CHAPTER XI
INDIAN BEAVER LORE
The two ate their supper that night with the eagerness of hungry and tired men. Jack thought that the term "wolfish," that Hugh sometimes used to express hunger, had a good deal of meaning. He was so greedy over his food that when the first helping was put on his plate he began to bolt it, as he said to Hugh, "like a hungry dog."
"Better eat slowly," said Hugh. "You'll get a good deal more comfort out of your food and it will do you a whole lot more good. As a rule the hungrier you are the slower you ought to eat. I've seen a number of starving people in my time, and the longer they'd been without food the less we gave them at a time. It makes a man pretty mad, though, when he is just ravenous, if he can't pitch right into his grub and eat all he wants."
"Yes," said Jack, "I've always heard that people that had been without food or without water for a long time ought to have their food or their water given them a very little at a time."
"That is so," said Hugh. "If a man takes all he wants to it's pretty sure to make him sick. I remember one time when I made quite a ride one day in about eleven hours, about seventy-five miles we called it. There was a Pawnee Indian that ran alongside of my horse the whole way. In other words, for eleven hours he ran about seven miles an hour. Sometimes he slowed down and got a mile or two behind, and then he'd run harder and catch up to me and keep right alongside the loping horse for hours. When we got to the Republican River I was good and tired. I wouldn't let my horse drink at first, and just wetted my head without drinking, but that Indian sat down on the bank and borrowed my quart cup and drank it seven times full while he was sitting there, and then he was sick—Lord! how sick he was. When my horse had cooled off I let him drink, and then we crossed the river and camped on the other side."
"Well, why did you make that long ride?" asked Jack.
"Well," said Hugh, "we had gone down from the old Pawnee agency to take back south some horses that had been stolen, and when we were coming back we passed through some white settlements, and the white men being new to the country, and not knowing anything about Indians, wanted to kill my people and arrest me. I had all I could do to get the bunch through without anybody getting hurt, and to keep out of trouble myself, but I finally did it, and when we got out of the settlement I told the Indians that we'd all better make for home, and that we'd better separate in doing it. This Indian, Sun Chief, and I came along together. They all got in finally without any more trouble."
"When was that, Hugh?" asked Jack.
"Why," said Hugh, "that was in '67 or '68, I think. It was just after the railroad had passed through Eastern Nebraska."
By this time supper was over and the dishes washed, and though Hugh and Jack were tired it hardly seemed time to go to bed.
"I wish, Hugh," said Jack, "that you would tell me something about what we saw to-day, and something more about the way the beavers live."
"Sure", said Hugh; "I'll tell you all I know, but that is not much yet, as far as what we saw to-day goes. We found a dam and some houses, where, I am sure, there are quite a number of beaver, maybe twenty-five or thirty, and maybe more, and from what we saw, I am pretty sure that they are gentle and unsuspicious. We ought to be able to get some of them, but until we've looked about more I can't tell much. What I think we'd better do is spend a day or two more prospecting, especially on this side of the creek, and then we'll move camp according to what we see, and then go to work to set some traps. You saw enough to-day to get some idea of how the beaver live. You saw an old dam and a new one, and you saw some houses. Did you ever see a muskrat house back East?"
"Yes," said Jack, "I've seen a good many."
"Did you ever see one opened?" asked Hugh.
"No. I never did," said Jack.
"Well, now, a muskrat and a beaver are pretty close relations, I take it. They live in much the same way, and build houses that are a good deal alike. Of course, a muskrat doesn't build dams, and a muskrat's tail is flattened from side to side, while the beaver's tail is flattened from above downward, but in many ways they are a good deal alike. They both live in their houses during the winter, and if they're driven from their houses they swim under the water to some place where there's an air-hole in the ice and where they can put up their noses to breathe. Of course, both beaver and muskrat must have air. A muskrat builds his house by heaping up mud and reeds and grass in a shallow pond at a distance from the bank. The beaver builds his by heaping up the same sort of stuff, only bigger, that is to say, sticks and brush and mud in a shallow pond away from the bank. Each sort of house has in it one or more rooms with a kind of a bench all round the walls where the animals sit or sleep, and with a hole somewhere near the middle of the floor leading down through the bottom of the house and out into the open water. I have seen beaver houses opened. Generally, they have only one big room, but sometimes a big house will have two or three rooms in it, and each room has a separate passage out into the water. I think that perhaps several families take part in building such a big house as that, and each family has its separate home.
"Beaver, you know, don't always live in houses. There's a kind that people call bank beaver, and they just dig a hole in the bank under water, which slopes up a little and finally gets above the level of the water, and there they dig out quite a good-sized room not so very far under ground. These bank beaver live for the most part in rivers or in natural lakes, and as a rule they don't build any dams. They are just like any other beaver, but I expect they live in the way that is handiest to them."
