A rock fell from a high cliff and struck upon solid granite near a
grizzly whom I was watching. There was a terrific crash and roar.
Unmindful of the flying fragments and pieces bounding near, the grizzly
reared up and pressed fore paws over his ears. Just as he was uncovering
them the echo came thundering and booming back from a cliff across the
lake. Again he hastily covered his ears with his paws to soften the
ear-bursting crash.
On another occasion a wounded bear took refuge in a small thicket where
the hunter was unable to get a shot at him. After failing to force the
bear into the open, the hunter gave a wild, ear-splitting yell. With a
growl of pain the bear at once chained furiously through the thicket
toward the hunter.
A grizzly has supersensitive ears, and loud, harsh sounds give his
nerves a harrowing shock. Through his higher development the grizzly
probably suffers more intensely and enjoys more fully than other
animals. The clashing city noises must be a never-ending irritation and
torture to a bear who has been sentenced to end his days in a riotous
environment. How he must yearn for the hush of the wilderness! And, as
his sense of smell is also amazingly developed, perhaps he longs for a
whiff of pine-spiced air and the wild, exquisite perfume of the violets.
Experience in many zoos has shown that subjecting caged grizzlies to
close contact with people is usually cruelty to animals. Often they
become cross, and a number of crowd-worried grizzlies have died
prematurely from resultant apoplexy. Modern zoo bear-pens are
constructed so that the bear is beyond the wiles of visitors--so that he
can have much privacy--one of the needs of any grizzly. Perhaps we too
often think of the bulky grizzly as being coarse and crude. But he is an
animal of the highest type, sensitive, independent, and retiring. The
normal bear is good-tempered and cheerful.
A grizzly placed in new environment in association with men will respond
happily only to considerate handling and proper feeding. Tell me what a
bear is fed and how, and I will tell you what the bear is--his
disposition and health. A grizzly should be fed by no one except his
keeper. If any one and every one feed a bear, he is likely to receive
food that he ought not to eat and to have it given in a manner annoying
to him. Feeding is the vital consideration for grizzly pets, for
grizzlies in zoos, and for grizzlies in National Parks.
When I arrived in Colorado, in 1884, grizzlies were still common
throughout the mountain areas of the State. They were numerous in a few
rugged sections where there were but few people and plenty of food. In
the Long's Peak region around my cabin, I early discovered the tracks of
five grizzlies. One or two missing toes or some other peculiarity
enabled me to determine the number. Two of these bears ranged near, and
I had frequent glimpses of them.
During the autumn of one year, 1893 as I remember, I crossed the
mountains between Trapper's Lake and Long's Peak. Snow covered most of
the ground. During the eight days which this trip occupied I must have
seen the tracks of between forty and forty-five grizzlies. I counted the
tracks of eleven in one half-day. But grizzlies decreased in numbers
rapidly. Numerous hunters came into the State annually. Stockmen and
settlers hunted grizzlies for fun and for their hides, and professional
hunters for revenue. Altogether, the grizzly had little chance for his
life, and only a few survived.
In the settlement of the West many of the grizzlies had to go. Men came
in with flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. The grizzlies' food was
taken or driven off. Rarely did a grizzly kill any of the invading
stock. Usually he worked harder for a living and took things
philosophically. Many grizzlies were killed and a few sought homes
elsewhere. But in the West there are still many wild regions, and in
these there is room for the grizzly.
There is a wonderful unwritten story of the making of an empire--the
Yellowstone--into a wildlife reservation. Big game had long been hunted
in this region. The grizzly bear, since his discovery, had been
relentlessly pursued; man with every conceivable contrivance was on his
trail day and night; there was no quarter and no hope for peace. But
suddenly firing ceased and pursuit stopped. This was epoch-marking.
"What can it mean?" the grizzlies must have instantly asked. They must
have asked it over and over again. But they quickly accepted it as a
fact and as an advantage, and came forth to associate peacefully with
man.
[Illustration: A BLACK BEAR AND CUBS]
This has made a change worth while for man. Since shooting has stopped,
thousands have seen the grizzly and enjoyed him where only one saw him
before.
The grizzly is easily the most popular animal in the National Parks. He
really is the greatest animal on the continent. The grizzly walks: there
is a dignity, a lordliness of carriage, and an indifference to all the
world that impress themselves on the attention. Some one speaks quietly
to him: he halts, stands on hind legs, and shows a childlike eagerness
of interest in his expressive face. His attitude and responsiveness are
most companionable and never fail to awake the best in every one who
sees him in these moments.
Some one told me the following amusing incident concerning a grizzly. In
the southwest corner of Yellowstone Park a number of boys were bathing
in a stream, when a young grizzly came along and for a moment stood
watching their pranks. Then he slipped quietly behind some trees upon
the bank of the stream. When the boys approached this spot, with a wild
"Woof, woof," he leaped into the water among them. This caused great
excitement and merriment, plainly just what he desired. As he swam
hurriedly away, he looked back over his shoulder with satisfaction.
Another amusing incident also happened in the Yellowstone. As the stage
arrived at the Cañon Hotel, one of the passengers, who had been having
much to say concerning bears, put on his raincoat and got down on all
fours, proceeding to impersonate a bear. While this demonstration was on
a grizzly arrived. He made a rush at the man and chased him up a tree,
amid laughter and excitement. The bear made no attempt to harm any one
and plainly enjoyed this prank merely as a prank.
