86 BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS 
back at the beaver trappers’ record of the stream from 
whence came his first practical experience as a beaver 
trapper—Little Sioux River in the State of Iowa—the 
after fate of many of these trappers would be a wonder 
to the tracer even though he was searching for the grin- 
ning skeletons of human action; murder, insanity, ill 
fate and the law of transgression as forcasted by divine 
law that ‘‘the way of the transgressor is hard,” or that 
the ‘‘iniquities of the fathers shall be visited unto the 
children of the third and fourth generation,” is fully 
verified as time grows apace. 
One of the most noted families of beaver trappers on 
the Upper Missouri were the DesChampes, who were 
of French-Indian stock and originally from the Selkirk 
settlement of Red River, but their latter field of opera- 
tions were about the mouth of Yellowstone River. They 
made headquarters at old Fort William near which site 
the military fort of Buford was afterwards constructed. 
This family consisted of ten persons. They trapped 
beavers on all tributary streams along the Missouri and 
Yellowstone Rivers within a hundred miles of their fort. 
White Earth River was one of their favorite resorts and 
the beavers of the stone dams suffered much and often 
from their incursions. This whole family was destroyed 
by enemies their bad conduct had made, in June 1836. 
The head of the family was killed in the same manner 
that he had killed his hundreds of beavers, viz, pounded 
on the head until his brains oozed out through broken 
pieces of skull until life was extinct. He had also been 
trapped much the same as he had trapped the beavers. 
The family all met horrible deaths. The son of Gar- 
depee,slayer of old DesChampes was trapped and slain, 
