series of short stories that he had written during his stay in the
beautiful northwest. These were now edited and compiled into the volume
of short stories published by the Cosmopolitan Book Corporation under
the title of “Back to God’s Country.” This was in 1920.
Many of the stories which appeared in this collection were actually
lived and experienced by Jim Curwood in those six months back in the
“far-reaches.” Among them were: “The Mouse,” “Peter God,” “The Honor of
Her People,” “The Strength of Men,” and “His First Penitent.” “The Honor
of the Big Snows,” Jim’s novel of little Melesse and Jan, originated
from the short story, “The Honor of Her People.” Many of these stories
appeared in such publications as _Good Housekeeping_, _Outing_,
_American Magazine_, and many others.
The title story, “Back to God’s Country,” was later filmed and made into
a great motion picture. With the arrival of this collection of short
stories on the market, it was immediately hailed and heralded as one of
the finest collections of short stories of its type ever published.
In 1921, sixteen years after Jim Curwood started out on his prolific
writing career, came still two more exciting and well-written novels of
rugged adventure: “The Golden Snare” and “The Flaming Forest.” The
latter was praised highly for it was a magnificent story, a story so
well told that it sold nearly 100,000 copies before it was actually
released, thus nearly putting it on an equal with “The Valley of Silent
Men” and “The River’s End.”
“Teddy” Roosevelt praised “The Flaming Forest” with these words:
“I have read with great interest Mr. Curwood’s book, ‘The Flaming
Forest.’ It is excellent. It is good, clean adventure in the open
spaces.”
“The Flaming Forest” was the third and last of Jim’s tense novels about
the Three River Country. The first two had sold better than 100,000
copies in the advance sale. This would have been flattery to the
majority of authors, but to Jim Curwood, who lived in the vivid and
exciting northwoods life of which he wrote, it was just a fighting
challenge.
The advertisement of Jim Curwood’s book, “The Country Beyond,” read
something like this:
“2,000,000 people have bought his books. He is no one book author. Every
one of his novels has outsold its predecessors.”
With the publication of “The Country Beyond” Jim Curwood had reached his
44th birthday and was still considered young in his profession. His
books themselves contained youth and what it stood for and fought
valiantly for. People rushed to the bookstores when they learned a new
James Oliver Curwood novel was coming off the presses. They actually
went in droves to get a single copy of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th
editions. Incidentally, most of his books ran into more than five
editions, for many printings had to be made in order to supply the great
demand for his writings, and printings still continue to be made to this
day.
Three months elapsed before the ever prolific pen of James Oliver
Curwood brought forth another first-rate novel entitled “The Golden
Snare.” Although “The Golden Snare” did not enjoy the major sales of his
other works, it still was listed among the “best sellers” of its day.
In the little volume “God’s Country—The Trail to Happiness,” James
Oliver Curwood did a magnificent job of non-fiction. In this book Jim
tells of his conversion from a “killer of wildlife,” to “a savior of
wildlife.” He openly confesses his sins about his former treatment of
the wild creatures that roam our forests, as no other man of his fame,
ability or popularity has ever done before or probably ever will do
again.
“God’s Country—The Trail to Happiness” is a series of four essays, none
of which was written to please those people who believe that the
organized church is an institution of importance in our national life in
every respect. The four essays were entitled: “My Secret of Happiness,”
“I Became a Killer,” “My Brotherhood,” and “The Road of Faith.” The
little book by itself is nothing else save a summary of the religion of
a nature loving and God fearing man. It has often been called the
strangest thing James Oliver Curwood ever wrote and at the same time a
most wonderful message to all mankind. At the age of 44, James Oliver
Curwood was already at his goal, for he had to his credit a total of
twenty novels and two works of non-fiction, fourteen of which were on
the “best seller” lists, with the remainder selling much better than the
average fiction book.
