Tag Archives: #fur trade

What Was the Malady in the Malad River?

By Carol Kuhn
October 22, 2026

In the fall of 1824, Hudson’s Bay Company’s Alexander Ross reported the sickening of his trappers along a river that Ross subsequently named “Riviere Aux Malades.”[1] In his own words,

On reaching that stream we found beaver in considerable numbers. … but here a misfortune clouded our hopes and made beaver a secondary consideration. After breakfast the second morning, a number of the people were taken ill; and the sickness becoming general throughout the camp, it struck me that there must have been something poisonous in our food or water. Not being able to discover anything, I began to enquire more particularly what each person had eaten that morning, and found that all those who had breakfasted on the fresh beaver taken out of the river were affected, whilst those who had eaten other food remained in good health.…We then examined the flesh of the beaver, and found it much whiter and softer, and, the people who had eaten of it said, sweeter to the taste than the flesh of beaver generally. As there was no wood about the banks of the river, we supposed these animals must have lived on some root of a poisonous quality, which although not strong enough to destroy them, yet was sufficiently deleterious to injure us: from this it was that I named this stream Rivière aux Malades.[2]  

Donald McKenzie wrote of a similar event in 1811, as did Peter Skene Ogden in 1825-1826, who noted in his journal that this “fine large stream; derives its name from the beaver living on a poisonous root.” He recollects that “in 1819, all who ate of the beaver taken here were seriously ill.”[3]  

Robert Campbell’s brigade suffered the same fate in 1827.

One of my men caught a beaver. We had nothing to eat. My French Cook roasted the beaver. I ate a small piece to quiet my appetite, as I had had nothing to eat for a day or two. Just after I ate, I felt pains, as did all the others who ate it. The beavers were poisoned from eating the wild parsnip.  Hence the name of the river,– Malad. Every one who ate these beavers were poisoned…. We had pains in the neck, head and other disagreeable sensations in the stomach and bowels. The old trappers knew what was the matter and attributed our sickness to eating poisoned beaver.[4]

The cause of this poisoning is a conundrum. The fur trappers themselves blamed a notoriously poisonous plant called water hemlock.[5] The assumption was that beaver living in areas with minimal woody vegetation were forced to eat tubers and roots, including those of water hemlock. The toxin, called cicutoxin, would then be passed on to the trappers via contaminated meat.

Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata). Image Credit: Original illustration by Carol Kuhn.

However, Dr. Benedict Green, Pharmacologist at the USDA-ARS Poisonous Plant Research Lab, thinks that that scenario is unlikely, because cicutoxin is an unstable molecule that degrades quickly.[6] Besides, since water hemlock is quickly lethal in even small amounts,[7] it is unlikely that the beaver would ingest a tuber or root and survive long enough to find its way to a trap or even care enough to investigate it.      

Or was it something in the water?  If that were the case, then perhaps the toxin would be in other aquatic organisms. However, Mr. Mike Sandifer, a professional trout fisherman who has fished the Malad for over 30 years, states that he has never become ill from water contact or from eating trout from that river.[8] Also, J. H. Stevens, as quoted by Warren A. Ferris, described being one of a group of parched trappers who fell upon the Malad River and drank profusely. While he does describe vomiting afterwards, he attributed that to over-indulgence, and no other symptoms occurred.[9]

But if the beaver were ingesting a far less lethal plant than water hemlock – one that would not cause immediate poisoning – then perhaps a toxin could bioaccumulate in their tissues over a period of time. But if that were the case, there should not be such an immediate reaction in the men who consumed them.

The chemical composition of plants varies based on a number of factors, including genetics, season, weather, soil, and geology. With that in mind, there is a strong likelihood that water hemlock varies in cicutoxin levels, such that the Malad River population might exhibit environmental or genetic reduction in the amount or strength of the toxin. After all, an isolated population of water hemlock in the steep Malad River canyon could evolve more quickly than one in a larger landscape, and perhaps that evolution would include a reduction in cicutoxin, especially if the primary herbivore target of that toxin is not present. Right? However, toxic beaver flesh was not restricted to one unlucky stream. It turns out there was not one, not two, but three rivers that harbored beaver that were toxic when consumed by hungry trappers, and thus were named “Malad,” and botanical records show water hemlock throughout southern Idaho. The three Malad Rivers are:

