Category: History

Mysterious Beaver Ways of Yore

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, History December 11, 2016

Our retired librarian friend from Georgia, Bob Kobres, is always finding us interesting tidbits. Whether it’s hot off the presses new beaver research in phys.org or some historical gem that the world has long overlooked. This comes from a letter to the editor of Popular Science magazine in 1884. And it’s a whopper.

The author, one Samuel Aughey of Lincoln Nebraska, is responding to the May issue in which Dr. Stockwell wrote about Henry Morgan’s seminal book, “The beaver and his works“. He begins much in a familiar manner, saying it was a fun read but just because some researchers never saw something doesn’t mean it never occurs.

Rickipedia used to quote, “Absence of Evidence, isn’t evidence of absence“.

And then goes on to tackle the thorny debate about whether beavers use their tails in construction. Dr. Stockwell apparently said “No way”, but Samuel had other ideas.

Okay, did you get that? Samuel is minding his own business when he suddenly sees a group of beavers work together to move a trunk – some pulling some pushing. Already I’m intrigued because we never really saw beavers working together on a single log.

So there’s a little rut in the hill and the beavers can’t get the log over it, no matter how many times they try. Time for a new strategy.

Okay! Beavers in a huddle form two teams, the pull team and the push team! The pull team LAID THEIR TAILS OUT FLAT and the log was rolled onto them. Then they hauled that log forward hoisted, as it were, by their own petards.

Oompf! After that big log gets moved the pull team examines their tails to make sure they weren’t injured in the line of duty. Nope, all fine here.

Samuel ends with “Just because they didn’t go to your fancy schools doesn’t mean what they saw didn’t really happen”. And by the way who is this wacky Samuel Aughey of the obvious “tinfoil hat” beaver brigade?

Samuel Aughey Jr. was a minister and naturalist/ geologist in Nebraska and Wyoming from 1864 until 1886. He graduated from Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) in 1856 and then attended seminary there. Aughey came to Dakota City, Nebraska, in 1864 as a “home missionary” for the Lutheran Church. After resigning this position in 1867, he worked for the Dakota County government from 1866 until 1869 as superintendent of public instruction and county surveyor. He was named the first professor of natural science at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1871.

Well okay, professor of natural science, superintendent of schools and county surveyor. But still we’re talking Nebraska and anyone that could read would be called a scholar there, right? Here’s a partial list of is publications:

Which all goes to leave me scratching my head in wonderment. Surely when there were millions more beavers they might have worked together differently. But did they use their tails differently? Samuel thinks that some beavers have better ideas than others. Not just any beaver could do it. Go read the whole letter to the editor here and puzzle for yourself if it could possibly be true.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act I: Scene 5

Another Origin Story…

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, Who's saving beavers now? November 19, 2016

I am hard at work on the newsletter for our tenth anniversary, and I spent most of yesterday writing the origin story of Worth A Dam. As nothing else seems to be happening in the beaver world at the moment, I thought you might enjoy it.

It was certainly unusual to have beavers in the middle of town, as our city suddenly did in 2007. Maybe if nothing else had happened that’s all it would have been; a passing interest that eventually – passed. But when the city announced that flat-tailed residents would have to be eliminated people started talking: to their neighbors, to each other, to their representatives, and to the media.

Eventually the city was forced to hold a meeting to discuss the beavers’ fate. There were too many people interested to fit into city hall and the forum was moved to the High School Auditorium. Some 200 people showed up – coming from uptown, downtown, and out-of-town. There were representatives from the Sierra Club, the Human Society, local news and a documentary filmmaker. The vast majority overwhelmingly demanded that the city solve the flooding risk without harming the beavers.

Faced with such vocal public support, the city council agreed to form a subcommittee to study the issue further. I was thrilled to be invited aboard the task force which consisted of council members, creek professionals, beaver supporters and concerned property owners. We had 90 days to address the pros and cons of possibly living with beavers in an urban stream. We quickly recommended hiring Skip Lisle to install a flow device that would prevent possible flooding.

The success of that first big meeting originally left me with euphoric hopes for a positive outcome. I was surprised to learn that even after we succeeded in persuading the city to hire Skip and even though his device worked entirely as promised, there was still uncertainty about the beavers fate. Addressing the real (and imagined) concerns in the subcommittee soon made me realize that the fight was a long way from over. It was Skip Lisle who initially suggested that a nonprofit might be necessary to advocate for the beavers and direct funding over time. After watching the acrimony of those meetings even after flooding was averted with his help, I could see he was right.

In choosing a name for the organization I remember thinking that the struggle was too bitter for something benign like “Friends of Martinez Beavers” or “Wildlife Protectors”. It seemed the name needed to be something snappy with a little feisty backbone to get us thru the long struggle that lie ahead.

