmens Their homes
were underground rooms in the banks, two
stories high, so to speak, the trance to
which was under water and the upstairs
portion considerably above high water
mark. A slide in the river bank one day
destroyed these domiciles, aud so the little
fellows had to seek home elsewhere.
Another old fellow who was trying to
raise corn showed me a dam made by
beavers on little stream that crossed hi
farm, and wofully pointed out spots where
the tall stalks of tasseled silk had been cut
down and carried away.
"Them's beavers" said he.
What! Is it possible that you have q
colony Of beavers on your farm, and did
they really steal the corn1 What a lucky
MAJ you aren
Lucky by goshl Concarn the 'tarnal
critters. If / could get load of buckshot
at 'em I'd show 'em whether l was lucky.
Why, l can't get rid of 'en nohow."
This small band Of beavers had taken up
residence on this old fellows farm, or at
leas5 had been there before he pre-empted
it, and all attempts to destoy hem or drive
them away had failed. Although many
night watches were kept and traps set, still
their sagacity aud cunning were such that
seldom were any OF them seen and never
were any of them caught.
A great deal has been said and written
about beavers, and many writers have
affirmed that they have personally seen the
animals at work hauling logs, plastering
mud and building dams Unless the OBJ
server or observers spend the night in
watching, they never see a beaver at work.
As remarked. they are nocturnal in their
habits, everlasting night workers, and par
ticnlarly shy of man.
| have seen beavers building a dam, but
it was at the dead of night, still, cold, and
the moon shining brightly overhead like a
lamp, and 40 suspicion 20 theu of my pres
ence behind one Of the biggest trees in the
whole Bitter Root range OF mountains.
They hauled their logs a long distance,
sometimes going a half mile UP stream and
floating them down with the current, the
workers at the dam catching the sticks and
placing them in position. Bridges, arches,
stone piles and pillars. if subjected for only
a short time to the tremendous force and
fierce power of some mountain torrents |
have seen would soon crumble away and
disappear, but a beaver dam laughs at
these tritles, aud actually becomes harder
and stronger the fiercer IL is assailed. Should
the water be sluggish or slow moving, with
no danger of foods or freshets, the dam
will, as a rule, run straight across from
bank to bank, but where the current is
swift aud the pressure is great, engineering
skill is brought into play to curve the dam