Jan. 19, 1907] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
95 
BREEDING PENS FOR ENGLISH AND CHINESE RING-NECK PHEASANTS—COOPS 
PLACED CLOSE TOGETHER FOR TILE WINTER SEASON. 
COOPS FOR YOUNG PHEASANTS AND QUAIL—ROOSTTNG BOXES SET ON 
COOPS TO PROTECT FROM THE WEATHER IN THE WINTER SEASON. 
Beaver as Irrigators. 
Many years ago I was at the Blackfoot In¬ 
dian Agency in northern Montana making 
preparations to start into the mountain on a 
hunting trip. About the reservation were 
many old acquaintances and friends, Indians, 
half-breeds and whites, who had been in the 
West for thirty or forty years, and were fami¬ 
liar with old-time conditions. It has always 
been a pleasure to me to talk to such people— 
men whose powers of observation were highly 
trained, whose experience had been long and 
whose memories were good. Most of the 
things they said deserved careful attention; 
many of them were worth setting down in a 
notebook. 
One afternoon I was sitting alone in front 
of the trader’s store, when old Bill Weaver, 
the best trapper of all that northern country, 
came around the corner of the building, and 
walking up to me, sat down and said: 
“When are you going to- start out? ’ 
“I do not know just when,” I replied, “but 
certainly before long. I am waiting to see the 
clouds lift off the mountains. I don’t care to 
go into them in rain or snow, if I can help it. 
We have bad weather enough there, anyhow. 
The old man sat silent for a little while, and 
then reaching out a stubby forefinger, he 
touched my knee and said, “George, don’t you 
go.” 
“Why not?” I asked. 
“Let the mountains go this year, and come 
with me. I will tell you why. I have found a 
place where there is a whole lot of beaver. 
It’s only a little stream, but they are thick, and 
if you and I go there. I reckon we can catch 
twenty-five or thirty in two or three weeks. 
Come with me and we will have a nice little 
spell of trapping, and will make a little money.” 
The proposition was an attractive one. I 
should have enjoyed Weaver’s company in 
a visit to a place where beaver were undis¬ 
turbed, the trapping and the money; but I had 
promised friends that I would go with them to 
the mountains, and it was too late to change 
my plans. So I went into the high hills, and 
Beaver Bill went off to trap. Four weeks later 
when I returned, I found that he had come in 
some time before with forty-two beaver and 
about seventy mink skins: Certainly- an ample 
reward for his labor. 
For a number of years Weaver used to go 
off every season to this trapping ground, whose 
secret he carefully guarded, and come back in 
a sho.rt time with a considerable catch of fur. 
But at last some change swept Weaver out of 
the country, and I have not seen him for many 
years. 
In the autumn of 1906 I crossed the little 
stream which, until Weaver had discovered 
it. had perhaps never been trapped. It lies in 
a rough country at a little distance out from 
the mountains, hidden at the bottom of a nar¬ 
row valley, whose steep walls rise hundreds of 
feet on either side. Now, however, as with 
most of the little valleys in the West where 
there is water, a settler’s house is there and 
his cattle browse on the steep hillsides, while 
from the narrow but level stream valley, he 
cuts hay enough to insure them against the 
dangers of winter. One would suppose that 
the beaver would long ago have disappeared, 
but this is just what they have not done. At close 
intervals along the little stream -stand dams 
kept constantly in repair by the beaver, the 
water being held back so that it stands only 
about six inches below the level of the stream 
bottom. There may be a difference of a foot 
or a foot and a half in the height of the water 
above and below any one of the dams, but in 
any case it is close’to the land’s level. The 
actual bed of the stream, however, lies five or 
six feet below the level of the soil in the* 
bottom, and in every pool there is water deep 
enough to swim a horse. I know, because I 
tried to find a place to ride across it without 
going down to the bridge where the road 
crosses, and I had to back out or get a wetting. 
