THE BEAVERS RETURN The recent sighting of a male beaver swimming in the Bronx River outside of Manhattan has generated great excitement and widespread media attention. Why? Beavers disappeared from the river over two centuries ago. Their surprising return to New York City highlights the improving water quality of Gotham’s rivers. Biologists label beavers ecosystem engineers. The presence of the furry rodents not only indicates the health of their habitat, but their skills as dam builders enable them to transform their environment. By felling trees and constructing dams and lodges, beavers create ponds, wetlands, and meadows that increase an ecosystem’s biodiversity, improve its water quality, and deter catastrophic flooding and erosion. But beavers are important for another reason. More than any other wild animal, they shaped the conflict among European nations for control of North America--and the development of New York City. Acquiring fur pelts was one of the primary motives for European settlement in North America during the seventeenth century. Beaver skins were especially valued for the manufacture of hats. Their soft, dense fur made ideal felt. No sooner did the Pilgrims establish Plymouth colony in 1620 than they developed a flourishing beaver trade with Maine Indians. So did other British settlers. The towns of Springfield and Concord, Massachusetts, were both founded in 1635 as beaver trading posts. Beaver hats became so fashionable in London that King Charles I declared in 1638 that “nothing but beaver stuff or beaver wool shall be used in the making of hats.” Beaver pelts served as a form of bartering currency. A single skin was worth two pounds of sugar or a gallon of brandy. An Indian could acquire a prized musket for 132 pelts. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the lucrative beaver trade excited the imperial ambitions of the Dutch and French as well as the British. Albany, New York, then called Fort Orange, emerged as the center of the regional fur trade—and the site of imperial intrigues. At Fort Orange, Indians traded pelts for rum and merchandise, and the pelts were then transported down the Hudson River to Manhattan for sale to colonial hatters and for shipment to Europe. In 1624 Fort Orange processed 700 beaver pelts for export; by 1635 the number had soared to 15,000. By 1650 relentless hunting had decimated the beavers in the territory controlled by the Iroquois in central New York. Yet the scarcity only increased the demand for pelts and embroiled the Indians in complex international chicanery. First the Dutch and then the British (after they gained control of New York in 1664) secretly encouraged the Iroquois to push farther into western New York and across the Great Lakes into southern Canada in the quest for more beavers. Such incursions infuriated the French and their Indian allies. Backwoods skirmishes over beavers and hunting rights led to major battles and even global wars with far-flung consequences. The beaver trade also heightened tensions between England and its American colonies. In 1732 Parliament passed the Hat Act prohibiting American hatmakers from selling their beaver hats in England. As frontier warfare between the British and French and their Indian allies continued throughout the eighteenth century, so too did the relentless killing of beavers. By 1800, the prized aquatic mammals had virtually disappeared east of the Mississippi River. The need for new sources of furs was one of the primary reasons why President Thomas Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the trans-Mississippi West. Lewis and Clark were astounded by what they found. The two intrepid explorers described the foothills of the Rocky Mountains as “richer in beaver and otter than any other country on earth.” Lewis and Clark found even more beavers in what is now Oregon. News of Lewis and Clark’s discoveries spread fast. Entrepreneurs rushed to exploit the plentiful pelts in the Pacific Northwest. In 1808 John Jacob Astor, an ambitious German immigrant living in New York City, founded the American Fur Company and built a trading center called Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River near what is today Portland. There he established a flourishing global exchange that soon made him the first millionaire in America and perhaps the wealthiest man in the world. The tens of thousands of fur pelts he acquired from Indians and trappers were traded in China for tea, silk, and spices, which in turn were exchanged in New York City for beads, blankets, and rum, which Astor used to acquire more western pelts. The flagship of Astor’s merchant fleet was appropriately named The Beaver. Over time, Astor used his fantastic profits to buy up much of Manhattan. John Jacob Astor’s phenomenal wealth and notoriety ensured that the history of New York would continue to be robed in fur. Images of the beaver are on the official seal and flag of New York City. It is the official animal of New York State (and Oregon). So it is not surprising that a beaver swimming in the Bronx River should excite such commotion among New Yorkers. It remains to be seen whether the beaver will be allowed to keep his pelt.
-- David Shi is a historian, writer and president |