True Bear Stories Part 1

True Bear Stories.

by Joaquin Miller.

PREFACE.

_My Bright Young Reader_: I was once exactly your own age. Like all boys, I was, from the first, fond of bear stories, and above all, I did not like stories that seemed the least bit untrue. I always preferred a natural and reasonable story and one that would instruct as well as interest. This I think best for us all, and I have acted on this line in compiling these comparatively few bear stories from a long life of action in our mountains and up and down the continent.

As a rule, the modern bear is not a b.l.o.o.d.y, bad fellow, whatever he may have been in Bible days. You read, almost any circus season, about the killing of his keeper by a lion, a tiger, a panther, or even the dreary old elephant, but you never hear of a tame bear's hurting anybody.

I suppose you have been told, and believe, that bears will eat boys, good or bad, if they meet them in the woods. This is not true. On the contrary, there are several well-authenticated cases, in Germany mostly, where bears have taken lost children under their protection, one boy having been reared from the age of four to sixteen by a she bear without ever seeing the face of man.

I have known several persons to be maimed or killed in battles with bears, but in every case it was not the bear that began the fight, and in all my experience of about half a century I never knew a bear to eat human flesh, as does the tiger and like beasts.

Each branch of the bear family is represented here and each has its characteristics. By noting these as you go along you may learn something not set down in the schoolbooks. For the bear is a shy old hermit and is rarely encountered in his wild state by anyone save the hardy hunter, whose only interest in the event is to secure the skin and carca.s.s.

Of course, now and then, a man of science meets a bear in the woods, but the meeting is of short duration. If the bear does not leave, the man of books does, and so we seldom get his photograph as he really appears in his wild state. The first and only bear I ever saw that seemed to be sitting for his photograph was the swamp, or "sloth,"

bear--Ursus l.a.b.i.atus--found in the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi River. You will read of an encounter with him further on.

I know very well that there exists a good deal of bad feeling between boys and bears, particularly on the part of boys. The trouble began, I suppose, about the time when that old she bear destroyed more than forty boys at a single meeting, for poking fun at a good old prophet.

And we read that David, when a boy, got very angry at a she bear and slew her single-handed and alone for interfering with his flock. So you see the feud between the boy and bear family is an old one indeed.

But I am bound to say that I have found much that is pathetic, and something that is almost half-human, in this poor, s.h.a.ggy, shuffling hermit. He doesn't want much, only the wildest and most worthless parts of the mountains or marshes, where, if you will let him alone, he will let you alone, as a rule. Sometimes, out here in California, he loots a pig-pen, and now and then he gets among the bees. Only last week, a little black bear got his head fast in a bee-hive that had been improvised from a nail-keg, and the bee-farmer killed him with a pitchfork; but it is only when hungry and far from home that he seriously molests us.

The bear is a wise beast. This is, perhaps, because he never says anything. Next to the giraffe, which you may know never makes any noise or note whatever, notwithstanding the wonderful length of his throat, the bear is the most noiseless of beasts. With his nose to the ground all the time, standing up only now and then to pull a wild plum or pick a bunch of grapes, or knock a man down if he must, he seems to me like some weary old traveler that has missed the right road of life and doesn't quite know what to do with himself. Ah! if he would only lift up his nose and look about over this beautiful world, as the Indians say the grizzly bear was permitted to do before he disobeyed and got into trouble, an account of which you will find further on, why, the bear might be less a bear.

Stop here and reflect on how much there is in keeping your face well lifted. The pig with his snout to the ground will be forever a pig; the bear will be a bear to the end of his race, because he will not hold up his head in the world; but the horse--look at the horse!

However, our business is with the bear now.

INTRODUCTORY NOTES.

The bear is the most human of all the beasts. He is not the most man-like in anatomy, nor the nearest in the line of evolution. The likeness is rather in his temper and way of doing things and in the vicissitudes of his life. He is a savage, of course, but most men are that--wild members of a wild fauna--and, like wild men, the bear is a clumsy, good-natured blunderer, eating with his fingers in default of a knife, and preferring any day a mouthful of berries to the excitement of a fight.

In this book Joaquin Miller has tried to show us the bear as he is, not the traditional bear of the story-books. In season and out of season, the bear has been represented always the same bear, "as much alike as so many English n.o.blemen in evening dress," and always as a b.l.o.o.d.y bear.

