The Long and Fascinating History of Raccoons in North American Culture, From Symbols to Pets to Dinner

In the relationship between humans and raccoons, the black-masked mammals have played many roles

The raccoon has long held our fascination, admiration, and even our disdain. Perhaps no other animal has been as associated with the history of the United States as has this one. As society has changed, so has our perception of the raccoon and its place in our lives. The connection between raccoons and humans varies from one geographic area to another, and may also differ across socioeconomic groups. Yet overall, the masked bandit still evokes strong responses because of its unique role in the culture and economy of so many regions.

Given their historical abundance in North America, many Native American tribes probably hunted the raccoon. Evidence for them has been found in the refuse of Native Americans dating from 6000 to 4000 B.C. in what is now the Middle Atlantic United States. Their use has been documented for later inhabitants of the Ohio Valley between A.D. 1000 to 1700, and for more recent tribes such as the Delaware, Sauk, and Potawatomi. Although some tribes reportedly considered its meat to be unappetizing, the raccoon was probably a common source of food in many areas given its ubiquity and the numerous ways of preparing it.

Furthermore, the raccoon was very meaningful to certain tribes. For example, “Raccoon” was one of several “name groups” of both the Kickapoo and Shawnee tribes. In her informative book Raccoons in Folklore, History and Today’s Backyards, Virginia Holmgren recounts several legends and the many different names Native Americans had for this animal. First of all, various tribes used terms that referred to its manual dexterity. The one the Cree and the Chippewas used means “they pick up things,” while that of the Lenape Delaware is translated as “they use their hands as a tool.” Other names referred to its body parts, such as the face, forepaws, or tail; its eating of crabs or crayfish; and intriguingly, its perceived magical powers. Some Sioux tribes, for example, bestowed names on the raccoon that seem to have been derived from terms meaning “one who is sacred” or “one with magic.” These commonly appear phonetically as wee-kah, weekah-sah, or wee-chah, though they may alternately begin with an “m.” A Dakota Sioux tribe reportedly called it wee-kah teg-alega, which means “sacred one with painted face.”

The Aztec term for the raccoon was mapachitli or mapachitl, which translates as “one who takes everything in his hands.” Their term for the female, however, was see-oh-at-la-ma-kas-kay, which means “she who talks with gods.” Furthermore, their term for a female with cubs, ee-yah-mahtohn, translates as “little old one who knows things.” This is the title that they conferred upon the “wise women” in their society, demonstrating the elevated status of mother raccoons in Aztec culture. Raccoon idolization also seems to have occurred near the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. In this area, a Native American carving of a giant face is purported to be the land’s guardian spirit called tsa ga gla lal (or tsagiglalal), meaning “she who watches.” Although the Yakima tribe now refers to this figure as the “witch woman” or “watcher,” it clearly resembles a raccoon.

Many tribes believed that the raccoon was either related to the dog or that it had doglike qualities. The Tupi of Brazil placed it in a group with dogs and other animals that use a crouching-springing attack to pounce on their prey. Each of these was called a uara or “leaper,” a word that was modified to reflect a type of leaping. The raccoon was an aguara-popay, a “doglike leaper upon crabs and crayfish.” The Taino of the Bahamas used the word ah-on for raccoons as well as dogs. Though they kept both as pets, they also ate them. The Klamath of the Pacific Northwest also kept the raccoon as a pet, referring to it as a wacgina, an “animal that can be tamed like a dog.” Yet evidence does not support the notion that raccoons and dogs are closely related. The dog family appeared as a distinct entity considerably before the raccoon family emerged about 25 million years ago.

Given its pervasive association with American culture, it is fitting that we can attribute the first written record of the raccoon, as well as its first European-language name, to the celebrated explorer Christopher Columbus. Soon after landing in the Caribbean in 1492, he noticed a couple of pets near a fisherman’s hut on what he named Fernandina Island (now Long Island). In his journals, Columbus referred to them as perros, apparently presuming that they were dogs or doglike animals. Perhaps in reference to its mask, he also used the term perro mastin or “clownlike dog.” Some of his crew members called it a perro tej ´on, a “badgerlike dog.” Columbus brought several back to Europe and had them exhibited in Portugal, where they apparently did not survive for long. During his second voyage, raccoon meat was a staple food item for his sailors. In fact, overhunting led to the raccoon’s first local extinction on Española, the island where he had established his headquarters. Later known as Hispaniola, today this island includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

In the 1520s, a group of Spaniards ventured north from the Caribbean, exploring the islands off of what are now Georgia and South Carolina. Upon returning to their post, they informed its historian that they had observed foxlike animals with faces that were “muy pintada,” indicating that they were “painted.” This suggests that they had seen raccoons, and if so, it would have been the first European report of them in what is now the United States.

In his 1570s study of Mexican animals, the Spanish physician-naturalist Francisco Hernández indicated that the term for “badgerdog” was the name that the New World Spaniards used most often for the raccoon. But after learning that the Aztecs called it a mapachitli, he is said to have prodded the colonists into adopting this term. Eventually, it evolved into mapache, which now refers to the common and crab-eating raccoons of Central and South America. Names such as mapach and tepe Maxtlaton have also been recorded, and mapachín is presently used in Costa Rica. Not surprisingly, Spanish-speaking countries have different colloquial names for the raccoon, such as the aforementioned osito lavador or “little bearwasher” and tej ´on solitaria or “solitary badger” in Mexico. The latter is reminiscent of the other erroneous associations of raccoons with badgers. By the mid-seventeenth century, raccoons were probably observed in southern Mexico and were seen on the Trés Marías Islands off of western Mexico in 1686.