Thus “Worth A Dam” was born.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Beaver in a camel suit!

heidi08 History October 18, 2016

Zenas Leonard is best known for his eye-witness account of the Walker expedition (which was the first westward pass) over the Sierras. The account was serialized in his home town paper in PA the Clearfield Republican when he got back and published in book form in 1839. Despite dying before his 50th birthday, Zenas did alright for himself. His account has been republished several times since and is readable online in several places. His writing is concise, frank, and gives a richly detailed account of a pivotal moment in American History. In fact, the original printed first edition sold last year at auction in San Francisco for a cool 125,000.

Yesterday I had the very fun fortune to come across this: First some context, the troop of 58 men is starving at the Nevada foot of the Sierras trying to find a way over in very deep snow, and sent a hunting party to look for anything they could find to eat. (Although not cactus, because unlike the natives, mountain men were strictly Paleo in their diet). The narrative writes that the unsuccessful hunters came back only with a “colt and a CAMEL“.

The footnotes are from a later reprinting explaining that the great California Camel experiment didn’t occur until some 20 years later, so Leonard must have gotten it wrong since camels are in Africa and not California.

Which leaves a bit of a mystery with something like three possible solutions.

Zenas was wrong and it was some other animal that he didn’t recognize.
Zenas was right but his manuscript was illegible in places and the word is some related other word that makes more sense – like ‘cattle’ or ‘ram’
There really was a camel in Nevada in 1832 because it got left behind or lost from some forgotten expedition.

Robin of Napa and I had a fun chat about what it might have been and she suggested maybe a llama that had straggled behind. And, honestly if the potato could make it here from Peru, why not a llama?

Rickipedia’s more serious answer thinks its explanation #1. He believes the animal was a pronghorn.

I would wager the “camel” was our pronghorn Antilocapra americana. They had nothing like it in Europe or the eastern US. They knew deer and they knew elk (which they call red deer in Europe) but not pronghorn. It is commonly called antelope, although incorrectly, because of pronghorn’s vague resemblance to African antelopes.

Well, I am almost always prepared to trust Rick’s instinct but a camel with horns? Even female pronghorn have horns so it must have had them. Of course not every 19th century illustration of a species actually looks like the animal in question. We all know that right?

Here’s some personal history that migt be relevant: Jon and I had the odd fortune of actually riding camels to a monastery in Egypt many years ago, I can testify that they are fairly LARGE and unmistakable – intimidating even without the horns. I can’t imagine there was ever one lost in Nevada. But then, we’ve never ridden pronghorn.

Confluence

heidi08 History, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 14, 2016

I knew Joseph R. Walker was a mountain man who happened to be buried in Martinez. I wrote about him years ago when we were working on the historic prevalence papers. I believe I referred to this picture as a “Dreamy Mona Lisa with a beard.” Ha! But I never realized before how very important he was to the eventual settlement of California. It’s not a stretch to say we might not even be here if it wasn’t for him.

He was the first white man to cross the Humbolt Sink in Nevada. The first to find a pass over the Sierras. The first white man to stand in Yosemite. And although he is fairly forgotten by history, he was considered the greatest of fur trappers in his day.

THE GREATEST.

He was a big man, 6 feet 2 and 220 lbs – but a thoughtful, unboastful, determined man who was said to never drink more than a toast. He was fair and cautious in his treatment of natives, but brutal if he felt they wronged him. While he never earned the fame of Bonneville (Who got Washington Irving to write his memoirs) or Fremont (who is famed for naming Tahoe) he was regarded as a remarkable leader of men and encouraged the most loyal regard by those who served him. The saying was that he only lost a single man in all his travels and that man had been attacked by a grizzly bear, not an indian.

Given our current political fray I found this quote about Fremont, attributed to Walker, amusing.

“Frémont, morally and physically, was the most complete coward I ever knew. I would call him a woman, if it were not casting an unmerited reproach on the sex.”

Yikes! That’s kind of respectable and catty at the same time. (Kind of like those leaked emails of Colin Powell.) Fremont was a complicated character in his own right, with his notable achievements including taking over as Governor of California, getting court marshaled for insubordination, being one of the new states first senators, and eventually running for president on an antislavery platform for the GOP.

Different story. Different day.

Back to our hero, I guess compared to Walker lots of men were short on courage. He was just 34 when Bonneville retained him to do a reconnaissance mission in ‘Alta California’ – which is what the Mexicans who were in charge of it called the territory. Since they were asking him to spy on another country Bonneville got him a Mexican passport before sending him out the door. Walker’s disguise was a fur trapper so he hired 60 grizzled others to look the part. They traveled down the Green River in Utah to the Humbolt in Nevada to the edge of the Sierras. They had been assured they would find the “Bonaventura” which was supposed to flow from Utah to the Pacific. Guess how true that turned out to be? Unfortunately it was already November by the time they started their ascent of the Sierras and conditions quickly went from bad to miserable.

