Press Democrat 1884

When beaver are taken at an early age they are very easily domesticated, and are so esteemed as pets iv the Far West and fur countries that almost every tradingpost or camp can exhibit three or four. It is no uncommon occurrence to see one running about an Indian lodge, submitting patiently to the wiles and caprices of the little savages, or joining in their sports, and frequently receiving with the papoose the nourishment from the maternal breast. The cry of the “kitten,” too, is so exactly like that of an unweaned child that one is readily mistaken for the other by even the initiated.

On one occasion this writer visited a wigwam at Little Traverse,Mich., for the purpose of viewing a “real, live baby beaver.” “He cry all same as papoose,” remarked the squaw, as she brought the little follow forward, at the same time giving him an unmerciful pinch that caused him to set up a doleful little wail that, had he not been forewarned, he should certainly have believed to proceed from a minute, black-eyed specimen of an aboriginal infant that, swathed in cloth,beads and bark, and bound fast, mummylike, to a board, stood leaned up against the wall.

[Popular Science Monthly.]