Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

"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."