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

by George Bird Grinnell

"I hope so," said Jack, as he rose to his feet and threw another stick or two on the fire. Then squatting down by it, he said: "Three or four days ago, Hugh, I asked you how big beaver were, and you told me, and ever since then I've been trying to think of something that my uncle told me two or three years ago about an old time sort of beaver that doesn't exist any more on the earth. I think it was what you were telling me about the Indians' belief in medicine beavers that made me think of it. Uncle George told me that out in Ohio there was found a skeleton, or part of the skeleton, of a great big animal just like a beaver, but about as big as a black bear. That would mean, I suppose, weighing three or four hundred pounds, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "about that."

"Well," said Jack, "this beaver lived in those old times, a good way back, but not nearly as far back as those older times when the coal was made. It lived about the same time that they used to have mastodons in this country."

"Hold on," said Hugh, "say that again. What is a mastodon?"

"Why," said Jack, "it's a great big animal, a good deal like an elephant. You have seen elephants, haven't you?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "once when I was a small boy I saw one. He was a powerful big animal."

"Well," said Jack, "a mastodon was like an elephant, only bigger, and he was different in some ways, but I've forgotten how. I think it was something about his teeth. The mastodon didn't live such a very great while ago, because I remember Uncle George said that the bones of those that they have found had not yet turned to stone. Of course all these fossils that come from the older times have changed into regular stone. They are just rocks with the shape of bones or shells or whatever it may be."

"Yes," said Hugh, "I know about that, because I've seen a heap of them. They're just rocks in the shape of the different things that they used to be."

"Well," said Jack, "anyhow the main thing is that in that time when there were mastodons in this country, there was also a big animal like a beaver, that would weigh several hundred pounds."

"He must have had fine fur," said Hugh, "but I reckon it would have been powerful hard work setting traps for that fellow. You'd have to have bear traps to catch him, and it's no joke to set a bear trap. You say all they know about him is that they found his bones?"