Early in 1922, Jim constructed his town studio which he named Curwood
Castle, because it was an exact replica of the old Norman fortress. The
Castle itself stands on the edge of the Shiawassee river and within
twenty feet of the old home just off John Street. Frequently Jim was
prompted to burn the old home place, or else tear it down and add those
grounds to the ones of the Castle. But because there were too many
memories embedded within the walls of the old house Jim was reluctant to
destroy it.
The Castle is surrounded on three of its four sides by a great sweeping
expanse of beautiful green lawns, which are kept beautifully trimmed and
immaculately clean. At the front, leading in from John street, is a
long, winding concrete walk which leads to the only entrance to Curwood
Castle. No one is allowed inside the studio at all. It is kept up and
maintained by Mrs. Curwood and once each week a housekeeper thoroughly
cleans the studio from top to bottom.
Overlooking the Shiawassee is the tower study which James Oliver Curwood
loved so well. It is the room and study from whence many of his writings
were created. The tower study has windows extending around it in
circular fashion and from all directions Jim could look out upon the
peaceful little town of Owosso and the lazy sweeping river. Down the
river, a short distance from the Castle, lies a small island. Here the
tall, weeping willows gently bend their heads down to the water’s edge
and sway in the gentle breeze. Here the birds of a thousand different
varieties gather and sing. This was one of the spots which Jim was
entirely devoted to.
In the old home next to the Castle remain all those wonderful Curwood
memories of not so long ago. There stands the second-hand Caligraph
typewriter and improvised desk his parents provided for Jim when he was
yet only a budding author. In his room the walls still hold the old
magazine and newspaper pictures that Jim had cut out as a boy and had
pasted and pinned up.
Long after Curwood Castle had been constructed and in use, Jim Curwood
used to go back to the old bedroom-study to finish many of his articles
and stories. Here he recaptured the inspiration that drove him onward
when he felt that he was going stale. But James Oliver Curwood never
went stale in his writing, for he kept constantly at it both day and
night and led a full and happy life.
Many, many times Jim would leave his town studio in Owosso for his
northern Michigan studio along the banks of the Au Sable, where it is
quiet and peaceful. Jim’s northern studio, in the thick forests of
northern Michigan, was built as a hunting lodge far away from mankind
and the noises of the city. It was indeed a beautiful spot.
Not very far from the only entrance to the Castle there stands a large,
stately tree. It was under this masterpiece of nature that James Oliver
Curwood once sat and talked by the hours with his many friends. Here
beneath this old oak Jim used to sit with prospectors from the wilds of
Alaska and northern Canada who had come to visit him.
Jim would carefully listen to these men of the north and have enough
material to weave a wonderful adventure story. Time and again he would
invite the swarthy, weatherbeaten men of the gold fields down to spend
days and weeks with him so that they might spin yarns for him and thus
provide him with material for future stories. It was not only that he
wanted stories from them, but he also wanted to see their faces again
and hear them talk.
Many were the nights when several of them would gather at the Castle
after a long journey and sit before a great open fire, swapping yarns
and smoking huge cigars and strong pipes. All this Jim Curwood enjoyed
to the fullest extent. He loved to have his old friends around him.
Many residents of Owosso and of other parts of the country have told
that regardless of how famous James Oliver Curwood ever grew to be, he
always remained “Jim” to everyone. He might be walking down the street
or be riding in an automobile and still he would throw up his hand to
those people he knew and even speak to those who were strangers. He
considered everyone a human being and felt that all men and women should
act as “brother humans,” and not try to appear superior. Jim’s usual
reply to anyone who spoke to him was this:
“Hello, there, Bill! What’s new?”
James Oliver Curwood, the famous man that he was, loved his home town of
Owosso with an undying love. It had persecuted him, laughed at him,
scorned him, but still he loved it. Of Owosso he would say to his
friends in New York:
“Come out and see, I think it is the nicest place in the world. I was
born there and I hope to die there. Of course my love for it does not
make me blind to its defects. We have our poor, pathetic smart set, our
misguided flappers and a wee bit of the salt and pepper of life ... and
we make coffins for half the world. I tell you these things because it
would take too long to tell you all the good things about my home town.
