Aboriginal America Page 6

  The beavers were once very numerous throughout the whole northern portion of the territory now occupied by the United States. In all the settled parts of the country, however, they have nearly or entirely disappeared; and so valuable are their skins, and so closely do the hunters and trappers follow up the work of taking them, that it will not be many years, if the present state of things continues, before the whole race will be completely exterminated.

  Other Fur-Bearing Animals

  Besides the beaver, there are a great many other fur-bearing animals, such as the mink, the otter, the sable, and others that live on the banks of ponds and streams in America, and, like the beaver, seek their principal food in the water. There are none of them, however, that build either dams or habitations. Perhaps this is because they are smaller, and can more easily find space enough under the ice for their fishing and foraging excursions, without resorting to artificial means to keep up the water, and can also more easily find or make holes in the ground sufficient to furnish them a safe retreat from the cold, and a refuge from the hostility of their enemies.

  These animals all produce fine and valuable furs, and are caught every winter by the trappers and hunters in great numbers, especially in that wide region of cold and desolate country which extends northward from the American frontier toward the pole, and which would be almost valueless to men, except for these productions.

  Curious Phenomenon

  There is one thing very curious about this class of animals that get their living in a great measure under water, and are consequently obliged to be often submerged, even in the coldest winter weather, and that is, that their fur becomes very little wet by such immersion. A dog, after plunging into a river, comes out wet to the skin, but the fur of a beaver or a mink, on account probably of some oleaginous substance with which it is dressed, does not allow the water to penetrate, so that, after swimming across a stream, or burrowing among roots at the bottom of a pond, the animal seeks the bank again, and comes out with only the outer surface wet, the skin beneath being as dry as when he went in. Thus, when swimming in the coldest water he is never cold.

  The Buffalo

  The buffalo, or bison, is a sort of wild bull, with a monstrous shaggy head and ferocious aspect. They are gregarious animals, that is, they live and feed together in immense herds. Almost all animals that feed on grass and herbage are gregarious, while beasts of prey are generally solitary in their habits. It is necessary for them to be so, for in order to succeed in their hunting, they must prowl about alone, or watch in ambush, patiently and in silence, for their prey. There are some exceptions, as in the case of wolves, for example, which usually hunt together in packs. There is a reason for this exception, too, for the wolves live generally by killing and devouring animals larger than themselves. and so are obliged to combine their strength in order to overpower their prey.

  The buffalos are gregarious by habit in order that they may the better defend themselves from their enemies; and so abundant is the food furnished for them by the luxuriant grass of the prairies, and so boundless is the extent of the plains over which they roam, that the herds increase to an almost incredible extent. Travelers sometimes find the whole region black with them in every direction as far as they can see. In one case that is described, the country was covered with a herd, or an aggregation of herds, so vast that the party journeying were six days in passing through them. The aspect which they presented with five, ten, and sometimes twenty thousand in sight at a time, spreading in every direction over the plains, some bellowing, some fighting, others advancing defiantly toward their supposed foes, and tearing up the soil with their hoofs and horns - the earth trembling under their tramp, and the air filled with a prolonged and portentous murmur, presented to the view of the traveler a really appalling spectacle. the bellowing of a large herd is sometimes heard at a distance of two miles!

  Annual Migration

  Of course the frosts and snows coming down from the Arctic regions in winter bind up and cover large tracts of land which in summer are clothed with luxuriant herbage. The grazing animals, accordingly, move southward to great distances as the season changes. These migrations, in respect to the numbers and the sold mass of the moving columns, surpass in grandeur all other spectacles that the animal kingdom affords.

  Swimming the Streams

  The country being intersected by rivers and streams in every part, as shown by the map, would seem to interpose great difficulties in the way of the passage of the animals to and fro. The difficulties are great, but they are not insurmountable. The herd, on approaching a river, if it is fordable, descend the bank in a massive column, and wade or swim across. If the descent of the bank is not already gradual, it soon becomes so by the trampling of so many heavy hoofs, the most daring, of course, impelled partly by their courage and partly by the pressure from behind, going down first and breaking the way.

  If there are calves in the herd, and the bank remains so steep that they dare not go down, their mothers always wait with them upon the margin, in great apparent distress, and make every effort to encourage them to go down. Sometimes it is said that the calves contrive to get upon the backs of the cows, and are conveyed in that way across the stream.

  It not unfrequently happens that the landing proves not to be good when the animals arrive on the further side, so that instead of a hard beach by which to ascend to the level of the plain, they find themselves sinking into quicksands or mire. The scene which is witnessed in a case like this presents sometimes, it is said, an aspect almost awful. The older and stronger beasts are perhaps able, after long-continued and desperate struggles, in which they trample down and climb over the others in their excitement and terror, to regain their footing and clamber up the bank; but often many are unable to extricate themselves, and perish miserably - their bodies being borne away by the current down the stream.