"Yes," said Jack; "'adapt themselves to their environment,' as Uncle George says."
"Yes, I reckon that's it," replied Hugh. "But those words are a trifle too long for me to understand. Now," Hugh went on, "this room that the bank beaver lives in is quite a big one, maybe four feet or so across, with a sort of bench or shelf all round it, where the beaver sit and sleep, and, of course, with the water in the middle, where the tunnel that they have dug comes up into the room. Usually there's a growth of willows or other brush on the ground above it, and quite a thickness of earth, so that there's no danger of any animal that walks around on the ground putting his foot through into the room. Of course, these holes are usually dug so that the mouths of them are always under water and so that the water always stands as near as possible at the same level, but if a big flood comes along, these bank beavers sometimes get drowned out, and have to leave their homes and sit around on the bank and in the brush waiting for the water to go down. I remember once, quite a number of years ago, making a big killing of beaver at a time like that."
"Where was that, Hugh?" asked Jack.
"I'd been hunting through the winter," said Hugh, "supplying meat to some of the forts along the Missouri River near where Bismarck is now; Fort Stephenson, Fort Lincoln, and sometimes Fort Rice. I would kill my meat and then pack it in to the posts. Game was plenty at the heads of all the streams running into the Missouri, and it was no trick at all to get what meat I wanted. There were no buffalo, but plenty of elk, deer, and antelope. I was pretty lucky about my hunting and got meat when the Indians couldn't, and two or three times that winter I came pretty near having a row with them. They had a notion that I had some sort of medicine that brought the game to me and kept it away from them, and some of the village Gros Ventres said they were going to kill me if I didn't leave the country, but, of course, that was just their talk, and I stayed there and kept on hunting."
"I wish you'd tell me about that, too, Hugh," said Jack.
"Well, I can only tell you about one thing at a time. I thought you wanted to hear about how I got those beaver."
"All right," replied Jack, "tell me about that first, and then about the Indians."
"Well," Hugh continued, "I was up quite a way on the Little Missouri, not anywhere near the head, of course, but about forty miles from the mouth, when there came a big rain and a warm spell, and all the snow melted at once, and pretty nearly the whole bottom of the river filled up. The beaver on that creek are all bank beaver. There are no houses at all, except maybe a few on some little creeks that run into the river. The weather got so bad and rainy that I started down to go to Berthold, and as I traveled down the river about the first things that I began to see were beaver sitting around on the banks and on driftwood, stupid and confused, and not knowing enough to jump into the water when I came along. Of course, I began to kill them, shooting them through the head, and I soon saw that I had a big job on my hands, and that I could kill more in half a day than I could skin in two or three days. Besides that, I had been out some time and was short of ammunition. What I did was to kill in the morning what beaver I could skin in the rest of the day, and for two or three days I was kept mighty busy, and working hard late into the night. Then the river went down and the beaver disappeared, all going back into their holes again, I suppose. I made quite a bit of money on that trip, and if I had had a man with me to skin all the time I could have got twice as many as I did, maybe three times as many. I think if I'd had a helper I could have killed one hundred and twenty-five beaver without trying very hard. I've often thought if a man could go down the Little Missouri in a boat at such a time, and with one of these little pea rifles, he could get an awful lot of fur."
"But I don't understand, Hugh," inquired Jack, "how the beaver let you come right up to them and shoot them."
"Well," said Hugh, "of course I didn't walk right up to them, making plenty of noise; I went as quietly as I could and shot as carefully as I could, but the beaver seemed to have lost their wits. They weren't shy and watchful, as beaver 'most always are. They just sat there in the rain and looked miserable."
"Dear me," commented Jack; "if you could find beaver as plenty as that only a few years ago, what immense numbers of them there must have been in the old times."
"Yes," said Hugh, "it's wonderful to think of it, of course, and yet you must remember that all the regular trapping had stopped more than twenty years before that, and that it was only once in a while a man came along and set some traps, and even then he didn't make a business of trapping. He got just a few beaver and then went on. And it's wonderful how quickly any sort of wild animal increases if they're let alone. I believe that you might trap out all the beaver, except one pair, from a stream, and then leave that stream alone for twenty years and go back there and you'd find just as many beaver there as there were the first time you visited it."
"That brings up another thing, Hugh, that I wanted to ask you about," said Jack. "How many young ones do the beaver have?"
