The front line of this French conquest was to become known as the beaver frontier. The coast of the fishermen had been the first fur trading frontier, but when that trade began moving rapidly inland and castor canadensis took over the chief victim’s role in the drama of destruction, it became the beaver frontier. For castor canadensis is not a highly reproductive animal and he is not a migrant. He is also hindered from flight in the face of danger by the large capital investment he has made in his home.
The beaver is an amphibious rodent whose natural environment is a pond or a sluggish stream. An industrious home body, operating on a self-imposed economy, he hews trees and builds protecting dams and apartment houses in which he cohabits with other beavers, all under a system of government much like man’s.
Physically, the beaver is distinguished by his thick coat of soft fur, his hard, incisor-like teeth with which he can cut through the stoutest oak, his palmated hind feet and his horizontally-flattened, scaly tail.
He depends very much on that tail, which probably was a model for Indian canoe paddles. It serves him as a rudder when he swims and as a balance for his awkwardly-proportioned body when he runs. As the foreman of a community construction project he uses his tail with telling effect to lash laggards in the matter of pushing logs about or sealing crevices in structures with good, hard clay. Frequently it comes in handy to smack the surface of the water as a warning that an enemy approaches as well as a protest to the unwelcome intruder. No sound impresses itself more sharply on the woodsman than the crash of an angry beaver’s tail on the quiet waters of his home preserve.
The fur of this busy little animal was much in demand in the old world. Not only was it preferred as a coating because of its beauty, warmth and durability, but the hat industry then centering about La Rochelle was requisitioning it in increasing quantities. With European reserves being depleted, the lovely blue-brown, blanket-like pelt of the larger Canadian animal found eager bidders in the French market at twenty or more livres a pound, the average beaver pelt weighing one and a half to two pounds.
Castoreum, an important by-product of the beaver trade at the time, was much in demand too. Obtained in the spring from the perineal glands of both male and female animals, it was used extensively by perfumers as a base for the flower scents. It was also often used to catch the beaver himself. During mating season both sexes of the beaver deposited the pungent, sticky, yellow substance on spots regularly visited by other beaver and added mud and dead leaves to form scent mounds. These served the natives to locate runways; also to bait the intricate snares they set in lieu of spearing, before the white man provided them with metal traps.
The Indians of French Canada fell in readily with the white man’s breathless pursuit of the beaver. They, themselves, had long since learned the warmth and durability of his pelt. They used his sharp teeth to point their cutting and scraping tools. They ate his flesh, the tail of the beaver being considered a special delicacy. Now they could trade his pelt and his castors for many wonderful things they thought they needed—ironware, clothing, guns and brandy. It was not difficult to persuade them to step up their war on the challenging little animal that acted like a man.
This soon changed the Indian’s mode of life, making him more and more dependent on the white man’s wares. Eventually it brought about the red man’s destruction.
As old cultural habits began falling away and as hardware which the Indian couldn’t make took the place of bone, wood and stone, he became the prey of every evil white man who stood to gain from him. Always deep in the Indian’s breast lay the revenge motive; always liquor stirred his most primal instincts. The displacement of bows and arrows by guns made it possible for him to kill off his aboriginal enemies much faster. But he was dependent on the European’s continued help even in that. Only the European could supply repair parts for the muskets and furnish the required ammunition. It was a case of the red man destroying himself with the white man’s culture.
The brass kettle had as much to do with it as guns or brandy—and the process was not restricted to New France. The pattern was to be repeated on every other American frontier, by the English, the Dutch and the Swedes. The fur trade furnished the means of contact between the two widely divergent cultures of white European and red American. Profits were tremendous—on both sides, considering relative values. But the trade led to the Indian’s self-destruction.