Beaver lodge

“ The third spring Shaggycoat's own first family of beavers left the lodge to roam during the summer months, and to return in the autumn with mates. This is the arrangement in a well ordered beaver lodge. The children stay with their parents until they are three years of age, so a lodge usually contains the babies, the yearlings and two-year-olds, who allow themselves shelter under the family lodge until their third birthday, when they are shoved out to make room for the babies who have just come. ”

“ These dams will easily support the weight of a man. In the pond area or on the dam, a conical mass of mud and twigs, (the beaver lodge) some three to five feet high may be found, which contains the home of the beavers using that pond. Each lodge has an underwater entrance which is constantly in use, winter and summer. While beavers work mostly at night, it has been a regular practice in the Park to observe them swimming in their ponds just before nightfall. The Mill Creek, Hidden Valley, and Colorado River Valley areas have been especially good locations for sight of beaver. ”

“ One day must have been very much like another under their covering of ice. Inside the lodge, the diameter was three or four feet and about the same in height. Each beaver has his own particular bed, which he always occupies, and the house is kept very neat and clean. I do not imagine there was much regularity in their meals, but whenever they felt hungry, one would go to the pile of logs near the dam and select a piece. ”

“ The young quit the lodge of their parents when they enter upon the summer of their third year, seek mates, and establish new lodges for themselves. As each litter numbers three or four, and breeding is annual, it follows that a beaver lodge never or rarely contains more than twelve individuals, while the number usually ranges from four to eight. Every season, and particularly when a district becomes [368] overstocked, some of the beavers migrate. The Indians say that in their local migrations the old beavers go up stream, and the young down ”

“ The latter loves solitude and builds its lodge in the most inaccessible places that can be found in the fastness of the uninhabited mountains and along some stream where the foot of man seldom treads. The other colonizes near civilization in some old dam or waterway thrown up by man. Under the protection [Pg 218] of the law, beaver are becoming more plentiful, and occasionally at the mouths of little creeks can be seen limbs of birch and willow freshly peeled ”

“ Had they been driven to such fare by necessity, there are smaller trees with more tender bark near the lodge. They have cut this tough tree for exercise, I think. Their teeth grow rapidly, and unless cutting edges are worn down to the proper bevel they soon grow troublesome. That is why a beaver often comes out beside his lodge, if he can possibly reach open water, and cuts for an hour or two at the butt of a tree to keep his teeth in trim. If he is unable to reach open water, he may find himself in need of heroic treatment when the ice breaks up. ”

“ A plunge down the hole at the centre of the lodge, and a dark form would shoot out at the bank of the river. Perhaps a beaver's head, dripping with water would be poked up, only a few feet from the mud house, or maybe they would go the entire width of the pond before coming to the surface, for they are great swimmers, and can stay down for several minutes without coming to the surface to breathe. ”

“ Each beaver colony is a veritable city, and each lodge contains a large and well ordered family.
The house is always scrupulously clean, and each member of the family has his own bed which he occupies. The front gate is surrounded by a moat, like the castles of old, and the drawbridge is always up. ”

“ Still following the trail, we struck, about mid-afternoon, a large stream bordered with alder, cottonwood, and willow, the bark of which is the beaver's favorite food. There were some signs of the animals here, but as we expected to find them more plentiful farther down, we kept on until nearly sundown, when we came to a fine grass meadow bordering the now larger river. Here was feed for the horses; in a pond at the upper end of the meadow there were five beaver lodges.
"Here is the place for us," said Pitamakan. "Let us hurry and picket the horses, and kill a deer; night is at hand." ”

“ This structure, like the dam, is formed of branches of trees, matted with mud, grass, moss, and other material. The walls are very thick, and the entire structure not only secures much warmth, but is an efficient protection from wolves, wolverines, and other beasts of prey, especially when solidly frozen in winter. Each family builds, maintains, and occupies its own lodge, the current belief that several families live together arising from the fact that the young beavers usually continue to live with their parents until the third year. ”

“ Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and these with the uncommonly big house tell us that the family is a large one. Probably their bark soured under water, the wood having been cut early with too much sap, and they were compelled to go afield for a fresh supply. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for a man to judge what went on in their troubled heads when the need of food grew imperative; but a little memory and some study [152] of the trail bring out two facts to make one thoughtful. ”

“ There are many good Beaver ponds near Yancey's now and probably made by the same colonies of Beavers as those I studied there.
Last September I found a fine lots of dams and dammers on the southeast side of Yellowstone Lake where you may go on a camera hunt with certainty of getting Beaver pictures. Yes, in broad daylight.
Let me correct here some popular errors about the Beaver:
It does not use its tail as a trowel. It does not use big logs in building a dam. It does not and cannot drive stakes. It cannot throw a tree in any given way. It finishes the lodge outside with sticks, not mud. ”

“ Then the warriors built great fires upon the ice, made a hole in the beaver dam with their hatchets and strong stakes which they cut in the woods, and destroyed the entire colony, with the exception of the great lodge of Puigagis, King of all the Beavers. This they would not touch, lest evil befall them; nor will they take the skin of a maimed beaver to this day. ”

“ In addition to the lodge, the same beavers who inhabit it have burrows in the banks surrounding the pond. They never risk their personal safety upon their lodge alone, which, being conspicuous to their enemies, is liable to attack. . . . . As the entrances are always below the surface level of the pond, there are no external indications to mark the site of the burrow,
except occasionally a small pile of beaver-cuttings a foot or more high. ”