"I think," replied Hugh, "that they have four, and maybe sometimes six. I know you take any place where there are three or four beaver houses, and if you can go there and watch them, and the beaver are not too shy, you'll see an awful lot of kittens playing around at the right time of the day. I don't believe that the beaver breed until they are two years old, because more than once I've seen what I took to be one family, which consisted of two old ones, four or five nearly as big as the old ones, and four or five only half grown. That makes me think that the young ones stay with their parents until they are considerably more than one year old, but when the young ones are about full grown, I expect the old ones drive them off. Beaver are pretty mean; they're great things to fight among themselves, and I've seen many a one all scarred and cut about his head and neck and shoulders, where he'd been fighting with another one. After the full-grown ones are driven off by their parents, I reckon they start out and either build themselves houses somewhere nearby, or perhaps go on up or down the stream, and either join some other colony, or build a dam for themselves."
"I don't understand, Hugh, how it is that the beaver know enough to build these dams which are strong enough to hold back the water in these creeks."
"Well, son, I don't believe that I can help you out a bit. All I know is, that the beaver do it, and that their dams are strong and hold back the water, and that if you go and break down a dam, so as to let the water run out of the pond, the beaver will come down that night and mend the dam, and the next morning you'll find the pond full, or nearly full. Somehow or other, they understand just how to put together sticks and stones and mud so that the dam will hold. Sometimes the dam runs straight across the creek, sometimes it curves a little downward, that is to say, the hollow of the dam looks up the stream; sometimes it curves a little the other way, so that the hollow of the dam looks down the stream. You'd think that this was the strongest way to build, and it has seemed to me the dams built in that shape are usually found on the strongest running streams, but I can't be sure about it, because I don't know that I ever took particular notice. Anyhow, I know that all people that I've ever seen, Indians and whites alike, think that the beaver is smart."
"I don't wonder," said Jack, "and now I remember," he went on, "that the Blackfeet have a lot of beliefs about the beaver. They think he's strong medicine."
"Sure, they do," said Hugh; "they have lots of beliefs about it, and they think it's one of the greatest animal helpers."
"I know they do," said Jack. "I remember now, that one time Joe took me to a ceremony where old Iron Shirt unwrapped a beaver bundle. I didn't know whether I would be allowed to see it, but Joe asked Iron Shirt, and he told me to come. I didn't understand what it was all about, but they unwrapped the bundle, which had in it a great lot of the skins of birds and small animals, and while it was being unwrapped, and after it was opened, Iron Shirt prayed and sang, and then two or three women who were present to help, danced around on their knees in the queerest way you ever saw. Joe said they were imitating the beaver."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I saw one of those bundles unwrapped one time. It is a big ceremony. You know they have lots of stories about people that have been helped by the beaver. There's one of those stories about a poor young man who loved a certain girl, but he was so badly off and was so homely that she wouldn't have anything to do with him, so he went off and wandered over the prairie, feeling awful badly and wanting to die, and when night came he lay down by the stream to go to sleep, and while he was lying there a strange young man came to him and asked him to go to his father's lodge. The young man walked down to the edge of the stream and the poor boy followed him. When they got to the water's edge, the young man told the poor boy to follow him, and do just as he did. Then the young man dived into the water, and the poor boy followed him, and presently both came up inside of a lodge, and there sitting on the seats about the lodge were the old beaver, and when they got inside of the lodge the young man turned into a beaver, too. Then the old beaver spoke to the poor boy, and told him that he knew all about his trouble and wanted to help him, and asked him to spend the winter in his lodge. The poor boy was glad to do so, and during winter the old beaver taught him all their medicine, and gave him all their power.
"Then the next spring the poor boy went out of the lodge and joined a party of his people who were going to war, and by the help of the beaver he killed the first enemy that they met, and scalped him, and this was the first time scalps were ever taken. This gave the poor boy great credit, and soon after he was able to marry the beautiful girl, and to become a head warrior, and later a big chief."
"That's a pretty good story, Hugh," said Jack.
"Yes," replied Hugh, "it's a pretty good story, but it is like a good many of those Indian stories which often have for their hero some poor, miserable young fellow who, being helped by some animal—his dream, they call it—comes out all right, and gets the thing that he wants."
"Of course, the Blackfeet," Hugh went on, "have a great deal of respect for the power of what they call the under-water people—Suye tuppi. I reckon you've heard about them."
"Yes," replied Jack, "they are people and animals that live at the bottom of lakes and streams, and have great power."
"That's it," said Hugh. "But it isn't the Blackfeet alone that have these strong beliefs about the beaver. I guess all Indians are alike in the way they look at these animals. I know the Pawnees and Cheyennes feel the same way. Both tribes have queer stories about them. I reckon I never told you about one thing that is said to have happened to a young Cheyenne man a long time ago."
"I don't remember it if you have, Hugh. What was it?"