Malad River, Tributary of the Snake

This Malad River is located at the western edge of the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer in Oneida and Gooding Counties, Idaho. It is a right bank tributary of the Snake, joining that river west of Tuttle and I-84, and southwest of Gooding, Idaho. Today’s Malad River begins at the junction of Little and Big Wood Rivers[10] due west of Gooding, Idaho, and flows 12 miles through the Malad Gorge, a deep cut in the lava beds, to the Snake. But during the fur trade era, “Malad River” was much longer, as it included Big Wood River. Older USGS topographic maps concur. Idaho historian C. S. Walgamott affirmed this reduction in the run-of-river bearing the name Malad, noting that immigrants “in 1862 from the immense amount of poplars along the banks, called the streams Big and Little Wood River, which united near Gooding from whence the river still maintains its name [Malad] until it flows into the Snake river.”[11]  

Donald McKenzie likely spoke of this Malad River when he described the 1811 trappers of the Pacific Fur Company [the Astorians] being stricken from eating beaver meat. Peter Skene Ogden camped on this Malad River in 1825-1826; he noted in his journal that this “fine large stream derives its name from the beaver living on a poisonous root.”  Ogden talked about going over the steep divide between Goddin’s [today’s Lost] and Malad Rivers. He recognized this as the “fork of Salmon [Snake] River called by Mr. Ross Malad his men having been attacked with beaver illness.”[12]

Adolf Stieler and A. Petermann, Vereinigte Staaten von Nord-Amerika in 6 Blättern, Bl. 1 (1875), published by Justus Perthes.
Image Courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection. View the full map.

Malad River, Tributary of Bear River above Salt Lake      

This Malad River flows through southeastern Idaho and northern Utah.[13] Its headwaters are in Big Malad Spring, northwest of Malad City, Idaho. This 97-mile right bank tributary empties into Bear River less than two miles south of Bear River City in Box Elder County, Utah.  Bear River then enters the Great Salt Lake.[14] Warren Ferris describes this Malad River:  “There is a small stream flowing into the Big Lake, the beaver taken from which, produce the same effect. It is the universal belief among hunters, that the beaver in these two streams feed upon some root or plant peculiar to the locality, which gives their flesh the strange quality of causing such indisposition.” Assuming Fayel’s Robert Campbell narrative is chronological, this is likely the Malad River described by Campbell, on his way from Wisdom River (today’s Big Hole River) to winter in Cache Valley.[15]

 Malad River in Camas Prairie, Elmore County, ID, north of Mount Bennett 

Historic USGS Historical Topographical Map. Courtesy of Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection, University of Texas, Austin. View the full map.

The headwaters of this Malad River are on the eastern slopes of Packer Butte, the western boundary of Camas Prairie. It becomes a braided marshland for a while, then reforms its channel prior to its entry into Camas Creek in eastern Elmore County, Idaho, ten miles east of its headwaters.[16] Camas Prairie, a lush wet prairie with hundreds of meandering rivulets, would have been a trapper’s dream come true. Peter Skene Ogden, John Work,  and others traveled through the Camas Prairie in the 1820s. It is unclear who named this third Malad River, but apparently it, too, contained toxic beavers.

[1] Alexander Ross. The Fur Hunters of the Far West: A Narrative of Adventures in the Oregon and Rocky Mountains. Vol. I. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1855, pp. 114–116. Read full text.

[2] Ross. The Fur Hunters of the Far West, pp. 114–116. Read full text.

[3] Peter Skene Ogden and T. C. Elliott. “The Peter Skene Ogden Journals.” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 10, no. 4 (1909): 331–365, at 355. JSTOR.

[4] William Fayel. A Narrative of Col. Robert Campbell’s Experiences in the Rocky Mountains Fur Trade from 1825 to 1835. Carol Kuhn, unpublished transcription of Fayel’s original 1886 notes, housed at the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, pp. 21-22

[5] This plant is also known as beaver poison, children’s bane, death-of-man, poison parsnip, and false parsley. Two separate species occur in Idaho. Cicuta bulbifera L. is found throughout Canada, south to the northern United States. Cicuta douglasii DC. (western water hemlock) is mainly limited to the Rocky Mountains. See Ray J. Davis et al. Flora of Idaho (Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown, 1952).

