some would be found even in species commonly regarded as untamable,
that for a time at least might be domesticated. Among _Ursidæ_
untrustworthiness is the rule. They are quite intelligent, capable
of being taught, and competent to understand the necessity for being
peaceable. Yet if one judges from reports they are more unreliable
than the cats. Relatively these animals are not so highly endowed,
and this fact, coupled with inherent ferocity, and an organization by
which passion is made explosive, accounts for the character they bear.
Cubs of _Ursus horribilis_ grow savage very soon. Lockwood and others
regard the species as incapable of being completely tamed. As far as
that goes, however, the same is true of every wild beast able to do
harm. These animals are kept under the same conditions as other show
creatures, and seem to be in much the same state. It is nevertheless
probable that either from a greater degree of insensibility or less
mental capacity, they always remain more dangerous than most _feræ_.
This brute has nothing of the phlegm about him that his appearance
suggests. He is morose, surly, and rough at all times, and even more
liable to sudden and violent fits of rage than a tiger.
Either, as seems likely from what we know of the animals in question,
on account of the fact that those who have had an opportunity
to observe them were exclusively occupied with describing their
destructiveness, or because grizzlies have few of those traits that
make many species interesting, their records are very barren indeed.
A solitary being like this could not possess the engaging qualities
Espinas (“Sociétés Animales”) and Beccari describe among those that
live in association; but other creatures are so placed without losing
all attractiveness. It does not take long to tell the little that is
certain about a grizzly’s ways when left to himself. Besides what has
been already said, we know that they appropriate game not killed by
themselves, and will steal meat wherever it is found. Audubon saw one
swimming in the Upper Missouri after the carcass of a drowned buffalo,
Roosevelt had his elk eaten, and four of them visited Lord Dunraven’s
camp, carrying off all the food they could find. He says “they scarcely
ate any of the flesh, but took the greatest pains to prevent any
other creatures getting at it.” This is not always the case, however.
That they bury provisions is sure, but it is sometimes done very
imperfectly, even when there is no physical difficulty in the way of
completeness. On rocky soil the cache is simply covered with leaves,
branches, and grass. Lord Dunraven, however, tells of a hunter who
watched a grizzly burying its prey with the greatest care, concealing
it completely, and finishing off his work in the most painstaking
manner. Animals that have this habit need not watch their food as a
tiger does his “kill,” and when the interment was accomplished to this
one’s satisfaction, it went away. Before getting far, some “whiskey
jacks” (a kind of magpie) that had been intently observing his doings
began to unearth the deposit. Then he came back, drove them off, and
repaired damages. This happened several times, until the bear flew into
a violent passion, and while ramping around after the manner of these
beasts he got shot. The author had a pony killed on one occasion, and
the murderer buried its remains in the most slovenly manner possible.
These bears collect salmon during the spawning season on the banks
of streams. They also scoop them out of the water with their claws,
and dive after single fish. There are no full accounts of the manner
in which prey is taken among these quadrupeds, but the creature’s
conformation makes it impossible that any of the deer kind could be
captured except by stratagem. A grizzly can make a rapid rush. His
lumbering, awkward gallop carries him forward so rapidly that on rough
ground a man would have to be very fleet of foot to have any chance of
escape. Colonel Markham states that the charge of an Indian hill bear
is so swift that it cannot be avoided, and it appears from all accounts
that so far as speed goes, at least for a short distance, the _Ursidæ_
have in general been underrated. In cover or upon open spaces, one of
these bears always rises up when its attention is attracted, and it
does the same if alarmed or angry, if wounded or intending to attack.
It does this in order to see more clearly; for the sight, although it
is not positively defective, cannot compare with that of many other
species, and independently of the advantage gained by elevation, its
short neck circumscribes vision while the body is in a horizontal
position. The hearing is acute and the sense of smell highly
developed. J. R. Bartlett, while acting upon the boundary commission
between the United States and Mexico, says that at his encampment by
the geysers of Pluton River his party found signs of these animals’
proximity, but that they managed to avoid meeting the intruders,
chiefly, as he supposed, by means of their scenting powers. Lieutenant
J. W. Abert, while hidden with a companion at fifty yards from three
grizzlies, was detected in this way, and the majority of observers have
remarked upon the goodness of their noses. It is also said that they
have an aversion to human effluvium, and that a warm trail will cause
one to turn aside more certainly than the sight of a hunter. This needs
confirmation, and may be taken with the same reservation which should
attach to Godman’s statement that the grizzly “is much more intimidated
by the voice than the aspect of man.” No doubt bears may have failed to
push a charge home because their intended victim screamed with terror,
but both in this case and in that just mentioned, while speaking of the
influence of odor, so soon as such experiences are created into general
truths, they can be met with facts by which they are stultified.
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.”