BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS 33 
lers, pure and simple—or following the lines of the 
pioneer plainsmen made commodious dugouts for them- 
selves in the side of the cut banks that marked a bend 
inthe creek. The beaver dams at this point were wide 
several as much as fifty yards across the breast, but 
were so well plastered with mud and rushes that they 
withstood the wild fury of the spring and summer fresh- 
ets yearafter year. In the autumn of 1892, when fears 
of hostile Indians nolonger deterred him, a vagabond 
trapper from over in Mercer County, visited the Upper 
Douglass colony and although winter was just coming 
on, this man deliberately cut away the breasts of the 
principal dams and let the water out that he might pro- 
fit thereby, in catching the beavers in their houses. 
In this he suffered a disappointment—even though 
in the hard winter that followed, many of these animals 
perished from the freezing down of their feed caused by 
loss of the water in their dams. 
Two years later while the Fort Stevenson reservation 
was in the care of a warden appointed through political 
uence—a visitor at the post was allowed the privi- 
ledge of dynamiting the largest dam at the lower colony. 
The breast was blown asunder and the waters drained 
down, but the benefit to the man who did the cruel 
work was the same that had attended the vagabond who 
destroyed the upper dams—viz: nothing but the satis- 
faction to himself of knowing that some of the animals 
must perish by starvation. Some time later, the moon- 
light hunter got in his wicked work, and one after 
another of the oldest of the beavers were destroyed, so 
that by the time the reservation fell into private hands 
through purchase, but a small part of the original col- 
ony of the Indian School days, were left alive. 
