Part 26

Nothing, so far as the author knows, has been advanced upon the subject of a male grizzly’s paternal virtues or conjugal affections. As is the rule with fierce beasts, offspring depend upon the mother for care and protection. Two or three cubs are born together in spring, and they have been seen in her company from infancy up to an age when apparently able to shift for themselves. Very little is known, however, about the important subject of their training, the length of time during which they are under tutelage, or the degree to which tenderness and solicitude are developed in females of this species by maternity. A tigress robbed of her young has become a familiar simile for expressing desperation and inappeasable anger, but it has little foundation in truth, and many reports to the same effect in this animal’s case, appear upon a wide survey of the evidence to be equally doubtful. Colonel R. I. Dodge (“Plains of the Great West”) most likely comes as near the truth as it is possible for any one to do in the present state of knowledge, when he remarks that although a she-bear will often fight desperately in defence of her cubs, it is just as probable that they may be abandoned to their fate if the mother supposes herself to be in danger.

As might be imagined, grizzly bears can, for the most part, only be got the better of by being killed. They are occasionally trapped, however. The instrument is an ordinary toothed spring trap, to which a log is attached by a chain. When sprung it is impossible either to break or unloose it, and the furious animal goes off with the entire apparatus, but is much hampered by this encumbrance, and leaves a trail as easily followed as a turnpike.

Of necessity such a beast of prey as this has gathered around it a perfect fog of superstitions, traditions, false beliefs, and incredible stories. The author is familiar with the scenes in which most of these exploits and wonders are said to have been wrought, as well as with the men who relate and oftentimes believe them. As a class, they are not perhaps greatly superior in culture and mental discipline to those savages among whom their lives have been passed. Like them, their observations are generally accurate, and the inferences drawn from experience absurd. Travellers who associate with undeveloped men anywhere soon learn to make this distinction. Moreover, the trapper or hunter seen in general and most frequently met with in books, no more resembles some exceptional members of this class, than that blustering, melodramatic assassin, the would-be desperado, does the quiet, self-contained fighting-man of the frontier, and a wider difference than these classes present cannot be found among alien species in nature. If one is fortunate enough to find favor in the eyes of a true mountain man, he will do well to listen to what is said, and compare as many experiences with him as possible.

Among reports most rife upon the border is this, that if a fugitive pursued by a grizzly bear keeps a straight line around a hillside, the animal is certain to get either above or below him. The writer has heard men swear that they have tried this and seen it tried, but would be loath to trust in this device himself. Many persons are also convinced of the truth of a very prevalent account to the effect that a puma can kill one of these bears, and frequently does so. Nothing can be offered on the basis of personal experience or observation either in corroboration or rebuttal of this opinion. We have seen that there are good grounds for crediting the fact of Indian wild dogs assaulting tigers successfully, and the same is not impossible in this instance. Theodore Roosevelt (“Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”) says “any one of the big bears we killed on the mountains would, I should think, have been able to make short work of a lion or a tiger.” At the same time he remarks that either of the latter “would be fully as dangerous to a hunter or other human being, on account of the superior speed of its charge, the lightning-like rapidity of its movements, and its apparently sharper senses.” The fact of an animal’s antagonist being a man has evidently no relation to the question of relative prowess. Those advantages attributed to _Felidæ_ must of course tell in conflict with any animal proportionately to the degree in which they exceeded like traits upon the part of an adversary. Cougars greatly excel the grizzly bear in those qualities mentioned, but how far they might counterbalance its great superiority in strength is another matter.

Nearly all that has been said of the subject of this sketch relates to his behavior towards human beings. Records of that character are not wanting, and it should be possible to give a correct idea of the grizzly as he appears in literature without overloading the text with quotations. Those traits to be considered in this connection are courage, ferocity, aggressiveness, and tenacity of life, all of which are represented very differently, according as the writers describe them from hearsay or personal observation, and as they refer to animals existing in dissimilar times and places, with or without reference to the fact that this is a creature which has undergone much modification under unlike conditions of existence. No one can delineate the features of this species in its entirety, but most persons attempt to do so, and their accounts are liable to the same objections which have been made to premature conclusions and want of discrimination in other instances.

