the skin so that we would not be disposed to tell how he had "treed a
bear." But I trust not, for he was a very generous-hearted fellow.
Anyhow, we never told the story while he lived.
VIII.
BILL CROSS AND HIS PET BEAR.
When my father settled down at the foot of the Oregon Sierras with his
little family, long, long years ago, it was about forty miles from our
place to the nearest civilized settlement.
People were very scarce in those days, and bears, as said before, were
very plenty. We also had wolves, wild-cats, wild cattle, wild hogs,
and a good many long-tailed and big-headed yellow Californian lions.
The wild cattle, brought there from Spanish Mexico, next to the bear,
were most to be feared. They had long, sharp horns and keen, sharp
hoofs. Nature had gradually helped them out in these weapons of
defense. They had grown to be slim and trim in body, and were as
supple and swift as deer. They were the deadly enemies of all wild
beasts; because all wild beasts devoured their young.
When fat and saucy, in warm summer weather, these cattle would hover
along the foothills in bands, hiding in the hollows, and would begin
to bellow whenever they saw a bear or a wolf, or even a man or boy, if
on foot, crossing the wide valley of grass and blue camas blossoms.
Then there would be music! They would start up, with heads and tails
in the air, and, broadening out, left and right, they would draw a
long bent line, completely shutting off their victim from all approach
to the foothills. If the unfortunate victim were a man or boy on foot,
he generally made escape up one of the small ash trees that dotted the
valley in groves here and there, and the cattle would then soon give
up the chase. But if it were a wolf or any other wild beast that could
not get up a tree, the case was different. Far away, on the other side
of the valley, where dense woods lined the banks of the winding
Willamette river, the wild, bellowing herd would be answered. Out from
the edge of the woods would stream, right and left, two long,
corresponding, surging lines, bellowing and plunging forward now and
then, their heads to the ground, their tails always in the air and
their eyes aflame, as if they would set fire to the long gray grass.
With the precision and discipline of a well-ordered army, they would
close in upon the wild beast, too terrified now to either fight or
fly, and, leaping upon him, one after another, with their long, sharp
hoofs, he would, in a little time, be crushed into an unrecognizable
mass. Not a bone would be left unbroken. It is a mistake to suppose
that they ever used their long, sharp horns in attack. These were used
only in defense, the same as elk or deer, falling on the knees and
receiving the enemy on their horns, much as the Old Guard received the
French in the last terrible struggle at Waterloo.
Bill Cross was a "tender foot" at the time of which I write, and a
sailor, at that. Now, the old pilgrims who had dared the plains in
those days of '49, when cowards did not venture and the weak died on
the way, had not the greatest respect for the courage or endurance of
those who had reached Oregon by ship. But here was this man, a sailor
by trade, settling down in the interior of Oregon, and, strangely
enough, pretending to know more about everything in general and bears
in particular than either my father or any of his boys!
He had taken up a piece of land down in the pretty Camas Valley where
the grass grew long and strong and waved in the wind, mobile and
beautiful as the mobile sea.
The good-natured and self-complacent old sailor liked to watch the
waving grass. It reminded him of the sea, I reckon. He would sometimes
sit on our little porch as the sun went down and tell us boys strange,
wild sea stories. He had traveled far and seen much, as much as any
man can see on water, and maybe was not a very big liar, for a
sailor, after all. We liked his tales. He would not work, and so he
paid his way with stories of the sea. The only thing about him that we
did not like, outside of his chronic idleness, was his exalted opinion
of himself and his unconcealed contempt for everybody's opinion but
his own.
"Bill," said my father one day, "those black Spanish cattle will get
after that red sash and sailor jacket of yours some day when you go
down in the valley to your claim, and they won't leave a grease spot.
Better go horseback, or at least take a gun, when you go down next
time."
"Pshaw! Squire. I wish I had as many dollars as I ain't afeard of all
the black Spanish cattle in Oregon. Why, if they're so blasted
dangerous, how did your missionaries ever manage to drive them up here
from Mexico, anyhow?"
Still, for all that, the very next time that he saw the old sailor
setting out at his snail pace for his ranch below, slow and indolent
as if on the deck of a ship, my father insisted that he should go on
horseback, or at least take a gun.