Here’s how a nice article in the Half Moon Bay Review recently described it

Growing short of food for themselves and feed for their animals, they moved ahead. What followed as they made their assault on the mountains is a truly California story. Their animals began to starve. The air was thin. Their wool and fur-lined clothing was little match for the snow and freezing wet cold. Most of all, the unknown way forward became a brew of uncertainty and fear, even for these seasoned men.

Walker needed to use both reason and inspiration. As they neared the highest ridges in mid-November they were also approaching the very edge of their ability to survive. They began eating their horses. There was talk of mutiny and retreat. They began to wonder whether they were more likely to survive by going forward or by retracing their steps in retreat.

The part about eating their horses stuck in my craw the first time I read this. I guess because they theoretically were there to hunt beavers which they were just tossing away after they skinned them. Apparently during dire times mountain men were known to eat horses, mules, dogs, and their native guides – not to mention sucking what little nutrients they could glean from their beaver skins, leather fringes or moccasins. Apparently they were on the original Paleo diet, gorging on barely cooked meat and fat when it was available and not eating much of anything else.

Suffice it to say our noble captain lead his men through an eventual pass and they left the snow to camp under the really big trees of Yosemite. He eventually discovered “Walker Pass” and opened all California for discovery. After Joseph and his friends had trapped out beaver they rented themselves as guides to the pioneers heading west.

He lived to the remarkable age of 80 and eventually went to live with his nephew on a ranch on Mount Diablo.

And so it came to pass that the most famed beaver trapper of his day was buried in the town of the most famous beavers in the nation which happened to be the home town of the most famous conservationist ever and where he was visited by the author of the most famous beaver book ever.

Because … castor coincidence.

Belated note. RIP to early Martinez Beaver supporter Paul L. Wilson who died peacefully and with family yesterday. Paul was the city watchdog and always ready to make sure they did the right thing. You will be missed.

Take me to the Faire!

heidi08 History, What's killing beavers now? October 12, 2016

The Renaissance faire was always a fun place to visit, I especially loved the old one in Novato before it moved. I loved the costumes and the ‘reduced shakespeare company’. Jon loved the beer. I remember one particularly clever vendor claimed that his “Oysters were guaranteed to work“. And one equally clever dissatisfied customer came back angrily saying “He had purchased two, and only one of them worked.” HA! ” The renaissance faire for visitors was the sometimes joyful sometimes awkward playdate of summer.

But for my acquaintances that worked it – it was more of a way of life. I remember one classmate who would work on stitching her bodice in Algebra class. For a month or two out of each year ‘Rennies’ would literally live in character, speak in character, dress in character, do some drugs in character, and have sex in character. Sometimes they had more deeply vivid lives in character than they had without them. Lets call it the seedy underbelly of faire life.

And lets just be thankful they weren’t working the Rendezvous circuit.

Event teaches crafts, history

Once again, the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge is a window to the past with the 23rd annual Mountain Man Rendezvous.

History enthusiasts set up camp at the refuge like 19th-century trappers and traders and gave presentations Friday to students about various historical topics, from blacksmithing to trapping. The rendezvous will continue today and Sunday, so visitors can learn more about the past.

Gordon “Talking Bear” Welch from Wichita has attended the rendezvous off and on for 15 years. On Friday, he spoke to schoolchildren about the life of a trapper.

“I give trap demonstrations, show them how beavers were skinned and turned into hats,” he said. “A lot of people ask if the traps would cut off a beaver’s foot. I say that’s the last thing a mountain man wants, because then the beaver can just swim away.”

Well isn’t that precious. Teaching children how hundreds of millions of beavers were slaughtered. I can’t think of anything more inspiring. Of course if the trap cut off both their feet they couldn’t ‘swim away’ could they? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many survivalists in the mix who expect the wild west to come back any day now.

“I think it’s best to know how to do things the old-fashioned way, just in case,” he said.

Minix said there’s value in learning old crafts, especially in troubled times. If a situation arises where people are cut off from modern technology and amenities, these old skills could be very useful.

Anyone wanna guess the number of firearms these men own? Me either. I’m pretty sure the actual rendezvous were no place to ever bring a decent human being let alone a child. There must have been shooting, stealing, boasting, swearing and all kinds of whoring.

Kind of like a Trump Rally really.

My ecosystem poster got a fair amount of attention yesterday. Fur-bearer Defenders wants to re-release it with legit images and co credit Worth A Dam. Environmental writer Mary Ellen Hannibel reposted it yesterday on facebook and I’m hopeful an artist friend of hers will take it under their creative wing soon.

It’s nice when crime pays, isn’t it? 🙂