I think the nicest thing is that we’re not afraid to let the geese go
barefoot around about where we live. Come out and see.”
A good many people have done that very thing and many who came to see
have remained behind and have made their homes in Owosso or nearby. Such
is Owosso, the town where James Oliver Curwood was born and died—one of
the nicest, most beautiful little towns to be found anywhere on the
North American continent. There is no wonder Jim loved it as he did.
Today the lodge that once belonged to Jim is no more in Curwood hands.
In the fall of 1939 Mrs. Curwood sold it to a buyer who wanted it very
much. Fortunately enough it was sold to a great lover of James Oliver
Curwood stories as well as a great admirer of Jim himself—a man who
promised to keep it as it always was.
Today in Owosso, at 508 Williams Street, stands the home of Mr. and Mrs.
James Oliver Curwood, where Mrs. Curwood still resides. The house is a
very large, majestically built domicile standing on the very spot on
which the former tribes of the Chippawayan Indians camped. Jim chose
this site for that reason alone. The home could more readily be called a
mansion, it is so large and beautiful, with spacious gardens surrounding
it. It is just a few hundred yards from Curwood Castle.
Jim Curwood was without much doubt the greatest and foremost naturalist
of his time. He loved nature so sincerely and lived in such intimate
communion with it, that, as he once put it so naively:
“I have become a bit estranged from a large part of the rest of
humanity.”
Any and all times are good times to seek nature in all of her wondrous
glory, and that was precisely what he believed.
Jim Curwood believed that even a twig from off a tree, or a blade of
grass have souls. Souls that are every bit as important as the vital
organs and souls of human beings.
James Oliver Curwood’s God was nature. The same nature that he so
wonderfully preaches about in all his writings. He vividly tells of
nature, the reasons, the idea of nature and just why we must protect and
conserve it. Jim’s books and writings go straight to the hearts of his
readers for he was a common man even when his fame had been assured. His
readers knew that. Everyone knew him as Jim ... just Jim.
One of his common hobbies was raising radishes and onions. Jim once said
concerning these two vegetables that he delighted in raising:
“I can beat anyone in Shiawassee county raising onions. I mean green
onions, the kind you eat with bread and butter.”
Even about his own home somewhere in the back Jim always had an onion
patch along with some fine and assorted radishes. He loved to work in
the rich, black earth.
No matter where Jim might happen to be, whether on the stream in a
birchbark canoe, in the forest, or in his studios or gardens, his mind
was constantly upon the subject of nature. In fact Jim devoted much of
his life to the helping of nature and the consistent fighting of “game
hogs.”
True enough, Jim Curwood did not know all the scientific names for the
trees, toads, shrubs and so forth, but he could tell you all about them;
all about their life from birth to death. Jim practically knew the day a
certain plant or flower would die, so intent had been his study.
CHAPTER NINE
HIS BROTHERHOOD
After long years of successfully hunting and selfishly killing game,
James Oliver Curwood had at last ceased, and suddenly launched a
campaign by which he hoped to stop “game hogs” from taking wild life
from the forests.
This campaign was also an attempt to stop “ordinary hunters for the time
being, until the game had ample time to replenish itself.” He founded
the first conservation movement in the state of Michigan and remained as
its head for several years.
Jim pleaded through his books and his articles for the public to stop
the slaughtering of innocent, wild and untamed animals, to preserve the
natural resources and not to dynamite the streams in which fish
abounded.
Slowly the public began to take heed, but not quite soon enough, for
already a number of species had been all but destroyed. Many of those
species of animals and birds that were killed off then, have not been
able to recreate themselves even to this day. Jim realized that this was
not fair to either wildlife or mankind. “It must stop and it shall
stop.”
On January 1, 1927, Jim Curwood was made chairman of the “Game, Fish and
Wildlife Committee of the Conservation Department of the State of
Michigan,” and later was in charge of the activities of the entire
conservation commission. He was held in high regard and esteem by many
thousands of people who firmly believed and were convinced that he was
doing something fine and worthwhile. Others hated Jim with a vengeance.