The statements of those who know this animal do not disagree very conspicuously with respect to its character as a formidable foe. Dr. Elliott Coues, who, besides being a distinguished naturalist, had opportunities for acquiring a special knowledge of the grizzly bear, speaks of it in his “History of the Expedition of Lewis and Clark” in terms which afford a curious contrast to those of men who were less well informed. In mentioning the difficulties encountered by these explorers, he observes that “this bear was found to be so numerous and so fierce, especially in the upper Missouri region, as to more than once endanger the lives of the party, and form an impediment to the progress of the expedition.” Lord Dunraven says that on “The Great Divide” these bears “did not appear to mind the proximity of our camp in the least, or to take any notice of us or our tracks. A grizzly is an independent kind of beast, and has a good deal of don’t-care-a-damnativeness about him.” Godman asserts that it is “justly considered to be the most dreadful and dangerous of American quadrupeds,” while Audubon and Bachman, and, it may be added, the great majority of all who have had any personal acquaintance with the brute, refer to it in a similar way. Frederick Schwatka, for example, reports that “everywhere in his dismal dominions at the north he is religiously avoided by the native hunter.... Although he is not hunted, encounters with him are not unknown, as he is savage enough to become the hunter himself at times.... Indian fear of the great brown bear I found to be coextensive with all my travels in Alaska and the British Northwest Territory.”

The other side in these opinions is represented by nobody more positively than Alfred G. Brehm (“Thierleben”). So far as one can judge from his work, he knew the animal of which he writes only by report, and if the text of his article is to be taken as an indication of the authorities consulted upon this subject, they were so few that it is not surprising he wandered far from reality. This author’s views upon the character of _Ursus horribilis_ may be thus given in English: “In its habits the gray bear is similar to ours; like these, it hibernates; but its walk is staggering and uncertain, and all its motions are heavier.” Brehm states that in youth the grizzly climbs trees, that he is a good swimmer, “a thorough thief, and is strong enough to overpower every creature in his native country.” When lassoed, he can drag up the horse. “Former writers have characterized him as a terrible and vicious animal that shows no fear of man, but, on the contrary, pursues him, whether mounted or on foot, armed or unarmed.... On all these grounds the hunter who has overcome Old Ephraim, as the bear is called, becomes the wonder and admiration of all mankind,” including the Indians. “Among all their tribes the possession of a necklace of bears’ claws and teeth gives its wearer a distinction which a prince or successful general scarcely enjoys among us.” He must, however, have slain the animal from which these trophies were taken, himself. “Statements of this nature,” remarks Brehm, “are some of them false and others greatly exaggerated. They were spread and believed at a time when the far West was but little visited, and when the public demanded an exciting story about a much dreaded animal that was fitted to play in the New World the same part that the famous beasts of prey did in the Old.” This, with much more to the same effect; and then, after a passing notice that Pechuel and Loesche found no grizzlies that would stand, he quotes General Marcy at length to show that they are rather harmless, cowardly, contemptible creatures, and dismisses the beast in disgrace.

Marcy relates (“Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border”) that when he reached the haunts of grizzly bears, he expected to see destructive monsters in a perpetual rage, like Buffon’s tigers. It was his belief that they would attack mounted men with rifles as soon as they came in sight, that these bears desired nothing more than to fight, in season and out of it, irrespective of time, place, or circumstances, and without reference to odds or any former experiences of the results. Not finding any such extraordinarily besotted idiots as this, the soldier, who seems to have been as fit to decide upon questions of comparative psychology as he was to give opinions in canon-law, became possessed with conceptions that are counterparts of those announced by Brehm. Those extracts made from the latter were taken from a very voluminous and undoubtedly valuable work on natural history, but its author has said nothing concerning the anomaly of a beast of prey twice as large as a lion and fully as well armed, being naturally timid and inoffensive, nor offered any suggestions with respect to those conditions which changed what must necessarily have been the brute’s inherited character, before it began to avoid mankind; neither has he, apparently, taken more than the briefest glance at those accounts of the grizzly which give the results of personal observation. This animal is not customarily a hibernating one, it is not in the habit of climbing trees at any age, its reputation was far from being the outcome of a demand made by popular credulity. A grizzly bear could easily drag a horse up to him if he had hold of its riata. The Indian who killed one single-handed with a bow and arrows or trade-gun performed a feat second to none that can be imagined in the way of skill and daring, but thousands of rifle-carrying mountain men have done the like who took small credit to themselves, and got little from anybody else. This whole description is, considering its source, of the most surprising and unexpected character.

