With the seemingly unrelenting grimness of the news lately, it was nice to run across a story from a couple decades ago that gave me, at least, a bit of comic relief.
While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon a newspaper clipping (remember those?), and when I saw it, I remembered being amused when the story hit way back then—which is like two centuries in Internet age.
What happened was the U.S. Park Service had geared up and was hot on the trail of vandals who had severely damaged some of those prized cherry trees on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Come to find out, though, the “vandals” were furry critters with flat tails, great big teeth, and healthy appetites—beavers.
It’s not too surprising, I suppose, that park rangers in Washington, D.C., one of the most heavily urbanized areas in the nation, were at first surprised to find beavers munching happily away on the capital’s prized cherry trees.
We’re not nearly as heavily urbanized here in northeast Oswego Township as they are in Washington, D.C., but we’re not exactly out in the boonies, either—the population’s fairly dense around these parts. But beavers, like raccoons, coyotes, squirrels, deer, skunks, and a host of other wild animals don’t mind living amongst us humans.
The Fox River Trail at Violet Patch Park along the Fox River just north of Oswego.
In fact, many of those animals thrive thanks to humans. The population of whitetail deer, for instance, has exploded in recent years, and there are now far more of them bounding about the countryside here in the Fox Valley than 200 years ago. During my childhood back in the mists of history, there were none around here at all.
We’ve had our beaver problems, too, here in the Fox Valley, just like in D.C. Beavers like young trees best—like the ones park and forest preserve districts favor planting—and have been known to mow down dozens of succulent saplings in a single night. The Oswegoland Park District found that out to its dismay back 2002 when they landscaped the stretch of the Fox River Trail between Oswego and Montgomery. In a single night, beavers gnawed off dozens of brand new trees that still had their root balls bagged in burlap as they awaited planting. Those of us living along the Fox River’s banks know it’s best to armor plate fruit and most other young trees, or the local resident beaver will chop it down in no time.
It wasn’t all that many years ago that beaver were virtually non-existent here in the Fox Valley. The beaver population, along with muskrats, mink, and other fur-bearing animals had been wiped out nearly 200 years ago in the waning days of the fur trade. And given the area’s quick conversion to farm fields from the native prairies between the late 1830s and early 1850s, the habitat changed far too quickly for wild animals to adapt. And then, as if that wasn’t enough ecological stress, the Fox River was so polluted by industrial and human waste from the late 19th through the mid 20th centuries that most wild animals couldn’t live in it. Mercury, cyanide and other heavy metals poison beavers just as surely as people.
Fox River beavers don’t build traditional lodges, but instead burrow into the riverbank to create their homes.
By the time the first settlers arrived in Kendall County in the late 1820s, most of the prime fur-bearers had already been trapped or hunted to local extinction by the Native Americans who lived here during the fur trade era. The fur trade was, in large part, what drove the westward expansion of the European colonizing nations. French, Dutch, and British traders pushed ever farther west in a vigorous and ruthless quest for more and higher quality furs.
The beaver population in eastern Canada and in the area east of the Appalachians had been largely trapped out as early as the late 1600s, so the only option was to seek furs farther west. The French had penetrated all the way to Lake Superior by the early 1600s, although they were stopped from moving into the southern Great Lakes by the Iroquois Confederacy, which hated the French and their allies. Meanwhile, British traders, primarily Scots and Irish adventurers, penetrated the Appalachian chain of mountains and dealt with western tribes for furs.
This frantic economic exploitation of natural resources was not peaceful, of course, The Iroquois Confederacy attempted to corner the fur market in the late 1600s, raiding west in large numbers from their homeland in upper New York. The conflicts of the era historians call the Beaver Wars resulted in the extermination of some tribes and forced the displacement of many others.
In addition, the Dutch, French, and British all fought wars over the fur trade, each with their own set of Native American allies, until the British emerged victorious in 1765 following the Seven Years War. But their triumph was only fleeting; their North American colonies south of Canada successfully rebelled forming the United States.