  Crossing on the Ice

  The case is still worse sometimes when the river is frozen, and the herd is consequently compelled to cross upon the ice. The animals have no means of judging of the strength of the ice except by taking the opinion of the leaders, who go down cautiously, and step in a timid, hesitating manner upon the margin of it, and then it if gives no sign of weakness under the weight of a single tread, they conclude it to be strong and proceed. But it may be strong enough to bear one, while far too weak to sustain the weight of a hundred.

  Still the whole herd follow on, and perhaps when the head of the column has advance toward the middle of the stream, some cracking sound or other token of weakness gives the alarm. The leaders stop, the others press on, the ice becomes immensely overloaded, and presently goes down with a great crash, carrying hundreds into the water. Then ensues a scene of struggling and commotion and terror impossible to describe. Animals of every age and size are writhing and plunging in the water, vainly trying to climb up upon cakes of ice, or to force their way through the floating fragments to the shore - bellowing all the time with terror. Some at last gain the bank, but others are swept away in great numbers beneath the unbroken ice below and drowned.

  Trails

  In making their journeys the buffalos move in columns, those behind keeping in the track of those before, and in this way they make trails which soon become well worn; and being pretty wide, on account of the columns being formed with several animals abreast, they look like wagon roads. These roads extend, in some places, for hundreds of miles across the country. When they are once made they followed year after year by successive herds. In this respect the habits of the buffalo correspond with those of domestic cows in the pastures of New England, who lay out paths on the hill sides and in the woods, and continue to use them, when they are once worn, for many years.

  Use of the Buffalo

  The buffalo, as may readily be supposed, was a great resource to the Indians. His flesh furnished him with an abundant supply of excellent food. His skin served for cloth , and, when cut into thongs, for cords. His horns were made into vessels and implemen
ts of various kinds. Some tribes also made boats of his hide by stretching the hide, when green, over a frame made of a suitable form for the purpose intended. This, of course, was a very clumsy sort of craft, but being made without any seam, was perfectly water-tight and very serviceable.

  The Buffalo-Skin Boat

  The buffalo has many enemies, but the greatest of all is civilized man. So long as the vast herds were attacked only by bears, packs of wolves, and Indians armed simply with spears and arrows, they were able to hold their ground. The bulls of the herd, with their prodigious strength, and the formidable weapons with which natures has provided them in their horns, would maintain terrible conflicts with any of these foes, and would often come off victorious from the fight. but when the white man came, mounted upon a horse and armed with a rifle, no choice was left to him but to abandon the field; and in proportion as the tide of emigration moves onward toward the west, the buffalo retires before it, and will probably in time entirely disappear.

  The frontiers, however, of his old dominion are drawn in very slowly and reluctantly, so that even the steamboat sometimes overtakes him. Cases have occurred in which steamboats, in feeling g their way up some of the western branches of the Mississippi and Missouri, have come upon a herd of buffalos crossing the stream, and the poor beasts, in the midst of their amazement at the spectacle, have been shot by the rifles of the passengers from the deck.

  There is one case mentioned in which a steamboat passed so near a buffalo swimming in the water that a passenger on board, who had learned the use of the lasso in South America, threw a rope, with a slip noose at the end, through the air and caught him by the horns. Note: See frontispiece The crew then pulled the poor beast alongside of the steamer, and, getting slings under him, hoisted him on board and butchered him for his beef.

  The Turkey

  The turkey is one of the most valuable gifts made by the new world to the old. Until after the discovery of America no such animals was ever known in Europe, Asia, or Africa, though the forests and prairies of America were filled everywhere with flocks of these birds. The turkeys were accustomed to migrate to and fro from north to south, according as the food they lived upon was in season. In these journeys they marched on foot as long as they could keep the ground, only using their wings when there was a river to cross, or some other obstacle to be surmounted.

  When they came to a river they used to pause long upon its bank before venturing to attempt the passage. They sometimes remained so for two or three days, during which time the old males would walk to and fro, strutting and gobbling with the greatest self importance, and with the air of being engaged in a deliberation of the utmost consequence to all the world. At length, as it seemed, they would succeed in raising their courage to the proper point, and they would proceed to climb up to the topmost branches of the tallest trees growing near the river. There they would select their positions, and after a great deal more gobbling and strutting and innumerable false starts, they would commence their flight. The oldest and strongest birds would succeed in flying across the river before coming down to the ground, but the younger and feebler ones, especially if the river was wide, would fall into the water at a greater or less distance from the bank.

  Then would follow a scene of floundering, scrambling and swimming, astonishing to behold, the result of which would be that the greater proportion of the flock would at last reach the land, though may of them would be carried by the force of the current far down the stream.

  The value of the flesh of the turkey for food was soon made known to Europeans, and the bird is now domesticated, and has become very abundant, in almost every part of the world.

  The Alligator

  An alligator is an immense reptile of the lizard kind, which haunts the inlets, rivers, swamps and lagoons of the southern States in great numbers. When full grown it is a very terrible animal, on account of its great size and strength. It is sometimes fifteen or twenty feet long. it crawls slowly on the land, but it can move through the water with great speed. Its body is covered with horny scales, which form a coat of mail that is proof against a musket ball. It is only near the head and shoulders that the skin can be penetrated by even a rifle bullet.