"Pooh, pooh! I wouldn't be bothered with a horse or a gun. Say, I'm
goin' to bring your boys a pet bear some day."
And so, cocking his little hat down over his right eye and thrusting
his big hands into his deep pockets almost to the elbows, he slowly
and lazily whistled himself down the gradual slope of the foothills,
waist deep in the waving grass and delicious wild flowers, and soon
was lost to sight in the great waving sea.
Two things may be here written down. He wouldn't ride a horse because
he couldn't, and for the same reason he wouldn't use a gun. Again let
it be written down, also, that the reason he was going away that warm
autumn afternoon was that there was some work to do. These facts were
clear to my kind and indulgent father; but of course we boys never
thought of it, and laid our little shoulders to the hard work of
helping father lift up the long, heavy poles that were to complete the
corral around our pioneer log cabin, and we really hoped and half
believed that he might bring home a little pet bear.
This stout log corral had become an absolute necessity. It was high
and strong, and made of poles or small logs stood on end in a trench,
after the fashion of a primitive fort or stout stockade. There was but
one opening, and that was a very narrow one in front of the cabin
door. Here it was proposed to put up a gate. We also had talked about
port-holes in the corners of the corral, but neither gate nor
port-holes were yet made. In fact, as said before, the serene and
indolent man of the sea always slowly walked away down through the
grass toward his untracked claim whenever there was anything said
about port-holes, posts or gates.
Father and we three little boys had only got the last post set and
solidly "tamped" in the ground as the sun was going down.
Suddenly we heard a yell; then a yelling, then a bellowing. The
yelling was heard in the high grass in the Camas Valley below, and the
bellowing of cattle came from the woody river banks far beyond.
Then up on the brown hills of the Oregon Sierras above us came the
wild answer of the wild black cattle of the hills, and a moment later,
right and left, the long black lines began to widen out; then down
they came, like a whirlwind, toward the black and surging line in the
grass below. We were now almost in the center of what would, in a
little time, be a complete circle and cyclone of furious Spanish
cattle.
And now, here is something curious to relate. Our own cows, poor,
weary, immigrant cows of only a year before, tossed their tails in the
air, pawed the ground, bellowed and fairly went wild in the splendid
excitement and tumult. One touch of nature made the whole cow world
kin!
Father clambered up on a "buck-horse" and looked out over the
stockade; and then he shouted and shook his hat and laughed as I had
never heard him laugh before. For there, breathless, coatless,
hatless, came William Cross, Esq., two small wolves and a very small
black bear! They were all making good time, anywhere, anyway, to
escape the frantic cattle. Father used to say afterwards, when telling
about this little incident, that "it was nip and tuck between the
four, and hard to say which was ahead." The cattle had made quite a
"round-up."
They all four straggled in at the narrow little gate at about the same
time, the great big, lazy sailor in a hurry, for the first time in his
life.
But think of the coolness of the man, as he turned to us children with
his first gasp of breath, and said, "Bo--bo--boys, I've
bro--bro--brought you a little bear!"
The wolves were the little chicken thieves known as coyotes, quite
harmless, as a rule, so far as man is concerned, but the cattle hated
them and they were terrified nearly to death.
The cattle stopped a few rods from the stockade. We let the coyotes
go, but we kept the little bear and named him Bill Cross. Yet he was
never a bit cross, despite his name.
IX.
THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR.
(Ursus Ferox.)
"The Indians have unbounded reverence for this bear. When they kill
one, they make exculpating speeches to it, smoke tobacco to it, call
it grandfather, ancestor, etc."
P. MARTIN DUNCAN, M. B., F. R. S., F. G. S.
Kings College, London.
The Indians with whom I once lived in the Californian Sierras held the
grizzly bear in great respect and veneration. Some writers have said
that this was because they were afraid of this terrible king of
beasts. But this is not true. The Indian, notwithstanding his almost
useless bow and arrow in battles with this monster, was not controlled
by fear. He venerated the grizzly bear as his paternal ancestor. And
here I briefly set down the Modoc and Mount Shasta Indians' account of
their own creation.