Even so, the fur trade and its resulting competition continued.
At its height, the bison population east of the Mississippi River stood at between 2 and 4 million animals. Bison are gradually being reintroduced back into Illinois at various state and national wildlife areas. This photo was taken at the Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands near Franklin Grove here in Illinois.
The trade had major effects on the Midwest. Most fur-bearing animals were driven to regional extinction, as were most of the larger game animals like the whitetail deer mentioned above, which were prized for their tanned hides. Other casualties were the Eastern Elk and the Eastern Bison. Both large animals breed slowly and the introduction of firearms into the area starting in the late 1600s had a major impact on their populations. It was about that time the Eastern Bison herds reached their largest populations, but then the subsistence hunting of Native People changed to market hunting for the fur trade. Thousands of the large animals were killed for their hides. According to R. Bruce McMillan writing in Records of Early Bison in Illinois (Illinois State Museum, 2006), a bison tannery established on the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Ohio River shipped between 12,000 and 15,000 bison hides down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1702 alone. Heavy hunting pressure combined with a series of harsh winters put severe pressure on both the region’s bison and elk populations. The last Illinois bison was killed in 1808.
After the Revolution, two major companies, the North West Company and the XY Company, dominated the Great Lakes fur trade until 1808. That year, a German immigrant, John Jacob Astor, established the American Fur Company, and began a spirited competition with the established companies, including the Hudson Bay Company.
Surviving the upheaval of the War of 1812, Astor gradually consolidated his efforts in the upper Midwest, moving the administrative headquarters of that part of the operation to Mackinac Island in the strait between lakes Huron and Michigan. Each year, brigades of boats and canoes left Mackinac Island and headed into the interior to gather furs from the Native Americans and trappers of European descent who had harvested them during the winter months. The cold winters of the upper Midwest caused beaver and other fur bearing animals to grow thick, lustrous pelts. In fact, the prime winter beaver pelt was the de facto currency in the area before settlement.
The fur trade first depended on large birch bark canoes, but switched to Mackinac boats in the 19th Century, especially in the areas south of the range of birch trees.
Fleets of the double-ended, sturdily built Mackinac boats favored for the trade were rowed and sailed down the western shore of Lake Michigan to Chicago and up the Chicago River to the portage into the DesPlaines, provided there was enough water in it. The route was then down the DesPlaines to the confluence with the Kankakee. On this part of the route, it was not uncommon for the boats and the goods they carried to be hauled overland by wagon some 60 miles to the confluence with the Kankakee.
The Fox and DuPage rivers were seldom used to transport furs or trade goods because both were too shallow. Instead, goods were unloaded at depots along the Illinois River. Furs were transported to the depots by the Indian and white trappers, where they were exchanged for goods. In addition, traders working for the American Fur Company used packhorses to transport trade goods and furs along regular routes. Before he settled down in Kendall County, Vetal Vermet, an early resident, had been an American Fur Company trader who worked a regular route from Peoria to Detroit, passing through the area as he gathered Fox River-produced furs.
In 1834, Astor, correctly figuring the furs were about tapped out in the upper Midwest, sold the American Fur Company, instantly making him one of the richest men in the country. The company’s Midwestern operations were shut down soon after, although the firm itself lingered until 1864, with its operations moving steadily westward as the era of the French voyageurs gave way to that of the mountain men who harvested Rocky Mountain furs.
Today, many of the fur-bearers that made fortunes for some during the fur trade era are on their way back from local extinction, including the bison and, much to the dismay of cherry tree guards in Washington, D.C., those hungry beavers.
Many of us believe the era when Illinois really was “The Prairie State” is impossibly remote and bucolic. But the farmers who came to northern Illinois in the late 1820s and early 1830s were practical, scientific, literate and above all, hard working.
historyonthefox 