the medieval bestiaries that preceded his text, the veracity of these accounts of beaverly bargaining was less important than their allegorical value. By casting away its own glands, the beaver set an example for humans “to give our pursse to theeves, rather then our lives, and by our wealth to redeeme our danger.”70
The seventeenth-century chroniclers of New England combined the colonial booster’s interest in furs as an exportable commodity with a new appreciation for the beaver’s engineering prowess, now on display to the English settlers beginning to push up the river valleys of North America.71 William Wood, writing in the 1630s, noted the value of beaver as a source of furs and castoreum while also marveling at the creatures’ teamwork. He judged their dams and lodges to merit “admiration from wise understanding men.”72 Such sentiments would eventually develop into a new allegorical role for the beaver. In the eighteenth century English artists and authors anthropomorphized the beaver as a paragon of industriousness, and held up their colonies as models of well-ordered efficiency. In a similar vein, French anti-Cartesians pointed to the beaver’s engineering genius as proof that animals could possess souls.73 Unfortunately, such representations did little to advance knowledge of the beaver’s broader role in the landscape.74 Even those colonial authors who eschewed discussing the moral dimensions of beaver behavior focused instead on describing how best to hunt the creatures while showing little interest in the environmental impact of fur harvesting.75
Knowledge of the important role that beaver played in creating and maintaining land- and waterscapes was slow to develop. For the English, the fact that most beaver hunting and trapping was done by their Native American trading partners in areas far removed from colonial settlements meant that it was hard to draw a direct link between the removal of beaver from a stretch of stream and the myriad environmental changes that followed. As late as the 1790s, Harvard-educated minister Jeremy Belknap was able to remark in his History of New Hampshire that the beaver’s capacity for constructing its own environment was “not mentioned by any of the writers of natural history which I have had the opportunity to consult.”76
It was one of Belknap’s correspondents, New Hampshire Congressman Joseph Peirce, who helped make up this scientific shortfall. In a short essay on natural history, Peirce praised the benevolence of “that Being by whom the universe is so wisely governed” whose “design in this little animal [the beaver]” had in the two previous centuries created a landscape providentially suited to the pioneering efforts of English colonists. Precolonial beaver had, by Peirce’s account, transformed great stretches of swamps and marshes—the “worst of lands”—into verdant meadows. By creating ponds, beaver had drowned off trees and brush. At the same time “the leaves, bark, rotten wood and other manure, which is washed down by the rains, from the adjacent high lands … spread over this pond … making it smooth and level.” Then Indian hunters, “subservient to the great design of Providence,” destroyed the beaver and its dam so that “the whole tract, which before was the bottom of a pond, is covered with wild grass, which grows as high as a man’s shoulders, and very thick.” These newly formed, lush meadows attracted game animals like deer and moose for Native hunters. They were “of still greater use to new [English] settlers” who found “a mowing field already cleared to their hands … and without these natural meadows many settlements could not possibly have been made.” Beaver meadows provided early English settlers in New Hampshire and elsewhere in New England sufficient grass for their cattle until they had “cleared ground enough to raise English hay.” For Peirce, then, it was the hand of Providence—acting through the teeth of the beaver and the industry of Indian hunters—that had made successful English colonization possible.77
Setting aside the role of “Providence,” Peirce presented an astute early understanding of the importance of beaver to colonial landscapes. Beaver had historically played an important role in converting woodlands bordering streams into first ponds and wetlands, and then broad, verdant meadows.78 These meadows provided Native American hunters with game and, later, fed the cattle of the English settlers who appropriated their lands. But while astute, Peirce’s late eighteenth-century tribute to the utility of the beaver fell far short of accounting for all of the creature’s myriad impacts upon New England’s land- and waterscapes.
As beaver ponds disappeared from the landscape in the wake of the fur trade, species diversity declined apace. Bird species that nested in waterlogged trees—the blue heron, osprey, woodcocks, and various types of eagle—disappeared or saw their regional populations decline precipitously. Species of woodpecker that fed upon the insects living in these decaying trees also would have declined in number and, as a consequence, birds like black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, tree swallows, and screech owls that live in the holes excavated by woodpeckers would have become scarcer. As the populations of insects associated with ponds and wetlands—like dragonand damselflies—declined, so too did the populations of birds like the tree swallow and kingbird, which fed upon them. While the declining numbers of many of these bird species would likely not have dismayed early English settlers, or even their Native American neighbors, they may have felt differently about the loss of waterfowl habitat within the Connecticut basin. Duck species—like the wood duck and hooded merganser—lost many of their summer feeding and nesting sites in the region, reducing their numbers and forcing them to concentrate in the watershed’s lakes and remaining ponds.79
Other pond species also suffered. Frogs, toads, tortoises—all of which local Native American communities relied upon seasonally to supplement their diets—and other species of amphibians and reptiles lost a large percentage of their breeding habitat. Freshwater crayfish continued to thrive in lakes and free-flowing rivers, but their numbers likely declined as the overall amount of freshwater habitat fell. Most obviously, fish populations faced declining habitat as a result of disappearing beaver ponds. Some species suffered more than others. Since beaver ponds are dynamic ecosystems, gradually transitioning from free-flowing stream to pond and back again, different fish species benefit from different stages in the pond lifecycle. Brook trout flourished in the still, well-shaded waters of new beaver ponds. As rising water tables and tree harvesting by beaver opened up the woodland canopies bordering ponds and waterways, yellow perch and sunfish flourished in the warmer, sunbathed waters and fed on the proliferating species of aquatic plants. With the disappearance of beaver dams and the ecological dynamism they fostered, fish of all species became less abundant, and local Native American and Euro-American communities faced declining opportunities for including fresh fish in their regular diet.80
This decline in the availability of freshwater fish may in part explain English colonists’ later focus on the springtime runs of anadromous fish (those species that live and feed in the ocean but spawn in freshwater streams) like salmon, shad, and alewives. The relationship between beaver and salmon, especially, is an ambiguous one. While young anadromous fish can often pass downstream through the loose weave of limbs that forms a beaver dam, these same dams can pose an obstacle for adult fish attempting to ascend a river to breed. With each subsequent beaver dam on a stream, fewer spawners would have been able to pass. However, placing such geographic limits on anadromous fish actually protected the biodiversity of the river system. Shad and alewives head out to sea within a few months of hatching, but juvenile salmon can linger to feed in their native streams for up to five years, significantly decreasing the population of freshwater fish with whom they compete for food and space.
If beaver dams limited the geographic distribution of anadromous fish, beaver ponds provided important spawning habitat and more abundant food sources to help ensure the survival of the newly hatched fry. As beaver dams disappeared, anadromous fish would likely have expanded their range upstream in each of the Connecticut’s tributaries, but their overall numbers may have suffered, just as this new source of competition would have increased the pressure on freshwater fish populations already undergoing habitat loss.81 Still, the salmon, shad, and alewives would have retained one key advantage. Once their young had passed downstream and made it out into the ocean, the diets of these far-traveling fish no longer relied on the declining resources of the inland river environment. They could feed on the ocean’s bounty before