They, as in the Biblical account of the creation of all things, claim
to have found the woods, wild beasts, birds and all things waiting for
them, as did Adam and Eve.
The Indians say the Great Spirit made this mountain first of all. Can
you not see how it is? they say. He first pushed down snow and ice
from the skies through a hole which he made in the blue heavens by
turning a stone round and round, till he made this great mountain;
then he stepped out of the clouds onto the mountain-top, and descended
and planted the trees all around by putting his finger on the ground.
The sun melted the snow, and the water ran down and nurtured the trees
and made the rivers. After that he made the fish for the rivers out of
the small end of his staff. He made the birds by blowing some leaves,
which he took up from the ground, among the trees. After that he made
the beasts out of the remainder of his stick, but made the grizzly
bear out of the big end, and made him master over all the others. He
made the grizzly so strong that he feared him himself, and would have
to go up on top of the mountain out of sight of the forest to sleep at
night, lest the grizzly, who, as will be seen, was much more strong
and cunning then than now, should assail him in his sleep. Afterwards,
the Great Spirit, wishing to remain on earth and make the sea and some
more land, converted Mount Shasta, by a great deal of labor, into a
wigwam, and built a fire in the center of it and made it a pleasant
home. After that, his family came down, and they all have lived in the
mountain ever since. They say that before the white man came they
could see the fire ascending from the mountain by night and the smoke
by day, every time they chose to look in that direction. They say that
one late and severe springtime, many thousand snows ago, there was a
great storm about the summit of Mount Shasta, and that the Great
Spirit sent his youngest and fairest daughter, of whom he was very
fond, up to the hole in the top, bidding her to speak to the storm
that came up from the sea, and tell it to be more gentle or it would
blow the mountain over. He bade her do this hastily, and not put her
head out, lest the wind should catch her in the hair and blow her
away. He told her she should only thrust out her long red arm and make
a sign, and then speak to the storm without.
The child hastened to the top and did as she was bid, and was about to
return, but having never yet seen the ocean, where the wind was born
and made his home, when it was white with the storm, she stopped,
turned and put her head out to look that way, when lo! the storm
caught in her long red hair, and blew her out and away down and down
the mountain side. Here she could not fix her feet in the hard, smooth
ice and snow, and so slid on and on down to the dark belt of firs
below the snow rim.
Now, the grizzly bears possessed all the wood and all the land down to
the sea at that time, and were very numerous and very powerful. They
were not exactly beasts then, although they were covered with hair,
lived in caves and had sharp claws; but they walked on two feet, and
talked, and used clubs to fight with, instead of their teeth and
claws, as they do now.
At this time, there was a family of grizzlies living close up to the
snows. The mother had lately brought forth, and the father was out in
quest of food for the young, when, as he returned with his club on his
shoulder and a young elk in his left hand, under his arm, he saw this
little child, red like fire, hid under a fir-bush, with her long hair
trailing in the snows, and shivering with fright and cold. Not knowing
what to make of her, he took her to the old mother, who was very
learned in all things, and asked her what this fair and frail thing
was that he had found shivering under a fir-bush in the snow. The old
mother grizzly, who had things pretty much her own way, bade him
leave the child with her, but never mention it to anyone, and she
would share her breast with her, and bring her up with the other
children, and maybe some great good would come of it.
The old mother reared her as she promised to do, and the old hairy
father went out every day, with his club on his shoulder, to get food
for his family, till they were all grown up and able to do for
themselves.
"Now," said the old mother Grizzly to the old father Grizzly, as he
stood his club by the door and sat down one day, "our oldest son is
quite grown up and must have a wife. Now, who shall it be but the
little red creature you found in the snow under the black fir-bush."
So the old father Grizzly kissed her, said she was very wise, then
took up his club on his shoulder and went out and killed some meat for
the marriage feast.
They married and were very happy, and many children were born to
them. But, being part of the Great Spirit and part of the grizzly
bear, these children did not exactly resemble either of their parents,
but partook somewhat of the nature and likeness of both. Thus was the
red man created; for these children were the first Indians.