There are not many accounts of grizzly bears declining to fight; but it is evident that in this respect the animal, like every other beast that has been discussed, is more or less aggressive, according to the locality where it is found. Those bears Lewis and Clark encountered on the Upper Missouri in 1804, are like the grizzlies of the Yukon to-day, but their relations, that have been shot for nearly a century, know about rifles and conduct themselves accordingly. Theodore Roosevelt (“Still Hunting the Grizzly”) expresses this change very well. “Now-a-days,” he observes, “these great bears are much better aware than formerly of the death-dealing power of man, and, as a consequence, are far less fierce than was the case with their forefathers.... Constant contact with rifle-carrying hunters for a period extending over many generations of bear life, has taught the grizzly, by bitter experience, that man is his undoubted overlord, so far as fighting goes; and this knowledge has become a hereditary characteristic.” With every advantage in arms, it is yet as dangerous to meet this brute fairly as to encounter a tiger on foot; and wherever that superiority has not been of long standing, grizzlies act like those that stalked Clark, charged Fremont, confronted Long, and killed Ross Cox’s voyageur on the Columbia.

Colonel Dodge, referring to those that had become familiar with firearms, says that “a grizzly never attacks unless when wounded, or when he is cornered.” This is, however, too general a statement. As one rides out of the Tejon Pass into the Tulare Valley, there is, a little to the right, an indentation or pocket in the foot-hills, in front of which stand some huge bowlders. From behind one of them a bear rushed out and destroyed the famous Andrew Sublette before he had an opportunity to defend himself. So far as that goes, the result might have been equally fatal if he had fired, for the writer used to carry his rifle, and it was far too light a weapon for such game as this. Goday, who was as renowned a paladin of the plains as he, related the circumstances of his death, and said that many similar cases had occurred in his experience. He added that one night, while sitting, as we were then, by the hearth of his little house at the mountain’s base, there was a commotion outside at the corral, and going out in the darkness to see what was wrong, an immense bear rushed at him, and it was only by an instant that he got inside first. Many persons have been assailed by grizzly bears they never saw until too late, and the writer, except for the good fortune of being pitched over a precipice, would have been another. Some authors have a curious way of accounting for these incidents. They say that they occur because the animal was actually cornered, or if that statement cannot be made to fit the circumstances, its attack is attributed to an impression that it could not get away. There is no need to dwell upon this explanation. It is merely a blank assertion upon the part of those who know nothing about what the beast thinks or feels, and it is plainly one-sided in so far as it omits to take cognizance of the constitutional temper and tendencies of the creature whose acts are discussed.

No writer of any note except General Marcy has, so far as the author knows, denied that a grizzly bear soon comes to bay, and that he then devotes his energies to destruction with entire single-mindedness. Those who have met him, alike with those who have acquainted themselves with any completeness with the observations of others, know that this brute’s patience under aggression is of the briefest, and his inherent ferocity easily aroused. When it is injured, the animal is exceptionally desperate, and fights from the first as a lion, tiger, and jaguar are apt to do only in their death rally. Colonel Dodge expresses the best opinions upon this point in saying that “when wounded, a grizzly bear attacks with the utmost ferocity, and regardless of the number or nature of his assailants. Then he is without doubt the most formidable and dangerous of wild beasts.”

“In some way it has come about,” says Lockwood, “that ... Bruin has secured for himself an almost superstitious respect.” The way he did so has just been mentioned. Men had reason to fear him, and their veneration followed as a matter of course. It was because he proved “most formidable and dangerous” that Schwatka found among the Chilkat Indians the highest clan called brown bears, and for a like reason the native warrior wore his claws as a badge of honor.

Ferocity, prowess, and tenacity of life appear most conspicuously in accounts of actual conflict. Enough has been said with respect to the first-named trait, and no one ever called the others in question. Major Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”) is of the opinion that grizzly bears should only be met with the heaviest rifles--“bone-smashers,” as Sir Samuel Baker calls them. Lighter weapons are too often ineffectual, and Dall (“Alaska and its Resources”) reports that when the poorly armed natives of that province occasionally venture upon an assault of this kind, they assemble in large parties, watch the bear into the recesses of its den, block up the entrance with timber prepared for this purpose, and fire volleys into him as he tries to get at them. It will be denied by some, on anatomical grounds, that the Alaskan bears are grizzlies, but we are not concerned here with structural distinctions, and in character there is no difference. Colonel Dodge mentions the case of two soldiers at Fort Wingate who had an unfortunate encounter with one of these beasts, but does not give the details. Roosevelt, however, had the tale from the surgeon who attended them, and relates it (“Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”) as follows: “The men were mail-carriers, and one day did not come in at the appointed time. Next day a relief party was sent out to look for them, and after some search found the bodies of both, as well as that of one of the horses. One of the men still showed signs of life; he came to his senses before dying, and told his story. They had seen a grizzly and pursued it on horseback, with their Spencer rifles. On coming close, one fired into its side, when it turned, with marvellous quickness for so large and unwieldy an animal, and struck down the horse, at the same time inflicting a ghastly wound upon the rider. The other man dismounted and came up to the rescue of his companion. The bear then left the latter and attacked him. Although hit by the bullet, it charged home and thrust the man down, and then lay on him and deliberately bit him to death, while his groans and cries were frightful to hear. Afterward it walked off into the bushes, without again offering to molest the already mortally wounded victim of his first assault.”