They believed, as there are so many who do today, that James Oliver
Curwood, and the so called conservationists, were meddling into other
people’s business. Likewise Jim hated the “game hog” who was attempting
to destroy the very thing which God had intended to live and to make the
world more beautiful for mankind.
Since James Oliver Curwood was born and raised within the heart of the
timber country, and lived most of his life in it, he could respect and
love it more readily and naturally than people of large metropolitan
cities. As a boy he had gone into the deep forests unescorted many times
when it was known to be dangerous. Often he did not even carry a rifle
for protection, for even as a small boy he believed in a mutual feeling
between animals and men. Jim believed that he could make friends with
the animals and make those creatures understand him. He did just that.
Many of Jim’s friends who have been fortunate enough to accompany him on
one of his trips into the wilds, still describe how they saw him make
friends with the most fierce of all North American animals—the Grizzly.
Because of his wanderings and explorations throughout the whole of the
Dominion of Canada, Jim developed what he chose to call a “Creed of the
Wild!”
“To hunt and fish is the first great law of nature. Everything ‘hunts
and fishes,’ from man to the weakest of the creatures and things which
he destroys. It is ordained that the ashes of destruction shall give
birth to life, and that in killing, if it is within the immutable bounds
prescribed by nature, there is rejuvenation; but to adventure beyond
those limitations, until killing becomes a lust, is to invite
destruction of the balance of those laws of nature which makes existence
possible.
“I believe that many generations, if not centuries, will pass before man
arrives at a point where he will view all manifestations of life as so
nearly akin to his own that he will cease to slaughter for pleasure.”
This alone was Jim Curwood’s “Creed of the Wild,” as well as his creed
of life. He loved everything and hated nothing save the “game hogs.”
When Jim Curwood assumed his position on the conservation commission on
January 1, 1927, he immediately set to work to make adjustments. For one
thing he immediately began clamping down on the capturing of certain
species of birds. In some cases he closed the season long before it was
to have officially closed, or else set the bag limit very low. Many
people objected to this as they did not understand the real purpose
behind it.
Jim took several trips around the state, entirely on his own initiative,
and issued “official communiques” with great abandon regarding the
closing of seasons on certain types of wildlife. The conservation
commission felt that he was not justified in these actions and believed
that he was causing the commission undue trouble. As a matter of fact
one of the members of the original commission had this to say of Jim:
“He took a trip around the state, entirely on his own, issuing official
communiques with great abandon, and getting the department into hot
water. I recall particularly the decidedly vexing problem of an open
season on birds (perhaps deer, but I’m pretty sure it was birds).
Curwood said that his survey had shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that
the birds were scarce and therefore the season should be closed. I
believe he gave newspaper interviews declaring the season closed in
certain sections.”
Jim Curwood’s policy of riding roughshod over the statutes and his
fellow commissioners, plus the fact that he had his great reputation as
an out-of-doors expert to live up to, was becoming very serious and
embarrassing, or so certain members of the conservation commission felt,
for what he believed in he fought for, regardless of how the rest of the
commission felt or thought. So intent was he upon his ideas of
conservation that he had to have his way in everything which was
undertaken. And as another fellow commissioner once said of Jim:
“If I were to write a chapter on Curwood’s activities as a member of the
commission it would be in the section of the book devoted to wild life,
sub-classification, ‘stormy petrel.’ I recall that he simply had to have
his own way, and so perhaps if one were to look him up in the index it
would be in the list of fauna, under lone wolf.”
Despite the fact that some so-called conservation experts felt that Jim
Curwood was radical in his ideas, and beliefs concerning conservation
movements, he proved conclusively that he was right in most of his ideas
at some time or other.
“Jim was almost exclusively interested in protecting wild life from man,
shorter or no, seasons; reduced bag limits, banning of spears, etc.,
were items for which he would fight. He had an academic interest in
fire, a sentimental leaning toward the planting of trees, no time for
research or land acquisition. Jim was just too starry-eyed for the
others to get.” So spoke another fellow member of the original
commission on which Curwood served and directed during 1927.