All the other grizzlies throughout the black forests, even down to the
sea, were very proud and very kind, and met together, and, with their
united strength, built for the lovely little red princess a wigwam
close to that of her father, the Great Spirit. This is what is now
called "Little Mount Shasta."
After many years, the old mother Grizzly felt that she soon must die,
and, fearing that she had done wrong in detaining the child of the
Great Spirit, she could not rest till she had seen him and restored to
him his long-lost treasure and asked his forgiveness.
With this object in view, she gathered together all the grizzlies at
the new and magnificent lodge built for the princess and her children,
and then sent her eldest grandson to the summit of Mount Shasta in a
cloud, to speak to the Great Spirit and tell him where he could find
his long-lost daughter.
When the Great Spirit heard this, he was so glad that he ran down the
mountain side on the south so fast and strong that the snow was melted
off in places, and the tokens of his steps remain to this day. The
grizzlies went out to meet him by thousands; and as he approached they
stood apart in two great lines, with their clubs under their arms, and
so opened a lane through which he passed in great state to the lodge
where his daughter sat with her children.
But when he saw the children, and learned how the grizzlies that he
had created had betrayed him into the creation of a new race, he was
very wroth, and frowned on the old mother Grizzly till she died on
the spot. At this, the grizzlies all set up a dreadful howl; but he
took his daughter on his shoulder and, turning to all the grizzlies,
bade them hold their tongues, get down on their hands and knees and so
remain till he returned. They did as they were bid, and he closed the
door of the lodge after him, drove all the children out into the
world, passed out and up the mountain and never returned to the timber
any more.
So the grizzlies could not rise up any more, or make a noise, or use
their clubs, but ever since have had to go on all-fours, much like
other beasts, except when they have to fight for their lives; then the
Great Spirit permits them to stand up and fight with their fists like
men.
That is why the Indians about Mount Shasta will never kill or
interfere in any way with a grizzly. Whenever one of their number is
killed by one of these kings of the forest, he is burned on the spot,
and all who pass that way for years cast a stone on the place till a
great pile is thrown up. Fortunately, however, grizzlies are not now
plentiful about the mountain.
In proof of the story that the grizzly once stood and walked erect and
was much like a man, they show that he has scarcely any tail, and that
his arms are a great deal shorter than his legs, and that they are
more like a man than any other animal.
X.
AS A HUMORIST.
Not long ago, about the time a party of Americans were setting out for
India to hunt the tiger, a young banker from New York came to
California to hunt what he rightly considered the nobler beast.
He chartered a small steamer in San Francisco Bay and taking with him
a party of friends, as well as a great-grandson of Daniel Boone, a
famous hunter, for a guide, he sailed up the coast to the redwood
wilderness of Humboldt. Here he camped on the bank of a small stream
in a madrona thicket and began to hunt for his bear. He found his
bear, an old female with young cubs. As Boone was naturally in advance
when the beast was suddenly stumbled upon, he had to do the fighting,
and this gave the banker from the States a chance to scramble up a
small madrona. Of course he dropped his gun. They always do drop
their guns, by some singularly sad combination of accidents, when they
start up a tree with two rows of big teeth in the rear, and it is
hardly fair to expect the young bear-hunter from New York to prove an
exception. Poor Boone was severely maltreated by the savage old mother
grizzly in defense of her young. There was a crashing of brush and a
crushing of bones, and then all was still.
[Illustration: Of course he dropped his gun.--Page 107.]
Suddenly the bear seemed to remember that there was a second party who
had been in earnest search for a bear, and looking back down the trail
and up in the boughs of a small tree, she saw a pair of boots. She
left poor Boone senseless on the ground and went for those boots.
Coming forward, she reared up under the tree and began to claw for the
capitalist. He told me that she seemed to him, as she stood there, to
be about fifty feet high. Then she laid hold of the tree.
Fortunately this madrona tree is of a hard and unyielding nature, and
with all her strength she could neither break nor bend it. But she
kept thrusting up her long nose and longer claws, laying hold first of
his boots, which she pulled off, one after the other, with her teeth,
then with her claws she took hold of one garment and then another till
the man of money had hardly a shred, and his legs were streaming with
blood. Fearing that he should faint from loss of blood, he lashed
himself to the small trunk of the tree by his belt and then began to
scream with all his might for his friends.
