106 TRAPPING IN IOWA 1865-6. 
He had gone but a few days when Hawthorne and 
Jackson, two trappers, appeared and asked for mutual 
camp and a division of the grounds. The proposition I 
cheerfully acceded to, though by trapper’s rules priority 
gave me fur rights tothe territory covered by my traps, 
providing acharge of dog-in-the-manger style of holding 
could not be sustained. 
Trapper Hawthorn was at that time reckoned one of 
the most successful beaver trappers in northwestern Iowa. 
He usually sought places that had been-to use a trapper’s 
phrase—trapped out. But he managed as a rule, to take 
about as much fur from the place, as the ‘‘skimmers’’ 
or first trappers. He was originally a Marylander,married 
young, brought his wife west, and were among the first 
settlers in Little Sioux Valley; in fact one of the earliest 
of the Smithlanders.but one who had refused to be a party 
to the disarming of Inkpaduta’s hunting camp, character- 
izing it as an unjustifiable proceeding, lacking cause. 
Had Hawthorn’s counsel been heeded, the massacre 
of Spirit Lake would not now be a matter of record. 
We made permanent camp at the Three Forks, and 
the following two months I became a diligent pupil in 
learning the noted trapper’s method of catching beaver 
by the scented bait. 
One March morning when the snow was falling fast, I 
started up the creek for an elk hunt, knowing that the 
storm would bring them in the braeks of the creek for 
shelter. I had not traveled far before 1 espied a band of 
about twenty, but having scented me were trotting out to 
the high prairies. I followed on the trail until drifting 
snow obliterated their tracks so that I lost the big game. 
The air had become filled with drifting snow and I 