[6] Personal communication, Carol Kuhn with Dr. Benedict Green, October 23–30, 2024.

[7] “Water Hemlock Poisoning—Maine, 1992.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read article.

[8] Personal communication, Carol Kuhn with Mike Sandifer of Northwest School of Fly Fishing, Boise, Idaho, October 29–30, 2024.

[9] W. A. Ferris and Paul C. Philips. Life In The Rocky Mountains.  The Old West Publishing Company. 1940.  P 66-67. Read full text.

[10] Coordinates 42.945105, -114.795428.

[11] C. S. Walgamott. Reminiscences of Early Days. Vol. II. A Series of Historical Sketches and Happenings in the Early Days of Snake River Valley. 1927, pp. 41–42.

[12] Peter Skene Ogden. “Journal of Peter Skene Ogden; Snake Expedition, 1827–1828.” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 11, no. 4 (1910): 361–379, at 364. JSTOR.

[13] Coordinates 41.586195, -112.117299.

[14] Malad River headwaters in T14S,  R35E, Sections 9 and 10. Its left bank tributary, Little Malad River, has its headwaters in T14S, R35E Section 3 [USGS Malad City West, Idaho]. Little Malad River joins the Malad southeast of Samaria, less than 10 miles south of Malad City. See USGS topographic map Brigham, Utah,  T10N, R2W, Section 19, for mouth of Malad at Bear River and Bear River’s entry into Great Salt Lake.

[15] William Fayel. A Narrative of Col. Robert Campbell’s Experiences in the Rocky Mountains Fur Trade from 1825 to 1835. Carol Kuhn, unpublished transcription of Fayel’s original 1886 notes, housed at the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, p. 22.

[16] See Cat Creek Summit USGS Topographic Map, T1S, R10E, Section 33, for the headwaters of Malad River. Packer Butte is 38 miles NW of Gooding, Idaho.

The Enduring Beaver

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff
February 25, 2026

Two hundred years after the height of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, beaver are still busy along the tributaries of the Snake, the Missouri, and the upper Green River and countless other streams that once held these fur bearing mammals. They go about their work mostly uninterrupted, much as they always have. The same cannot be said of the mountain men who once set their traps along these waters. Today, they exist chiefly in journals, memoirs, and the footnotes of historians.

Would early nineteenth-century trappers have been surprised to learn that beaver would recover, even as the profession built upon their pursuit vanished?  During the early Rocky Mountain fur trade, beaver in western rivers were routinely described as “plentiful” and “abundant.”[1] Yet even as the fur trade expanded, trappers, keen observers of the landscape, recognized that familiar streams could be “trapped out,” that pelts grew harder to come by, and that profits declined where competition was heavy.[2]  Whether their concern was practical or philosophical, it was real. Time has shown that while beaver populations recovered, the occupation built on their pursuit did not.

Abundant Beaver in Streams

In the early 1800s, beaver populations in rivers and streams west of the Mississippi appeared inexhaustible. Trapper Joseph Meek noted that the “beaver were very plenty on Henry’s fork” in 1830.[3]  The following year, mountain man Warren Ferris described the Snake River and Henry’s Fork in glowing terms, noting that his party was able to take “from forty to seventy beaver a day,” a reflection of the optimism that characterized the early Rocky Mountain fur trade.[4] For trappers, each drainage promised a new opportunity, each river a potential bonanza. If one stream failed to meet expectations, another lay in the next drainage ahead, promising abundant fur.

This confidence was not mere fantasy.  William Ashley noted in his 1825 journal information that Jedediah Smith learned from Peter Skene Ogden during his time at Flathead Post:

Mr. Smith ascertained from the gentleman who had charge of that establishment, that the Hudson Bay Company had then in their employment, trading with the Indians and trapping Beaver on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, there were about 80 men, 60 of whom were generally employed as trappers and confined their operations to that district called the Snake country, which Mr Smith understood as being confined to the district claimed by the Shoshone Indians. It appeared from the account, that they had taken in the last four years within that district eighty thousand Beaver, equal to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds of furs.

You can form some idea of the quantity of Beaver that country once possessed when I tell you that some of our hunters had taken upwards of one hundred in the last spring hunt out of streams which had been trapped, as I am informed, every season for the last four years.[5]

Early trapping parties encountered astonishing numbers of beaver, before experience and growing competition revealed the limits of even the richest streams.