Because of his short term on the conservation commission it was
impossible for him to carry out many of his ideas. Had not the mighty
hand of the Great Reaper struck, the conservation movements today would
be much stronger and more firm than they are. He was the first and in
reality the last man to start such a movement which carried over such a
widespread field.
During this time with the Department of Conservation of the State of
Michigan, Curwood was made a head of the Izaak Walton League. This is
the largest organization on the conservation of natural resources in the
world today. During a stormy meeting held in Chicago Jim almost
resigned. At that meeting Jim drafted a plan whereby thousands and
thousands of animals might be spared from the hunters’ guns. He was
promptly informed that this plan would not work and could not possibly
materialize. He arose and spoke with bated breath as he informed the
large gathering that despite what they thought, the plan would and could
be used effectively. He further stated that either the plan would be put
into operation immediately or else his resignation would be forthcoming.
Many members of the Izaak Walton League could not as yet understand Jim
and hesitated to vote. Eventually Jim Curwood had his way and his plan
was put into operation. It worked better than even he had anticipated.
Today Jim Curwood stands as a typical example of righteousness in the
halls of the State Conservation Department of Michigan. Even though many
have felt that his work for the preservation of our natural resources
was in vain, his work alone speaks for itself.
“One’s work is the voice that is heard most clearly and is most
enduring.” Jim proved his belief that “it is the work that counts” only
too well. His experience and intimate knowledge of the outdoors were his
guides on all matters.
* * * * *
The first book to appear from Jim’s pen after the completion of Curwood
Castle, was the widely read novel, “The Alaskan.” This book had an
exceptionally large advance sale.
In the early spring of 1924, two short years after his studio had been
constructed, Jim and Ethel returned from another one of his famous
expeditions into the North. It was then that Jim released to his
publishers his newest work entitled “A Gentleman of Courage,” a book
which brought him still more widespread fame and glory. People were
growing more and more each day to love this writer of the wilderness. He
wrote undeniably about a land that seemed so wonderful and far off, and
yet in reality so very close. Prompted by Jim’s writings many people
have journeyed into the Dominion of Canada to make their homes.
The following year Jim published the first of his historical novels,
“The Ancient Highway,” the locale being around old Quebec and its
plains. Many critics praised this new type of work Jim had put out, but
as he often remarked:
“A novelist of romance and adventure can never become a successful
historian.”
Jim spoke those words, but it doubtless did not occur to him at the time
that he was probably the greatest of all romantic historians on the
Dominion of Canada. Through his novels of romance and history he painted
a picture of the Canadian Northlands not only as they used to be years
ago but as they really are today.
James Oliver Curwood was both a novelist and a historian even if he did
not believe himself to be a recorder of both ancient and modern history.
It was said of “The Ancient Highway” that this story of modern Quebec
takes you down the old world highway of romance, while woodland beauty
brings nature near in that communion which Curwood lovers find a healing
and tonic force. “The Ancient Highway” is truly a fine piece of
historical work and deserved the praise which it received.
It was about this time that Lewis Galantiere reported that James Oliver
Curwood was by all odds the most popular of American writers among the
French people. Where it once had been Jack London and Upton Sinclair it
now was Curwood. Edith Wharton had attempted to establish herself as our
literary ambassadress to France, but she had failed.
In England, Germany, Denmark, Norway and numerous other countries, Jim
Curwood had built for himself a great reputation and his fame among the
various peoples of the world was definitely assured.
CHAPTER TEN
TRAIL’S END
Unlike most authors of Jim Curwood’s day, thousands of people annually
came to visit him and to see the fair city of Owosso, they came to meet
him from all parts of the country, and to ask him countless, rather
foolish questions. Being the well-bred, cultured man that he was, Jim
complied by answering each question and replying to each letter written
to him, to the very best of his ability.