Wild Animals of North America: Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal Kingdom

At the time of its discovery and occupation by Europeans, North America and the bordering seas teemed with an almost incredible profusion of large mammalian life. The hordes of game animals which roamed the primeval forests and plains of this continent were the marvel of early explorers and have been equaled in historic times only in Africa.

Even beyond the limit of trees, on the desolate Arctic barrens, vast herds containing hundreds of thousands of caribou drifted from one feeding ground to another, sharing their range with numberless smaller companies of musk-oxen. Despite the dwarfed and scanty vegetation of this bleak region, the fierce winter storms and long arctic nights, and the harrying by packs of white wolves, these hardy animals continued to hold their own until the fatal influence of civilized man was thrown against them.

Southward from the Arctic barrens, in the neighboring forests of spruce, tamarack, birches, and aspens, were multitudes of woodland caribou and moose. Still farther south, in the superb forests of eastern North America, and ranging thence over the limitless open plains of the West, were untold millions of buffalo, elk, and white-tailed deer, with the prong-horned antelope replacing the white-tails on the western plains.

With this profusion of large game, which afforded a superabundance of food, there was a corresponding abundance of large carnivores, as wolves, coyotes, black and grizzly bears, mountain lions, and lynxes. Black bears were everywhere except on the open plains, and numerous species of grizzlies occupied all the mountainous western part of the continent.

Fur-bearers, including beavers, muskrats, land-otters, sea-otters, fishers, martens, minks, foxes, and others, were so plentiful in the New World that immediately after the colonization of the United States and Canada a large part of the world’s supply of furs was obtained here.

Trade with the Indians laid the foundations of many fortunes, and later developed almost imperial organizations, like the Hudson’s Bay Company and its rivals. Many adventurous white men became trappers and traders, and through their energy, and the rivalry of the trading companies, we owe much of the first exploration of the northwestern and northern wilderness. The stockaded fur-trading stations were the outposts of civilization across the continent to the shores of Oregon and north to the Arctic coast. At the same time the presence of the sea-otter brought the Russians to occupy the Aleutian Islands, Sitka, and even northern California.