In Beaver World by Enos A. Mills

All Indian tribes in North America appear to have had one or more legends concerning the beaver. Most of these legends credit him with being a worthy and industrious fellow, and the Cherokees are said to trace their origin to a sacred and practical beaver. Many of the tribes had a legend which told that long, long ago the Great Waters surged around a shoreless world. These waters were peopled with beaver, beaver of a gigantic size. These, along with the Great Spirit, dived and brought up quantities of mud and shaped this into the hills and dales, the mountains where the cataracts plunged and sang, and all the caves and canyons. The scattered boulders and broken crags upon the earth were the missiles thrown by evil spirits, who in the beginning of things endeavored to hinder and prevent the constructive work of creation.

The beaver has been found in fossil both in Europe and in America. Remnants of the dugout and the teeth of beaver, together with rude stone implements of primitive man, have been found in England. Near Albany, New York, gnawed beaver wood and the remains of a mastodon were dug up from about forty feet below the surface in sediment and river ooze. Fossil beaver were of enormous size.