The earliest reference to the raccoon in Western literature is by another historical figure, Captain John Smith, who is linked to the famous Native American princess, Pocahontas. He reportedly first spelled it as rahaughcums as early as 1608. Undoubtedly, Smith was attempting to transcribe the vocalizations of the Algonquins who lived near Virginia’s Jamestown colony. They may have pronounced the word arakunem (which translates as “he who scratches with his hands”) as “ahrah-koon-em.” “Raccoon” is derived from arakun, the shortened version of arakunem. In 1612, Smith used another spelling for it: “There is a beast they call Aroughcun, much like a badger, but vseth [sic] to live on trees as Squirrels doe [sic].” He also spelled its plural form as aroucouns and rarocuns. Several years ago, archaeologists found a raccoon skull from the seventeenth century near what might be Jamestown Fort on Virginia’s Jamestown Island. The teeth are so worn that it probably lived for an unusually long time, perhaps as a pet. Though the main character in the popular 1995 Disney movie Pocahontas did indeed have a raccoon pal named Meeko, the real princess is just as likely to have had one for dinner.

By the seventeenth century, various tribes in the Great Lakes region were apparently involved in the fur trade. While the beaver was its primary focus, raccoon pelts were also traded. The area near the southern shore of Lake Erie, the southernmost Great Lake, was close to the northern limit of the raccoon’s distribution in this part of the continent. Thus, the region’s northern tribes initially might not have recognized the raccoon pelts offered by those from its southern reaches. A northern Huron tribe may have been the first there to use the term “big-tailed” for both the pelts and the tribes bearing them, and the other local tribes evidently adopted this label. These southern fur traders hence became known as “people of the long-tailed ones” and the nearby lake was called “lake of the long-tailed ones.” The French settlers in this area transcribed the Huron terms for these as iri or eri, often adding the suffix a-chis (which meant “of this kind”), thus producing the name irabachis. The English colonists spelled this as ee-ree-a-gee, which then again was shortened to erie. This is why the southernmost Great Lake is named Erie, as was the tribe of fur traders from its southern shore.

In 1612, the famed explorer Samuel de Champlain had a map drawn of Lake Erie with a sketch of a raccoon at its northern corner. It included the first written record of the term iribachis to identify both the lake and its namesake animal. Curiously though, the area’s French settlers apparently used the word iri to describe a wild cat, perhaps the bobcat, and labeled the Erie people as les Chats and la nation de Chat. (Conversely, the Canadian French term chat sauvage, though defined as “wild cat,” may have referred to the raccoon; a seventeenth-century description of the area’s “wild cats” appears to depict one.) It seems highly doubtful though that the Huron words iri or eri originally referred to a cat. In all likelihood, both the lake and the tribe were named after the raccoon. After all, the Erie’s distinctive fur blankets that had tails around their edges were undoubtedly made from raccoon pelts. Yet even today, many of the people in this area still seem to assume that Erie refers to a mountain lion. This confusion could have originated with the French mistaking what the natives called an iri for a wild cat, or possibly with the English settlers who thought that the French were referring to a cat.

In any event, of all of the North American tribes, the raccoon has been most closely associated with the Erie. The name actually refers to several tribes centered in northwestern New York south of Lake Erie who seem to have been culturally and linguistically connected to various Northern Iroquoian people. This categorization, however, is based on seventeenth century French accounts; no Erie words have ever been recorded. There is, at best, an incomplete understanding of this group because of a lack of recorded contact with the European settlers. By the mid-seventeenth century, they had dispersed from the lake area and ultimately disappeared.

Other early descriptions of the raccoon include those of John Lawson and Mark Catesby from the first half of the eighteenth century, who both reported its occurrence in the Carolinas. During that period, Hans Sloane stated that it was common in the mountains of Jamaica, which is odd given that no specimens have been found on this island. In the 1730s, Nathaniel Bailey’s English dictionary and other works listed the “raccoon” as a New England animal, whereas the “rattoon” was described as a comparable form in the West Indies. Undoubtedly, these were simply different names for the common raccoon and the various island species.

Just as it is logical to assume that Native Americans would have made use of raccoons wherever they were abundant, the early European settlers in North America must have also used them to satisfy various needs. Their fur was probably converted into coats, cushions, covers, and, of course, the ubiquitous cap. The size, shape, and thickness of the raccoon’s pelt made it a common choice for a winter hat, as evidenced by the numerous illustrations of frontiersmen wearing them. Even before the Revolutionary War, it was recognized as a symbol of the frontier, due in part to the popularity of the legendary backwoodsman Daniel Boone (1734– 1820). Benjamin Franklin himself is said to have donned one rather than wear the traditional wig while on his 1776 journey to France.

There is an amusing tale about the raccoon hat from the Revolutionary War. Financial support for the war effort was often lacking, so much so that the Continental soldiers could not count on having adequate uniforms. Consequently, some resorted to wearing their caps in the winter months. In New Jersey, several units had so many men wearing them that they were supposedly teased about enlisting raccoons. They were greeted with shouts of “Oh, you Raccoons!”

The raccoon has clearly been an intriguing part of our history. Its ongoing success in North America ensures that it will remain a fascinating part of our culture for many generations to come.

Read more in Raccoons, which is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit Smithsonian Books’ website to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from Raccoons © 2002 by the Smithsonian Institution
 

Samuel I. Zeveloff | Read More

Dr. Samuel I. Zeveloff is a professor of zoology at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He is the author of the book Mammals of the Intermountain West (University of Utah Press, 1988) and the senior editor of two other volumes on wilderness issues. He received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wyoming.