It is commonly believed that feigning death will prevent a bear from inflicting further injuries. In many cases this is no doubt the case. Few unwounded animals tear a dead body, except in the act of devouring it. This stratagem must always be of doubtful efficacy, since beasts of prey would generally be acute enough to detect it. The ruse, however, may have been tried upon grizzlies with success; they are not brilliant beasts, so far as can be discovered; but this device sometimes fails. A hunter told the writer, over their camp-fire in the Sierra Nevada, of his brother’s death, which he witnessed. They were shooting in those mountains, and he was on a steep escarpment of rock, his companion in the ravine beneath. A deer was roused and shot by the latter, when a large bear rushed upon him, struck the rifle out of his hands, and knocked him down, but without causing any serious injury. He said that he dared not fire for fear of infuriating the animal, and shouted to his brother to pretend to be dead. This was done; the beast walked round him, smelt at his body, and finally lay down close beside it. Suddenly he seized upon one of the arms and bit it savagely. The unfortunate man probably could not control respiration sufficiently, or there was some involuntary muscular movement. At all events, this is what happened, and the pain caused him to start up with a loud cry, upon which the bear rose erect, grasped him with his arms, and, in the language of the narrator, “bit the top of his head off clean.”

Roosevelt relates that a neighbor of his, “out on a mining trip, was prospecting with two other men near the head-water of the Little Missouri, in the Black Hills country. They were walking down along the river, and came to a point of land thrust out into it, which was densely covered with brush and fallen timber. Two of the party walked round by the edge of the stream; but the third, a German, and a very powerful fellow, followed a well-beaten game trail leading through the bushy point. When they were some forty yards apart, these two men heard an agonized shout from the German, and at the same time the loud coughing growl or roar of a bear. They turned just in time to see their companion struck a terrible blow on the head by a grizzly, which must have been roused from its lair by his almost stepping on it; so close was it that he had no time to fire his rifle, but merely held it up over his head as a guard. Of course it was struck down, the claws of the great brute at the same time shattering his skull like an eggshell. Yet the man staggered on some ten feet before he fell; but when he did, he never spoke or moved again. The two others killed the bear after a short, brisk struggle, as he was in the midst of a most determined charge.”

Everybody makes an oversight sometimes, and although this accomplished sportsman and careful writer is very free from the blemishes that usually disfigure observers of wild beasts, there is a slip of the pen here. How did he know this bear was not waiting for the man it killed? Nobody saw it until in the act of striking, and why the brute “_must_ have been roused from its lair by his almost stepping upon it” does not appear. There is at least a probability that its acute senses warned it of the approach of a heavy man walking carelessly through brush, and of two others tramping round the cover within forty yards.

The bear’s temper, disposition, and power of offence seem to be underrated with respect to the species at large. Whether because its appearance is less impressive than that of animals which have gathered about them most of the world’s gossip, or for any other reason to which this inappreciation may be attributed, both in Europe, Asia, and America, the _Ursidæ_ in general have undoubtedly less reputation than they seem to deserve, and less than the deeds they do and have done in all countries would apparently have brought with them as a matter of course. Poorly armed and primitive populations throughout the earth think differently, however, about them. In the folk-lore of Europe and Asia this creature is conspicuous. The great hunters write of it in a respectful strain. No man who ever stood before an enraged bear thought lightly of its prowess. A host of well-known names are appended to statements concerning destructive arctoids in the Scandinavian Mountains and the Pyrenees, in the Himalayas and Caucasus, the highlands of Central India, and the forests and plains north and south of “the stony girdle of the world.”

There is every reason why this beast should be formidable wherever it has not encountered modern weapons; and that it is so its whole literature attests. Richardson’s name (“Fauna Boreali Americana”), _Ursus ferox_, translates his own experiences and those of native tribes. Colonel Pollock (“Natural History Notes”) asserts that “in Assam bears are far more destructive to human life than tigers,” and more than one authoritative statement to the same effect has been made concerning those of India. It happens curiously that the ancient documents of China preserve the descriptive title which has been conferred upon the great bear of America. In Dr. Legge’s edition of the Chinese Classics, the Bamboo Books have a note appended by some native scholiast to Part I., relating to the reign of Hwang-te, in which his general Ying-lung, while fighting against Ch’e-yew, is said to have been assisted by “tigers, panthers, bears, and _gristly (grizzly) bears_.”