Beaver Competition

This weekend I embarked on some historic sniffing to help our wikipedia friend in his effort to document the presence of beavers in the South Bay. Knowing the history is an important defense for the argument that “beavers don’t belong here so kill them”. Most have heard of the reference for Captain Sutter bringing 1500 pelts to the San Jose mission, but the question remains whether they were taken from local beavers or are “imports”.

So it’s a matter of following up with who trapped where and what they found, and its a lot more exciting than you might think, although sometimes I am pushed into reading something I really should leave to others with harder hearts. This is what I found this weekend, trailing facts about the Fur desert, the Hudson Bay Company and the use of native peoples as trappers.

Ice chisels on long poles. Shades of Basic Instinct come to mind. Except times a billion. First drain their pond, then lock them in their homes. Can you imagine someone nailing poles to trap our beavers in their lodge and hacking them to death with an ice chisel? I’m still shuddering. Hmm well I’m sure some would have imagined it if they had known that was how its done.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes. The article goes on to describe the slow progress of beaver genocide even after the arrival of the steel trap in the 1750’s. Apparently no one could figure out what to bait them with. A tasty willow leaf just wasn’t cutting it, and they didn’t seem interested in fish. (No kidding!) By accident it was discovered that they went crazy for the smell of castoreum, (oil from their scent glands) which was easy enough to get from the beaver you caught yesterday. By 1818 most natives were trapping beaver with steel traps they bought from trappers and baited with Castoreum.

Game. Set. Match.

Gosh. It really IS like basic instinct. Using your own sexuality against you. Luring you in with the promise of a good time and then hacking you to pieces. So when beavers tried to procreate and identify their family members they were killed. Although the slaughter taught them to adapt to a nocturnal life and start building sneaky bank lodges instead of obvious island lodges, evolution couldn’t possibly eliminate THAT instinct. Charming.

And this is why I should dedicate my spare time to connecting with supporters and potential supporters, and stop reading historical snuff films. Note to self.

Wagers of the most sinister wars have long practiced a policy designed to not only kill the enemy, but to keep them from ever recovering use of their land. Romans are famously accused of “salting” the earth with a plow after demolishing Carthage, with the idea that nothing would grow in their soil again. Traitors in Portugal were punished by having their lands salted so that even their ancestors would suffer the consequences. Yesterday I was starkly reminded of this act of destroying not only what exists but all future investments as well, in a discussion about the “Fur Desert”.

Allow me to explain.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that at the Flyway Festival I started a conversation with a hydrologist from USDA about an archeologist who had discovered an ancient beaver dam near feather river and had it carbon-dated at 750 years old. Since the dam was at 5000 feet, it would challenge the long-held false belief that beavers weren’t native over 1000 feet in california, which is used to justify their killing in places like Tahoe. The archeologist wanted a coauthor, and Michael Pollack and our wikipedia friend were interested in helping out.

Yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with the Archeologist, who, among other things, pointed my attention to the “Fur Desert” policy of the Hudson Bay Company in the early 1800’s. It is alarming to me that I never read about it before. George Simpson, then the head of the HBC, developed the ruthless plan of “ruining the river” so that when American Trappers came looking for beaver they would find only a barren watershed, give up, and go away.

Simpson and a handful of equally ruthless men trapped-out the entire snake river and beyond.

George Simpson wrote in an 1824 journal entry: “If properly managed no question exists that it would yield handsome profits as we have convincing proof that the country is a rich preserve of Beaver and which for political reasons we should endeavor to destroy as fast as possible.”

Stunning. Simpson was a piece of work. Maintained corporate profits by cutting jobs and wages, and employed some of the most hardened men around, including Peter Skene Ogden , a once-rival trapper who was convicted of killing a native by “butchering him in the most cruel manner”. So every beaver within 100 miles of the Snake River was trapped, and then every beaver on the Columbia River was trapped, and every beaver…well you get the idea. We love the land and don’t want any one to come steal it, so we’re going to destroy it.

The Fur Desert is an apt name for the resource-less land HBC tried to leave behind. But it was more ironic than they understood at the time. When all those beaver were killed and all those dams eroded and lost, whole eastern regions lost the ability to maintain water throughout the dry summer months. Creek and river banks became steeper and water flowed faster on its way to the sea. Areas that were green and lush became barren and dry and trees that once lined fertile river banks disappeared.

This was the real “fur desert”. And it is still with us today.