Beaver Moon

Two explanations compete and both are plausible. Beavers are conspicuously busy in November, finishing lodges and dams before the water freezes. November was also the last practical month to set beaver traps before the swamps iced over, and beaver pelts were prime — thick winter fur — at exactly this point.

The fur trade explanation carries real historical weight. The beaver pelt was the currency of North American colonial expansion for two centuries; the Hudson’s Bay Company priced goods in “made beaver”, and the demand was driven almost entirely by European hat fashion. Beavers were trapped to near-extinction across the continent before silk hats made the trade collapse in the mid-nineteenth century.

Frost Moon needs no explanation, and Mourning Moon is sometimes applied to the last full moon before the winter solstice.

Also known as

• Frost Moon
• Mourning Moon
• Digging Moon

The 1778 record

Travelling among the Dakota in 1766 and 1767, Captain Jonathan Carver wrote down all twelve month names in a single passage. Published in 1778, it predates the almanac list by roughly a century and a half and is the oldest independent check on these names.