90 BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 
Near where the present site of the new military post 
of Fort Lincoln, near Apple Creek, is located another 
historical relic, namely—Sibley’s breastworks—a _ re- 
minder of that officer’s Indian campaign of 1863. 
In first signing up Apple Creek for fur bearers in the 
autumn of 1871, I had noted that the beavers used 
buck brush for feed bed purposes, and which was quite 
plentiful. While their dams were many, they were 
not large. As my leading fur was otter I did not bother 
the beavers much. In1874, ‘‘Big” Proctor, a trapper, 
made a systematic trap of the stream and in three years 
had the principal fur bearers, which included the beaver, 
destroyed along Apple Creek. Proctor was afterward 
killed in Idaho by falling from a precipice. 
John Yegan, ex-legislator, and an old and worthy 
citizen of Bismarck, N. D., being aland owner along ~ 
Apple Creek Valley and a believer in water storage as 
a preventive of drouth, said the following a few years 
ago te a representative of the Bismarck Tribune: 
‘‘When I came here twenty-five years ago Apple 
Creek from source to mouth was one succession of bea- 
ver dams, Throughout the country till very late in the 
season a goodly supply of water lay in the various 
sloughs and lake beds that are now dry and uncultivat- 
able. In the spring of the year and well through the 
summer season considerable water stood in the bottom 
lands south of the city. Eventually these beaver dams 
in the creeks about the country were cut out, the beaver 
killed and the numerous creeks and lakes drained. It 
is my firm conviction that if more dams were put in 
creeks and sloughs and the spring thaws caught and 
held that the farmer would have less cause to deplore 