Growing Awareness of Scarcity

Even as optimism prevailed, trappers’ journals reveal a growing awareness that local depletion was real. Jedediah Smith, in his 1830 letter to the Secretary of War and referring to Hudson’s Bay Company brigades, observed that “the territory … being trapped by both parties, is nearly exhausted of beavers, and unless the British can be stopped, will soon be entirely exhausted.”[6] (Read here: Jed’s Famous 1830 Letter – The Jedediah Smith Society)

Streams that once yielded abundant pelts had become increasingly labor-intensive. Trappers also noted a decline not only in the number of animals but in their size. In 1832, Robert Campbell wrote:

When we trapped the first time in the country, they would average more. It would not take 60 beavers to made a hundred pounds, as the old beavers, before they were trapped out, weighed more than young beavers.[7]

By the early 1830s, similar observations appeared with increasing frequency.  Nathaniel Wyeth remarked in 1832 that the beaver “had lately been trapped out.”[8] In 1835, Osborne Russell recorded reports from Shoshone people he encountered in the Lamar Valley indicating that beaver were “comparatively scarce” in the greater Yellowstone Lake region.[9] Robert Newell, a mountain man working in the Powder River area, noted in 1838 that “times is getting hard all over this part of the Country beever Scarce and low  all peltries are on the decline.”[10] By 1839, Russell reported that “Beaver also were getting very scarce” in the Bear River area.[11] 

Osborne Russell further recalled:

The trappers often remarked to each other as they rode over these lonely plains that it was time for the White man to leave the mountains as Beaver and game had nearly disappeared.[12] 

This recognition extended beyond the trappers themselves.  In 1839, Dr. Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus, a German physician, botanist, and explorer, traveled west with a supply caravan to the Green River rendezvous.  While documenting the regions botanical landscape, he also observed the business of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.  He wrote:

The beaver formerly spread over the greater part of the United States. From the cultivated portions he has disappeared long ago; and in his present home, in the Rocky Mountains, he is beginning to become scarcer. Hundreds of thousands of them have been trapped there in the last decades, and a war of extermination has been waged against the race. The consequence is that they are now found only singly in regions that were formerly well known for their abundance of beavers. It is only in the lands of hostile Indians, the Blackfeet, for instance, that they still exist in greater numbers, because the Indians do not specially occupy themselves with beaver trapping.[13]

This awareness was practical rather than sentimental. Concern over declining beaver numbers was likely driven less by environmental alarm than by the loss of income, but mountain men clearly recognized the changes taking place in the streams.  Descriptions of beaver populations shifted from “abounding” and “plentiful” to “scarce” and finally to “trapped out.” They noticed patterns of scarcity, differences between river systems, and the consequences of repeated trapping. In short, they were early experts in local population dynamics—even if they lacked the vocabulary of modern ecology.

Trapped Out, by Design

Declining numbers were not just an individual concern, they were also the result of corporate strategy. Beaver was a competitive resource and trapping out regions, or deliberately creating “fur deserts,” was intended to deny resources to rivals.[14]

Hudson’s Bay Company Governor George Simpson openly encouraged depletion of beaver in certain regions to deny Americans access. During an 1824 visit to the Columbia District, he wrote:

If properly managed no question exists that [the Snake County] would yield handsome profits as we have convincing proof that the country is a rich preserve of Beaver and which for political reasons we should endeavor to destroy as fast as possible.[15]

Wislizenus also noted the long-term consequence of this policy and what he described as “ruthless trapping”:

The Hudson’s Bay Company has established more system in beaver trapping within its territories. It allows trapping only at certain seasons, and when beavers get scarce in any neighborhood, trapping is strictly forbidden there for some years. In regions, however, on whose permanent possession the company does not count, it allows the trappers to do as they please. But if trapping is carried on in this ruthless fashion, in fifty years all the beavers there will have disappeared, as have those in the east, and the country will thereby lose a productive branch of commerce.[16]

Joe Meek noted the 1838 rendezvous was held at “Bonneville’s old fort on Green River, and was the last one held in the mountains by the American Fur Company. Beaver were growing scarce, and competition was strong.”[17] Later that year Meek and his companions “visited the old trapping grounds on Pierre’s Fork, Lewis’ Lake, Jackson’s River, Jackson’s Hole, Lewis River and Salt River: but beaver were scarce.”[18]

For the independent or company-employed trapper, declining numbers meant economic hardship. For company managers, depletion was a calculated tool. In either case, trappers were aware that beaver were a finite resource.

