THE LURE OF THE BEAVER 



BY D. LANGE 



With Photographs by the Author 







EAVERS have been called animal engineers, and 

 the title is by no means an empty honor. No ani- 

 mal possesses such remarkable constructive 

 ability as the beaver. Even the most scep- 

 tical scientist who sees the dams they have con- 

 structed, the dome-shaped houses they have built, the 

 canals they have dug, the trees they have felled and 

 the piles of brush and 

 poles they pickle for their 

 winter food will marvel at 

 the intelligence of these 

 furred dwellers of the wil- 

 derness, and will secretly 

 wonder, if after all, beav- 

 ers might not possess a 

 spark of human reason. 



The Chippewa Indians 

 believed that the beaver 

 people once did possess 

 both human reason and 

 a human language, but 

 Manitou had to take away 

 from them the power of 

 speech so that they would 

 not become wiser than the 

 Indians themselves. 



When North America 

 was discovered, the beav- 

 ers lived on almost every 

 stream and lake north of 

 Mexico and were an im- 

 portant source of both 

 food and clothing for all 

 the tribes inhabiting the present Northern States and 

 Canada. So numerous and so generally distributed 

 were these animals that the needs of the Indians made 

 no impression on their 

 numbers. 



With the increase of 

 trade between America and 

 Europe the beaver became 

 a veritable animal of fate 

 to both Indians and Whites, 

 and within historic times 

 no other animal has played 

 .such a fateful part in the 

 suppression of one race and 

 the spread of another and 

 indeed in the conquest of 

 a whole continent by the 

 white race as the American 

 beaver. Beaver wool, the 



OUR FRIEND THE BEAVER 



The clever, sagacious, hard-working animal the chief engineer of the 

 animal world not so protected by game laws that the chance of his be- 

 coming extinct is growing remote. 



Courtesy of the American Museum Journal 



YOUNG BEAVERS AT HOME 

 Part of the new group recently constructed in the American Museum. 



fine dense fur which protects the beaver from the icy 

 water of his habitat, was found to be the most suitable 

 material in the manufacture of fine hats, and for more 

 than two centuries, until 1825, the European markets 

 were insatiable in their demand for beaver furs. From 

 a very modest beginning the American fur trade rose 

 to world wide proportions and importance. Such in- 

 trepid explorers, pioneers 

 and traders as Kit Carson, 

 Jim Bridger, George Cart- 

 wright, John Jacob Astor, 

 Larpenteur, the two 

 Henrys and unnumbered 

 nameless and forgotten 

 adventurers and explor- 

 ers who wooed fortune, 

 suiifered untold hardship, 

 faced death, and commit- 

 ted dark a nd bloody 

 crimes as loyal servants 

 of three great rival fui 

 companies, all followed 

 the lure of the beaver. 

 They followed him to the 

 small headwaters of the 

 Mississippi and St. Law- 

 rence and they crossed the 

 divides and followed him 

 down the streams which 

 send their waters to the 

 distant Pacific and to the 

 ice-bound Arctic. 



When the Americans 

 had won their liberty in the Revolutionary War, to- 

 bacco was no longer used as currency in Old Virginia, 

 but beaver skins were still the standard of value in the 



country of the upper Great 

 Lakes and in vast regions 

 farther north and west. A 

 few records from the Jesuit 

 Relations and other docu- 

 ments of the eighteenth 

 century are interesting, 

 and the present day reader 

 may even find grains of 

 humor in them. One of the 

 Jesuit Fathers reports that, 

 "in 1656 Monsieur de la 

 Poterie opened a tavern at 

 Three Rivers at which wine 

 was sold to the savages, 

 two pots for a winter 



too 



