S8 Ep370: Leila Philip discusses 19th-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who documented beaver dams in the Lake Superior Basin, where Philip recently observed centuries-old dams still continually cleansing water. Philip also details her immersion into the w
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
Leila Philip discusses 19th-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who documented beaver dams in the Lake Superior Basin, where Philip recently observed centuries-old dams still continually cleansing water. Philip also details her immersion into the world of modern fur trappers, finding unexpected ecological knowledge and a deep connection to nature within that culture.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchel with Professor Leila Philip, the College of the Holy Cross. |
| 0:11.0 | She teaches in the Environmental Studies Program, and that's what we're talking about, the beaver, |
| 0:15.7 | Casercanadensis. Now, once upon a time, the beavers were as big as bears, but that's several million |
| 0:22.1 | years ago leading up until the end of the ice age. |
| 0:25.5 | We're talking about the beaver that is recognizable in colonial America. |
| 0:30.4 | And now we're in the late 19th century, a man named Louis Henry Morgan in 1855, and then again in 1862 has converted his obsession from the trout to the |
| 0:44.2 | beaver and he's on an expedition in the Lake Superior Basin to photograph a beaver dam. |
| 0:52.3 | Professor, this is a story you can't make up. Morgan is a character. |
| 0:57.1 | What did he make of this beaver dam? What were his thoughts? Thank you. This is one of my |
| 1:02.9 | favorite sections of the book. And he is such an amazing American figure because he's such a |
| 1:10.6 | study in contradictions. So Lewis Henry Morgan, |
| 1:14.7 | you know, he's one of America's first ethnographers and anthropologists. He was also an |
| 1:20.7 | industrialist, so he was a railroad investor. You know, he managed to write actually what is still considered one of the most important and earliest ethnographies of the Iroquois people. |
| 1:33.8 | And he goes out to visit his friend, one of the Eli's, who's building a railroad line to mine for iron ore in near Marquette, Michigan. |
| 1:46.0 | And as you point out, well, he's a big trout fisherman. |
| 1:49.0 | And while they're fishing for trout, they can't get anywhere because they keep having to go |
| 1:53.4 | over these magnificent, to lift the boats over these magnificent beaver dams. |
| 1:58.2 | And he falls in love with these constructions. He's just fascinated by the |
| 2:04.6 | beaver dams. And he makes it his mission for the next 15 years to document and map them. |
| 2:12.1 | And he produces a book called The American Beaver, publishes it in 1868. It is the first authoritative account of the beaver in North America, in the United States |
| 2:24.2 | anyway, and it is still considered authoritative. |
| 2:29.0 | And it's tremendously important because what he was able to do was document these beaver constructions before |
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