"Well," said Hugh, "in ancient times, the Indians used to kill lots of beaver. They liked the meat, and they used to make robes of the hides. In those days they had no steel traps, and the only way that they could get beaver was either to shoot them with their arrows or to tear down the dams, and when the water had run off, to get them out of their houses. It was a good deal of work to pull down the houses, and they used to train small dogs to go into the holes in the houses and worry the beaver until they would get mad and chase the little dog out through the mouth of the passage way, and there the Indian would be waiting with a club to knock the beaver on the head. Sometimes, however, the beaver would not come out far enough to be hit, and then they'd have to go into the house and kill them there, or pull them out.
"Once a party of people had torn down a dam and killed a number of beaver from the houses. But one man was working at a house, and couldn't get the beaver out of it. His dog would go in and bark, but the beaver would not come out to where the young man could kill him; so the young fellow got down and crawled into the passageway, and presently got close enough to the beaver so that he could get hold of its foot. He wasn't strong enough to pull it out, so he backed out of the hole and called to a woman on the bank to bring him a rope. When she had brought it, he crawled into the hole again and tied it to the beaver's foot, and then came out, and three or four people began to pull on the rope, so as to haul the beaver into the daylight. He came very slowly, moving forward only a short distance and then holding on, but at last they began to see something coming, and presently, when they had pulled this thing to the mouth of the hole, they were astonished and frightened to see that instead of being a beaver it was a queer little old white man whom they were pulling out by the rope tied to one of his legs. When they saw what they had at the end of the rope, they were all so frightened that most them ran away; but the young man who had tied on the rope, before running away, went down to the beaver house and took the rope off the old man's leg so that he might be free again. Then he climbed up onto the bank and hung the rope on a tree, and made a prayer, and went away himself."
"What do you suppose it was they saw, Hugh?" said Jack.
"Bless you, son, I have no more idea than you have. I reckon that what they saw was a beaver, but of course that was not what they thought they saw. You'll find lots of Indians that imagine that they've seen things, or that things have happened to them that you and I would say couldn't possibly have been seen, or couldn't possibly have happened. The Indians have got pretty strong imaginations and then again maybe they have eyes to see things that we white folks can't see. I have seen a whole lot of queer things in Indian camp, things that I couldn't explain, things that I've seen with my own eyes, yet that most white people would say were just my imagination."
"I know, Hugh; you told me about some of those things, and, of course, I can't see how they could possibly have happened, and yet because you saw them I believe that they did happen."
"Of course, son, you know that I think that they happened; but, of course, maybe I might have been fooled about them.
"Well, to go back to the beaver," he went on; "'most all Indians that I ever had anything to do with believe in a big old white beaver that is the chief of all beaver. I guess nobody ever saw him, but lots of people have seen him in dreams, especially in dreams where they went to the lodge of all the beavers. That is a dream that has come to a good many men, at least you often hear stories about people who have had the dream. This old white beaver is of great power. He knows about everything that has happened, and if by any chance he doesn't know about it himself, he calls all the other beaver together and asks them, and it's pretty sure that some one of them has some knowledge about the matter.
"You see, the beaver are scattered all over, inhabit all the waters, and are active, and going about all through the hours of darkness, so they are very likely to know about things that have happened, about which all the people are ignorant; such things, for example, as women being captured and carried off at night, or war parties traveling at night. If a man has a beaver for his dream, he is pretty likely to be lucky in everything that he undertakes."
"All the animals seem to have been very important to the Indians," said Jack. "They didn't exactly worship them, but they believe that they had great power to help."
"Yes," agreed Hugh, "that is true, of course. The Indians pray to the spirits of the animals, and to the spirits of the mountains and rocks and trees, and ask them to help them, but the way I understand it, they don't worship any of these things. They pray to them just the same as white folks pray to saints, but way up above all these different spirits or medicines that the Indians talk about, there is some great person who has the power, and to him all these prayers are carried by the spirits that are prayed to. It's a mighty complicated thing, you see, son," he went on. "I can't understand it, and I reckon the Indians themselves don't understand it much better than I do, and I know they can't explain it. Some of them have tried to, but they get just about as far as I get, and then they are stuck."
"Well, I suppose religion is a pretty hard subject anyhow, Hugh," remarked Jack.
"I suppose it is," said Hugh, "and I reckon if you were to take a hundred white men out of the same church, and were to ask each one of them just exactly what his beliefs are, you would find that no two of the hundred would exactly agree."
They sat for a little while looking at the fire, and then Hugh said, "Well, son, we've had a pretty long day and I reckon it's about time to go to bed."
"That will suit me," said Jack, and they turned into their blankets.