When the bear became weary of clawing up at the dangling legs she went
back and began to turn poor Boone over to see if he showed any signs
of life. Then she came back and again clawed a while at the screaming
man up the madrona tree. It was great fun for the bear!
To cut a thrilling story short, the party in camp on the other side of
the creek finally came in hail, when the old bear gathered up her
babies and made safe exit up a gulch. Boone, now in Arizona, was so
badly crushed and bitten that his life was long despaired of, but he
finally got well. The bear, he informed me, showed no disposition to
eat him while turning him over and tapping him with her foot and
thrusting her nose into his bleeding face to see if he still breathed.
Story after story of this character could be told to prove that the
grizzly at home is not entirely brutal and savage; but rather a
good-natured lover of his family and fond of his sly joke.
XI.
A GRIZZLY'S SLY LITTLE JOKE.
I know an old Indian who was terribly frightened by an old monster
grizzly and her half-grown cub, one autumn, while out gathering
manzanita berries. But badly as he was frightened, he was not even
scratched.
It seems that while he had his head raised, and was busy gathering and
eating berries, he almost stumbled over an old bear and her cub. They
had eaten their fill and fallen asleep in the trail on the wooded
hillside. The old Indian had only time to turn on his heel and throw
himself headlong in the large end of a hollow log, which luckily lay
at hand. This, however, was only a temporary refuge. He saw, to his
delight, that the log was open at the other end, and corkscrewing his
way along toward the further end, he was about to emerge, when, to his
dismay, he saw the old mother sitting down quietly waiting for him!
After recovering his breath as best he could in his hot and contracted
quarters, he elbowed and corkscrewed himself back to the place by
which he first entered. But lo! the bear was there, sitting down, half
smiling, and waiting to receive him warmly. This, the old Indian said,
was repeated time after time, till he had no longer strength left to
struggle further, and turned on his face to die, when she put her head
in, touched the top of his head gently with her nose and then drew
back, took her cub with her and shuffled on.
I went to the spot with the Indian a day or two afterward, and am
convinced that his story was exactly as narrated. And when you
understand that the bear could easily have entered the hollow log and
killed him at any time, you will see that she had at least a faint
sense of fun in that "cat and mouse" amusement with the frightened
Indian.
XII.
THE GRIZZLY AS FREMONT FOUND HIM.
General Fremont found this powerful brute to be a gregarious
and confiding creature, fond of his family and not given to
disturbing those who did not disturb him. In his report to the
government--1847--he tells of finding a large family of grizzly bears
gathering acorns very much as the native Indians gathered them, and
this not far from a small Mexican town. He says that riding at the
head of his troops he saw, on reaching the brow of a little grassy
hill set with oaks, a great commotion in the boughs of one of the
largest trees, and, halting to cautiously reconnoiter, he noticed that
there were grouped about the base of the tree and under its wide
boughs, several huge grizzlies, employed in gathering and eating the
acorns which the baby grizzlies threw down from the thick branches
overhead. More than this, he reports that the baby bears, on seeing
him, became frightened, and attempted to descend to the ground and run
away, but the older bears, which had not yet discovered the explorers,
beat the young ones and drove them back up the tree, and compelled
them to go on with their work, as if they had been children.
In the early '50s, I, myself, saw the grizzlies feeding together in
numbers under the trees, far up the Sacramento Valley, as tranquilly
as a flock of sheep. A serene, dignified and very decent old beast was
the full-grown grizzly as Fremont and others found him here at home.
This king of the continent, who is quietly abdicating his throne, has
never been understood. The grizzly was not only every inch a king, but
he had, in his undisputed dominion, a pretty fair sense of justice. He
was never a roaring lion. He was never a man-eater. He is indebted for
his character for ferocity almost entirely to tradition, but, in some
degree, to the female bear when seeking to protect her young. Of
course, the grizzlies are good fighters, when forced to it; but as for
lying in wait for anyone, like the lion, or creeping, cat-like, as the
tiger does, into camp to carry off someone for supper, such a thing
was never heard of in connection with the grizzly.