-: We have been told by our ancestors
that in the early days of us, the two legs,
being upon the Earth,
the responsibility for maintaining the cleanliness
of our waters, the purity of our waters
was assigned to Beaver.
Beaver was known as the architect.
He was able to build a series of dams
along all of our waterways, the feeder creeks
that enter into the major rivers,
and when he did this,
he was able to capture all those impurities,
those types of things
that would impact the quality of our waters.
And in doing so, he created a mosaic
of freshwater marshes all throughout our homelands.
And in these marsh areas, animals like the deer
and the beaver and the wild turkeys,
they would all take advantage of all the different types
of growth that occurred all around the marsh areas.
So it became a very balanced ecosystem.
And they were able to be so successful
in building these dams
that they captured a lot of the fresh water.
And this fresh water was to the point in which the amount
of salinity that goes into the Potomac River,
that point where in Mallows Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
it was all brackish water all the way up to
the Indian Head Naval Base to the Mattawoman Creek.
All of that was brackish water back in the time of contact
with the colonists and once the fur trade came along
and the beaver population with our homelands was wiped out
and the tobacco plantations came in
and started clearing away their dams,
they released all that fresh water into the Potomac
and pushed the salinity level of the waters,
the salt waters, back down to the lower part of Nanjemoy,
to the southern tip of the national marine sanctuary.
So we continue to tell the story of how
the original role of the beaver was to protect
as a water protector and now we, as two legged,
the humans, it is our responsibility to help the beaver
and become caretakers of our waters.
Waters is sacred to our people.
Part of the role that the beaver does
in protecting the waters is to create a series of dams
and when they create these dams,
these dams last for about six or seven years.
And what they do, they pile up sticks
and sticks on top of each other year after year,
and the water table behind the dam gets larger and larger.
And therefore, the dam has to get bigger and bigger.
And during this process, all those impurities
that may have washed into the waters
are captured behind that dam
and then as time goes by,
the bottom part of the dam begins to deteriorate,
so the beaver moves on.
And what that has done behind, it creates that marsh,
that marsh area is still resident,
that open plane of habitat
will stay that way for many more years
until the next generation of beaver comes back in.
So a beaver dam may be empty for six, seven years,
but if the population is left not bothered,
then a new set of beavers will come in
and reestablish that dam and that process is cyclical.
So it's always a new process from generation to generation,
moving from dam to dam, protecting the waters.