  Of course the alligator is a very formidable animal, the more so from his having an immense mouth, which is armed with rows of teeth of terrible aspect. Generally, however, he is pretty quiet in his disposition, and is often seen lying harmless, basking in the sun, on the shores of his lagoon, or crawling slowly along through the canes and flags that grow out of the slime. But sometimes, for example at certain seasons of the year, or when he is hungry, or has been in any way irritated or disturbed, he is very ferocious, and in such a case he becomes a dangerous as well as an ugly enemy.

  The alligator, like most other reptiles, is very prolific. Indeed, one great function that the animal seems destined to fulfill in the economy of nature is that of producing eggs and rearing young, to be consumed as food by birds of prey. Only a small portion of its progeny survives the dangers which thus beset the period of their infancy.

  The mothers make their nests in quite an artificial manner. They are built upon the ground, on the banks of lazy streams, or in the cane-brakes or marshes, and are of the form of great shallow cups, three or four feet in diameter. They are built of mud and grass, and a great many are usually constructed together, so as to form quite a village.

  In these nests the northern alligator lays a great number of eggs, which she packs in mud, in several successive layers, one above the other, in the most singular manner. First she covers the floor of her nest with a sort of mortar which she spreads over it, made of mud and slime, and upon this lays one layer of eggs. This layer, when complete, she covers with another stratum of mortar, and over this lays another tier of eggs. The eggs have hard shells, and are somewhat larger than hen's eggs, and the monster lays so many of them as to build up her nest sometimes four or five feet high with these alternate layers.

  When this work is finished the eggs are left to be hatched by the warmth of the sun, through the mother remains by them to guard them from the attacks of the pilferers that are always at hand in great numbers to steal and devour them. It has been said that in thus guarding these deposits the alligators in some sense make common cause, so that when one of the mothers has gone away to seek food, the others who remain watch over and protect her nest, and it is with some instinctive idea of this advantage that they adopt the plan of building their nests together.

  There are sometimes not less than a hundred and fifty or two hundred eggs in a single nest. Of these, however, but a portion are hatched, and still fewer of the young arrive at maturity. The young that are hatched are watched and defended by their mothers with great care, but they are exceedingly tender and helpless, and great numbers of them are seized and devoured by beasts and birds of prey.

  The greatest enemy of the alligator, however, is man. In gradually advancing the settlement of the countries in which they live, he intrudes more and more upon their haunts, and as their size is too great to allow them, like other reptiles, to secrete themselves from their pursuers, their numbers are all the time continually diminishing, and it is not improbable that before many years they may entirely disappear. The crocodile of the Nile is an animal of the same general character with the alligator, but is of an altogether different species.

  The Eagle

  America is celebrated for its eagles. Indeed, one of the species, the bald eagle, so called, has been selected as the emblem of the national power. The eagles are all birds of prey, and they are remarkable for their size and the strength of their pinions. They seek their habitations on the summit of the various mountain ranges and on lofty cliffs overhanging the sea. From these elevated positions they survey vast regions of the air and watch for their prey. For this purpose they are endowed with powers of vision of almost incredible acuteness.

  The eagle has always been held in high estimation by the American Indians, and his plumage has been p
rized more than that of any other bird for the dress and the decorations of warriors. This high estimation is derived partly from the warlike courage and propensities of the bird itself, and partly probably from the difficulty of taking him. Thus, eagles' feathers attached to a head-dress of a native chief, or ornamenting the shaft of a spear, were not only emblems of courage and strength proper to signalize the martial spirit of the wearer as a warrior, but they were also trophies of the daring and skill which he displayed as a huntsman, in scaling the lofty heights where alone they were to be procured.

  The eagle is very long-lived. Some specimens have been known to live from eighty to a hundred years.

  cochineal

  The forests of America produce a great many different woods which have been used extensively in dyeing, and for other similar purposes in the arts, but the most important pigment that has been derived from the productions of this country is cochineal.

  The cochineal is an insect. It is of the form of a little bug. It is a native of Mexico. It feeds upon certain species of cactus. Immense numbers of these plants are cultivated in Mexico and Peru, for the sake of the insects that feed upon them. The work of collecting these insects, which is very slow and tedious, is performed by women, who go about among the cactus plants and brush the bugs off into a basket with a little brush made of the tail of a squirrel, or of some other animal.

  The insects, when collected, are killed by being thrown into boiling water, and then are carefully dried by being placed in ovens, or exposed to the sun. The article is then ready for market.

  The cochineal insect produces a beautiful crimson dye, though a scarlet color can be obtained from it by a certain mode of using it. It is an article of very great value. Several millions of dollars' worth are annually exported from South America, and it is so precious that it is regarded in the markets of the world almost in the light of gold. Indeed it sometimes fulfills the functions of gold by being used for remittances and for making payments.