










































































Author of 
LL the old timers of the Northwest re- 
A member William Weaver. Beaver Bill, 
as he was familiarly called, and with 
the possible exception of old Hugh Monroe, all 
agree that he was the best beaver trapper, knew 
more about the cunning animals and their ways, 
than any other man, white or red, who in modern 
times ever set a trap in Rocky Mountain waters. 
Weaver was about five feet inches in 
height, broad shouldered, heavy muscled, brown 
haired, brown eyed and weighed probably 175 
pounds. He spoke always with a drawl to his 
words and he walked as slowly as he talked. 
All in all he gave the impression that he was a 
lazy, easy-going, careless, sleepy-headed fellow. 
In all he did he was deliberate, and for months 
at a time, when fur was out of season, he would 
do little but smoke and eat and read and sleep. 
When occasion for quick action arose, however, 
he was a real whirlwind: here, there and every- 
where all at once, and doing the right thing at 
the right time as coolly and calmly as anyone 
I ever knew. In fights with Indians, in scraps 
with grizzlies, in the many trying and dangerous 
positions in which the old frontiersmen often 
found themselves, no one ever saw him excited. 
At such times he could usually be heard sing- 
ing a quaint old Methodist camp meeting song, 
the words of which I have long since forgotten. 
Not that he was a Christian—far from it. I 
never knew a frontiersman, trader, trapper or 
whatever, who was a believer in revealed re- 
ligion. They nearly all agreed that some great 
force, an intelligent force, created the universe, 
and that the Bible not only did not explain it, 
but was itself, as Weaver once said, “Nothing 
but a lot of ‘codfish superstitions.’ ” 
Weaver fought on the Union side in the re- 
bellion. He was a native of southern Ohio, and 
when the army disbanded he went to St. Louis 
and thence by steamer up the Missouri to Fort 
Benton, Montana. From early boyhood he had 
always been a hunter and a trapper of the small 
game in the vicinity of his home. Here in this 
wild, unsettled country, teeming with all kinds 
of big game and fur animals, he pursued for 
a livelihood what he had done as a boy for 
sport, and soon became, as I have said, the most 
expert beaver trapper in the country. He was 
a splendid shot, almost as certain to knock over a 
flec'ng deer or other animal as a professional wing 
shct is to stop a pigeon sprung from a trap. 
six 
Beaver Bill’s Close Calls 
By J. W. SCHULTZ 
It was in the spring of 1866 that Weaver 
landed in Fort Benton. The Blackfeet had not 
yet met their Waterloo—the Baker massacre of 
1870o—and their war parties, ever abroad, made 
it impossible for the frontiersmen to hunt and 
trap, except in companies large enough to with- 
stand the attacks of the Indians. But from the 
time when they were quieted Weaver generally 
plied his vocation alone. There were other In- 
dians to be taken into account though; war 
parties of Crees, Assinaboines, Crows, Sioux 
and several times the lone trapper had narrow 
escapes from them. More than once he made 
them pay dearly for stealing or destroying his 
outfit. 
He was making a spring trip down the Marias 
River one year, and was having very good luck. 
One evening after setting some traps here and 
there in favorable places, generally at the foot 
of the beaver slides and in about six inches of 
water, a rain storm came on and he hastily put 
up his tent, storing within it his camp outfit and 
the forty odd beaver skins he had already col- 
lected. In pleasant weather he never unloaded 
his skiff, but slept aboard of it, going ashore 
only to cook his meals and skin his daily catch 
of fur. At night he would row some distance 
from where he had built his cook fire and tie 
up at the foot of an island or to one of the 
many huge “sawyers” sticking up in the chan- 
nel, thus to avoid any prowling enemy who had 
seen the blaze of his fire. 
On this occasion the night passed without in- 
cident; the storm ceased, and the sun came up 
in a clear sky. Weaver arose early, cooked and 
ate his breakfast, and then got into his skiff and 
crossed the river. Tying it to the bank under 
some drooping willows he walked up stream for 
a mile or more and then started back along the 
“shore to pick up the four traps he had set on 
that side the previous afternoon. The first and 
second of them each held a beaver, and hauling 
the stiff, drowned animals out on the bank, he 
sat down and skinned and fleshed them on the 
spot. It is slow, tedious work, fleshing a beaver 
hide; that is, removing the soft, slippery tena- 
cious fat with which it is lined. He was away 
from his camp all of three hours, and lo, when 
he returned he had no camp! Where the tent 
had stood was only a lot of burned and charred 
rubbish. Around about were scattered beans, 
rice, flour, some hoops on which drying hides 
“My Life as an Indian” 



















































al 
had been stretched. Pots and pans were miss‘! 
ing; not a thing was left that could be of any? 
use. On the sandy shore were soft-soled mocca:# 
sined footprints, and by that sign Weaver knew? 
that they were Cree Indians who had despoilec! 
him. The moccasins of all the other tribes ir! 
the country were soled with parfleche. I 
Weaver poked around in the blackened mass? 
but could find no evidence that his bedding o1* 
fur had been burned. These they had taken k 
also, in all probability, the sugar, tea, bacon" 
syrup, cartridges and such other articles asl! 
pleased the plunderers’ fancy. The heavy pro-! 
visions they had simply destroyed to prevent hi: 
from using them. There he was, more than <# 
hundred miles from Fort Benton, without fooc®! 
or shelter, and more than two hundred dollars’! 
worth of fur—the result of two weeks’ hard work! 
—gone to furnish some thieving Crees with the’! 
means for a drunken orgy. Then there was the* 
camp outfit, worth a hundred dollars and more.” 
I would like to have seen and heard my old# 
friend when he discovered his loss. 
“As soon as I got done cussin’,” Bill would 
say, in telling the story, “I began to prospect* 
around some, and from the sign concluded that's 
there were only four of ’em. They were afoot;ii 
no horse tracks anywhere. What with the beaver! 
skins, I says, and the beddin’ and such grub as! 
they took a fancy to, they're pretty well loaded,! 
I’m sure goin’ to follow ’em an’ try to play even.'® 
I counted my cartridges; forty-eight in the belt, 
twelve in the magazine of my Henry rifle—a' 
plenty. I took a big drink of water and struck!” 
out; not on their trail, which p’inted off down’ 
the river, but up a deep coulée which crossed!" 
the bottom from the slope of the valley. When'! 
I came to the end of it, a mile or so out on the}! 
plain, I went a ways farther to the top of a little} 
butte where I had a good view of the country)! 
for miles and miles around. I thought it prob-!! 
able that as they were Crees they would belt 
striking northward for their home away up oni 
the Saskatchewan. There was no sign of them)? 
out on the plain; the buffalo and antelope scat-/ 
tered here and there upon it were feeding or 
resting peaceful, which they wouldn’t have been!! 
doing if the Injuns were traveling that way. If 
sat there maybe fifteen minutes and then, away) 
down the river four or five miles, I saw a big!" 
band of buffalo rushing up from the valley andf! 
scamper in out over the plain. Uh huh! I says a 
\ 
| 