“ Your camp should be half a mile away and to the leaward of the beaver lake.
In the spring of the year beaver begin to swim early in the afternoon and take to their lodge late in the morning. In the autumn when the nights are long they break water late and are not to be seen after sunrise next morning.
If you see two beaver at one time swimming and shoot one, leave it floating on the water. The chances are the second one will make a short dive, and you want to be ready with your gun when he comes up. I have often got one with each barrel this way. ”

“ The roof is finished off with a thick layer of mud, laid on with wonderful smoothness and renewed every year. The severe frosts of winter freeze the lodge into such a solid structure that the beaver is safe against the wolverine, which is unable to break through the wall, resembling the adobe structures found in Mexico and the Southwest. Even the trapper who attempts to demolish one of the structures finds it tiresome labor, even with the help of iron implements.
The beavers excavate a ditch around their lodges too deep to be frozen. ”

“ There is nothing haphazard in the location; a beaver never settles on a place for winter quarters until by examination he is assured of three things: an ample food supply, a storehouse in which to keep it, and a dry lodge in which to live in comfort and security. Because he must have all these, with solitude or remoteness, you may search long in beaver land before you find where the animals have settled.
The first need of the family will be plenty of good food, and to secure that they explore the neighboring woods until they find a grove of poplars, of young poplars with tender bark. ”

“ Did
not raise camp in order to allow the people time to make their lodge poles. Our horses are also in need of a little time to feed, the grass is every where so dry that the horses derive little nourishment from it. The two men who remained behind arrived with four beaver. They had to go back to our encampment in order to find the road. Tho' we saw only one family of Snake Indians, yet there were the tracks of plenty of them about our encampment after we left, they were no doubt concealed while we were on the river. Some of the men were out with their traps, 8 beaver taken. ”

“ Along these they hunted unsuccessfully for beaver sign, and it was evident the spring hunt had almost exterminated the animal in this vicinity. Following Deer Creek to the ridge of the Black Hills, they crossed the mountain on to the waters of the Medicine Bow, and here they discovered a few lodges, and La Bonté set his first trap. He and old Luke finding cuttings near the camp, followed the sign along the bank, until the practiced eye of the latter discovered a slide, where the beaver had ascended the bank to chop the trunk of a cottonwood, and convey the bark to its lodge. ”

“ If the family grow too numerous for the space and the food to be found in the vicinity, several members of it emigrate and establish a new lodge close by: frequently an old beaver colony will contain a hundred. The beaver is one of the most cautious and timid animals in creation, and it is very difficult to get at it on land and kill it with firearms; on the other hand, it is wonderfully easy to capture in traps, and in this way an entire colony can be extirpated to the last one in a very short period. ”

“ The impossibility of obtaining this food in winter, when the waters and woods are clogged with ice and snow, compels them to prepare a supply. For this purpose the beavers become very active in the autumn, each family cutting down large trees and gnawing their limbs and trunks into sections small enough to be dragged to the water and floated to the neighborhood of their lodge. ”

“ Full growth was attained at two and one-half years, and they died of old age at about fifteen. A beaver family consisted of the two parents and the several offspring under two years of age, all living in one lodge or burrow. Occasionally a male refused to pair, and then after the second season he was driven from the colony and became an outcast. Their interesting social organisation and general sagacity placed them in the very top rank among animals. ”

“ Lewis H. Morgan in his “American Beaver and his Works” says: “No other animal has attracted a larger share of attention or acquired by his intelligence a more respectable position in the public estimation. Around him are the dam, [Pg 55] the lodge, the burrow, the tree-cutting, and the artificial canal, each testifying to his handiwork, and affording us an opportunity to see the application as well as the results of his mental and physical powers. ”

“ Up in the foothills were innumerable birch and maple saplings and here and there in the meadow were knolls of higher land, covered with small pines and spruces.
Perhaps Shaggycoat had seen this wild meadow covered with water in the spring during a freshet, or maybe he had only imagined it, but there was a picture in his active mind of a strong beaver dam at the foot of the narrows and a broad lake that should be enclosed by the foothills; upon the islands were to be many beaver lodges, the first of which should be occupied by Brighteyes and himself. ”

“ These dwellings are called beaver 'lodges', and accommodate a single family. They also live in burrows. They can gnaw through large trees with their strong teeth, this being done partly to obtain food, partly to get materials for houses or dam-building. ”

“ I am poor and am trying to get power.’
“Then the old beaver felt sorry for him and invited him to stay in their lodge, saying:
“ ‘If you remain here with us through the winter, we will teach you many wonderful things; and in the spring you can go home again.’
“Round-Cut-Robe was glad to stay in their lodge. When the beavers went out to work, he went along and watched them cut down many trees and bushes for their winter food—birch, poplar, cottonwood, red willow and willow brush. They told him to take back four things into the lodge ”

“ Meanwhile, from the first summer onward, the gradually increasing number of beaver families have built each for itself permanent homes, known from their resemblance to the Algonkian wigwam as ‘lodges.’ The sites chosen are along the banks of the stream or canal, and several houses may be so close together as to touch, or they may be widely scattered. The larger lodges are, in the interior, about 7 feet in diameter, and between 2 and 3 feet high, with the floor and inner walls made smooth by gnawing and wear. ”