Mr. Miller insists that there are bears and bears, as unlike one another in nature and action as so many horses, hogs or goats. This much they have in common--_bears are never cruel_. They are generally full of homely, careless kindness, and are very fond of music as well as of honey, blackberries, nuts, fish and other delicacies of the savage feast.

The matter of season affects a bear's temper and looks as the time of the day affects those of a man.

He goes to bed in the fall, when the fish and berry season is over, fat and happy, with no fight in him. He comes out in spring, just as good-natured, if not so fat. But the hot sun melts him down. His hungry hunt for roots, bugs, ants and small game makes him lean and cross. His claws grow long, his hair is unkempt and he is soon a s.h.a.ggy ghost of himself, looking "like a second-hand sofa with the stuffing coming out," and in this out-at-elbows condition he loses his own self-respect.

Mr. Miller has strenuously insisted that bears of the United States are of more than one or two species. In this he has the unqualified support of the latest scientific investigations. Not long ago naturalists were disposed to recognize but three kinds of bear in North America. These are the polar bear, the black bear, and the grizzly bear, and even the grizzly was thought doubtful, a slight variation of the bear of Europe.

But the careful study of bears' skulls has changed all that, and our highest authority on bears, Dr. C. Hart Merriam of the Department of Agriculture, now recognizes not less than ten species of bear in the limits of the United States and Alaska.

In his latest paper (1896), a "Preliminary Synopsis of the American Bears," Dr. Merriam groups these animals as follows:

I. POLAR BEARS.

1. POLAR BEAR: _Thalarctos maritimus_ Linnaeus. Found on all Arctic sh.o.r.es.

II. BLACK BEARS.

2. COMMON BLACK BEAR (sometimes brown or cinnamon): _Ursus america.n.u.s_ Pallas. Found throughout the United States.

3. YELLOW BEAR (sometimes black or brown): _Ursus luteolus_ Griffith.

Swamps of Louisiana and Texas.

4. EVERGLADE BEAR: _Ursus florida.n.u.s_ Merriam. Everglades of Florida.

5. GLACIER BEAR: _Ursus emmonsi_ Dall. About Mount St. Elias.

III. GRIZZLY BEARS.

6. THE GRIZZLY BEAR: _Ursus horribilis_ Ord. Found in the western parts of North America.

Under this species are four varieties: the original _horribilis_, or Rocky Mountain grizzly, from Montana to the Great Basin of Utah; the variety _californicus_ Merriam, the California grizzly, from the Sierra Nevada; variety _horriaeus_ Baird, the Sonora grizzly, from Arizona and the South; and variety _alascensis_ Merriam, the Alaska grizzly, from Alaska.

7. THE BARREN GROUND BEAR: _Ursus richardsoni_ Mayne Reid. A kind of grizzly found about Hudson Bay.

IV. GREAT BROWN BEARS.

8. THE YAKUTAT BEAR: _Ursus dalli_ Merriam. From about Mount St.

Elias.

9. THE SITKA BEAR: _Ursus sitkensis_ Merriam. From about Sitka.

10. THE KADIAK BEAR: _Ursus middendorfi_ Merriam. From Kadiak and the Peninsula of Alaska.

These three bears are even larger than the grizzly, and the Kadiak Bear is the largest of all the land bears of the world. It prowls about over the moss of the mountains, feeding on berries and fish.

The sea-bear, _Callorhinus ursinus_, which we call the fur seal, is also a cousin of the bear, having much in common with its bear ancestors of long ago, but neither that nor its relations, the sea-lion and the walrus, are exactly bears to-day.

Of all the real bears, Mr. Miller treats of five in the pages of this little book. All the straight "bear stories" relate to _Ursus america.n.u.s_, as most bear stories in our country do. The grizzly stories treat of _Ursus horribilis californicus_. The lean bear of the Louisiana swamps is _Ursus luteolus_, and the Polar Bear is _Thalarctos maritimus_. The author of the book has tried without intrusion of technicalities to bring the distinctive features of the different bears before the reader and to instruct as well as to interest children and children's parents in the simple realities of bear life.

DAVID STARR JORDAN.

Leland Stanford, Jr., University.