Beaver Poses & details by Ernest Thompson Seton
This is one in an ongoing series of nature essays from Lives of Game Animals (1925-1928) by Ernest Thompson Seton. If some evening, you are camping out beside a stream or pond in the forested mountain West you might be rewarded with a wonderful sight. In the dusk after sunset, you may see a leafy branch headed upstream against the current. Since tree limbs cannot do this on their own you have come across a Beaver moving forest products to secure its dam or to store away greenery for a salad dinner.
Place in History/Vol IV pg. 499
“The earliest known game law in America was established by the Redman for the protection of the Beaver. From Samuel G. Drake’s ‘Indian Biography’ (1832, p. 111) we learn that in 1684, De la Barre, Governor of Canada, complained that the Iroquois were encroaching on the country of Indians who were allies of the French. He got a stinging reply from Garangula, the Onondaga Chief, and a general statement that the aborigines had game laws; not written, indeed, but well known, and enforced with a club if need be: ‘We knock the Twightwies (Miamis) and the Chictaghicks (Illinois) on the head, because they had cut down the trees of peace, which were the limits of our country. They have hunted Beaver on our lands. They acted contrary to the customs of all Indians, for they left none of the Beavers alive, they killed both male and female.’
For four hundred years, we pursued the defenseless Beaver with ruthless extirpatory slaughter. Fortunately, before the consummation of our reckless activity, we have wakened up; we have realized the gravity of our impending loss. We have become almost as advanced and far-sighted as the Redmen were 300 years ago; and have enacted protective laws that will insure to us a supply of Beaver for the indefinite future.”