16 BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS 
lessly destroyed along the St. Lawrence River, and the 
country tributary to and east of the Great Lakes,during 
the zenith of the trapping and fur trading days of the 
eighteenth century. 
The invention of the steel trap as we know it, was 
not patented and brought into use until several years 
after the advent of the Hudson Bay Company, an or- 
ganization under the British crown with posession of 
all trading and fur rights to the northern half of the 
North American continent except the Alaskan region 
claimed by the Russian government. Previous to what 
was known as the ‘‘Hudson Bay Steel Trap’’ beavers 
were caught and destroyed with the primitive trap meth- 
ods of the Aborigines. Captain Carver spent three 
winters with the wild northwestern tribes, and accom- 
panied them on their hunts and closely observed their 
mode of procedure as to hunting and trapping. In 
describing the Indians general mode of destroying the 
beaver, Captain Carver writes thus: 
«‘But the hunting in which the Indians, particularly 
those who inhabit the northern parts, chiefly employ 
themselves, and from which they reap the greatest ad- 
vantage, is the beaver hunting. The season for this is 
throughout the whole of the winter, November to April; 
during which time the fur of those creatures is in the 
greatest perfection. A description of this extraordinary 
animal, the construction of their huts, and the regulations 
of their almost rational community, I shall give in an- 
other place. The hunters make use of several methods 
to destroy them. Those generally practised, are either 
that of taking them in snares, cutting through the ice, 
or opening their causeways. 