The Vanishing Mountain Man

The experiences of individual trappers reflect this broader shift. In his memoirs, Kit Carson recalled that by 1841, the changing landscape of the fur trade had forced many men to abandon trapping altogether:

Beaver was getting scarce, and, finding it was necessary to try our hand at something else, Bill Williams, Bill New, Mitchell, Frederick, a Frenchman, and myself concluded to start for Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas. [19]

There, Carson was hired to hunt for the fort. [20]

Mountain men became legendary almost as soon as the fur trade took shape in the Rocky Mountains. Yet their presence in the mountains proved fleeting when measured against the persistence of the beaver they pursued. By the 1830s and 1840s, changing fashions, markets, and economic conditions diminished demand for beaver hats and the need for long-term trapping expeditions. Though the beaver endured, the profession that relied on them did not.

The Resilient Beaver

Two hundred years later, the irony is unmistakable. Rivers once feared stripped bare of beaver continue to support thriving populations.

In the long contest between trapper and his prey, the beaver proved the more durable. Trappers correctly warned of local scarcity, but few foresaw how briefly their own profession would last.  The rivers remain, the beaver endure, yet the mountain men are gone.  Their words, however live on, offering a quiet irony and a reminder that the beaver is the unexpected victor of the story of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

The Rocky Mountain fur trade may be history, but beaver continue to offer a surprise. Learn more:

How Beavers Are Restoring Wetlands in North American Deserts!

Air dropped beaver in Idaho.

[1] For examples of journal entries remarking on an abundance of fur bearers, see: Peter Skene Ogden, “Journal of Peter Skene Ogden; Snake Expedition, 1828–1829,” Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 11, no. 4 (December 1910): 394; Warren Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, eds. Paul C. Phillips and Fred A. Rosenstock (Denver, CO: The Old West Publishing Company, 1942), 97; Frances Fuller Victor, The River of the West (Columbus, OH: Long’s College Book Co., 1952; reprint of original edition), 94.

[2] Robert Campbell, A Narrative of Colonel Robert Campbell’s Experiences in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade, 1825–1835, ed. Drew Alan Holloway (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1976), 42.

[3] Victor, River of the West, 64.

[4] Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, 97.

[5] Dale Morgan, ed., The West of William H. Ashley, 1822–1838, ed. Dale Morgan (Denver, CO: The Old West Publishing Company, 1964), 118, 288n211.

[6] Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953), 343–348.

[7]  Campbell, Narrative, 42.

[8] Jim Hardee, Obstinate Hope: The Western Expeditions of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, Volume One, 1832–1833 (Pinedale, WY: Sublette County Historical Society/Museum of the Mountain Man, 2013), 141.

[9] Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, ed. Aubrey L. Haines (Portland, OR: Champoeg Press, Reed College, for the Oregon Historical Society, 1955), 27.

[10] Robert Newell, Robert Newell’s Memoranda: Travels in the Territory of Missouri; Travel to the Cayuse War; Together with a Report on the Indians South of the Columbia River, ed. Dorothy O. Johansen (Portland, OR: Champoeg Press, 1959), 36.

[11] Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 112.

[12] Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 123.

[13] F. A. Wislizenus, A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1839 (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1912), 121.

[14] Jennifer Ott, “‘Ruining’ the Rivers in the Snake Country: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fur Desert Policy,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 104, no. 2 (Summer 2003):166-195.

[15] George Simpson, Fur Trade and Empire: George Simpson’s Journal: “Remarks Connected with the Fur Trade in the Course of a Voyage from York Factory to Fort George and Back to York Factory, 1824–1825,” ed. Frederick Merk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 46.

[16] F. A. Wislizenus, A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1839 (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1912), 122. Wislizenus, Journey to the Rocky Mountains, 122.

[17] Victor, River of the West, 255.

[18] Victor, River of the West, 263.

[19] Harvey Lewis Carter, Dear Old Kit: The Historical Christopher Carson (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 79.

[20] Carter, Dear Old Kit, 79.