Why is it these beaver still flourish on this 
little stream, as in fact they are beginning to 
flourish on many another little stream in Mon¬ 
tana? It is true that the Montana law pro¬ 
tects beaver, and it is forbidden to kill them, 
but in these sparsely settled districts the law 
is often forgotten, or if remembered, disre¬ 
garded. 
The reason that these beaver are protected 
is that the man who claims this water and the 
adjacent hay meadow realizes that in the 
beaver he has a lot of unpaid servants, who by 
their work are saving him a great deal of 
labor and of money. They have dammed this 
creek and have thus put under irrigation the 
meadows from which he cuts his hay. If he 
were short-sighted enough to tear up these 
dams and to kill these beaver, he would be 
obliged to go to the head of the stream and 
there take out a ditch, bring it around along 
the hillsides, build laterals and sub-laterals, 
and so get water on his hay meadows at con¬ 
siderable expense. Now, that meadow is sub- 
irrigated throughout its whole length, receiv¬ 
ing just the amount of water that it needs and 
all this without one cent of cost to him who 
cuts his hay there. 
This is a single example—but a striking one 
—of the work the beaver do. They are doing 
similar work in a number of places in Mon¬ 
tana, but what seems to me much more in¬ 
teresting than the fact that they are doing this 
work is the further fact that people are com¬ 
ing to understand the usefulness of their ser¬ 
vices, and are trying to encourage and pro¬ 
tect them in order that they may continue this 
work. . , r , 
There are many streams in Montana, and 
indeed in other portions of the West, where 
the water flows on a bed six, eight or twelve 
feet below the level of the stream valley. In 
such places men with infinite labor built dams 
to hold back the water, so that thqy may take 
it out to use in irrigation; but nine times out 
of ten, when the spring freshets come, the 
dam goes out, the labor is wholly lost, and the 
meadow which it was desired to irrigate re¬ 
mains as dry as ever. 
Such a stream is the Rosebud River, a tribu¬ 
tary of the Yellowstone from the south. For the 
lower eighty or ninety miles of its course, its 
valley is broad ‘and flat with wide meadows, 
which, if watered, produce luxuriant crops of 
grain or alfalfa or of native hay. But the stream 
itself flows through a narrow channel cut through 
this valley, and ten or twelve feet below its gen¬ 
eral level. Moreover, about midsummer the 
Rosebud usually goes dry, and for months water 
stands in it merely in holes. Many attempts— 
some of them successful—have been made to 
dam the stream so as to store the spring water 
for irrigation, but where these attempts are not 
successful, the dry meadows far above the water 
level produce nothing except a little dry pasture. 
At one point, however, twenty-five _ or thirty 
miles from the mouth there exists a little colony 
of beaver which the ranch owner has protected. 
They have dammed one or two trickles of water 
coming from springs in the hills, have made 
themselves a series of ponds in which the waters 
stand only a little below the level of the 
meadows, and the result of this shows itself in 
the best hay meadow on the place. 
In the settling up of the West the beaver 
has played a great part. It was the beaver 
that led men into and across those mysterious 
fastnesses that used to be called the Shining 
Mountains. It will be interesting if in these 
latter days, when civilization and all that goes 
with it, has thrust itself into every nook and 
valley of those Shining Mountains, and the 
land on both sides of them, the living beaver 
should perform an active work in making the 
land productive, and its occupancy by the white 
man possible- G. B. G. 
“In the Lodges of the Blackfeet.” 
Owing to various unexpected but unavoidable 
delays,' the publication of the volume, “My Life 
as an Indian” has been delayed until early in 
the month of February. This book, it will be 
remembered, appeared in Forest and Stream as 
a serial over the signature W. B. Anderson. Its 
present title as stated is “My Life as an Indian?’ 
and the author is J. W. Schultz. The volume 
will be handsomely illustrated by a multitude of 
photographs of Blackfeet Indians. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
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supply you regularly. 