A grizzly mother in Yellowstone Park was catching trout for her cubs one
June day of 1891, when a friend and I came along. We went near to watch
them. Mother grizzly charged; we fled. After one leap she stood still
and appeared to be almost grinning at us. We went back, she charged, and
again we ran, although she stopped at the end of the first leap. But the
third time she leaped at us we stood our ground. She growled but came no
nearer. Although her threats did not appear to be in earnest, we did not
risk going closer; nor would I have risked standing even at that
distance if we had been outside of the Park boundary.
One day I saw a bear who appeared to be suffering from a headache. A
short time before he had eaten an enormous quantity of garbage. This may
have been his first dinner at a garbage-pile. Standing up, he felt of
his head with first one fore paw and then the other. Then, lying down,
he endeavored to hold his head in both fore paws. He had just thrust it
into a stream and was trying to rub it with his paw when I last saw him.
On another occasion I noticed a bear suffering from a toothache. He felt
of his tooth, clawed at it, and in a number of other ways showed his
annoyance.
In the Yellowstone the environment of grizzlies was radically changed
when it became a wild-life reservation. The numerous bear-population
quickly discovered that in the Park it would not be shot at. Grizzlies
at once wandered about near people with no attempt to conceal themselves
and with the best of manners; there was no annoying of people, no
crossness, no ferocity. This ideal association of people and grizzly
bears went on unmarred for years.
Numbers of bears from far outside Park boundaries came to spend two or
three months of each summer there, returning to home territory during
the autumn. Other grizzlies left their homes outside the Park and moved
in to stay. Whether the summer migrant bears or the recent residents
came to the Park because of the food, the safety, or both is difficult
to say. Unusual opportunities were furnished Park visitors to study and
observe the grizzly, with beneficial influence on themselves. But their
worrying of the bears in time proved harmful.
The bears were thoughtlessly betrayed. Increasing numbers of visitors
produced large garbage-piles. People came to the garbage-piles to watch
the bears feed and often teased them. The bears became cross. Sometimes
there were fights among the assembled bears over the smelly feasts. The
charity of the garbage-pile led them into bad habits, upset their
digestions, and ruined their dispositions. But their appetite for
garbage increased until they became food pensioners and garbage
drunkards. Like some humans they enjoy being pensioners and insist on
being supplied. If there wasn't enough garbage they raided camps and
hotels. If their raid was interrupted they resented it. In due time a
few of the most dyspeptic bears became bold and defiant raiders.
The Park is visited by thousands for whom the bears should be a source
of relaxation and furnish new interests and enjoyment. But the bears are
becoming unhealthy and are a menace to people. Now and then some
official tries to cure the bear trouble by having a number of bears
roped, tied, and whipped. Occasionally a bear is shot. There are those
who advocate that the guides and officials of the Park carry guns; and
still others are advocating the extermination of the grizzly. We need
the grizzly. Most cures proposed are worse than his trouble. But there
is a prevention in simply no garbage-piles.
In the Glacier National Park, which has been a wild-life reservation
only since 1910, the grizzlies have not yet become demoralized by
garbage. The grizzly bear situation in the Yellowstone is a serious and
even an alarming one, and what exists here is certain to develop in
other Parks. The demoralizing factors are likely to be expanded and not
diminished. Then, too, in the Yellowstone this continuous eating of
garbage may ere long bring on a pestilence among the grizzlies, or
possibly put a check on the number of cubs born. The whole situation
appears to be embraced in what I have previously said about what a
grizzly is fed and how.
The grizzly has not lost all his old instincts in the Park. Around the
garbage-piles he is a lazy, cross pensioner. But away from them, and
especially where he ranges outside of the Park, the same bear is as
alert and as energetic as ever in getting a living and watching out for
his safety. They are tame near garbage-piles but a short distance away
are wild. They are comparatively easy to trap near the garbage-piles,
where they will enter a trap-door; but the same bear outside the Park is
extremely wary and avoids going near a trap. Says William H. Wright, in
"The Grizzly Bear":--
"Altogether I did not find the grizzlies of Yellowstone Park in any
degree more tame or less cunning than they are to-day, for example,
in the Selkirks. Many of them, it is true, come to the garbage-piles
to feed, but these very bears, fifty yards back in the timber, are
again as wild as any of them anywhere. At the cañon, the
garbage-pile is in a hollow at the foot of rather a steep incline
that leads up to the edge of the woods. Bear after bear, coming down
the trails that converge toward this point, will stop as he reaches
the brink of this declivity, glance downward, turn his head from
side to side, and launch himself down hill, with the same air of
committing himself to a foreign element that one sees in the upward
glance and deep breath of a man launching himself from a diving
board. On their return, they invariably halted for a few seconds at
the top of the hill, looked around, occasionally shook themselves,
and with their first step up the familiar trail, resumed every sign
of their habitual caution and alertness. While on the garbage-pile
itself, they appear to pay scant attention to the people gathered
behind the fairly distant wire fence, but even there, an eye
familiar with their actions would note the constant watch they kept
on what was going on and the hurried way in which they fed; and,
fifty feet from the edge of the surrounding timber, they would at
the least scent or sound or sight, bolt as incontinently as in the
farthest hills. Grizzlies are no more plentiful around the Park
to-day than they were twenty-five years ago in the Bitter Roots, and
a hundred yards from the garbage-pile they are no different."
Apparently young bears do not inherit fear of a trap, for they are
easily trapped. Young bears in captivity sometimes exhibit inherited
instincts; they may be pleasurably excited with the scent of food never
before seen; and they will sometimes dig down for a hidden root of a
kind that their parents ate but which they themselves had never seen. In
these cases of digging, they either dug at the right place from scent,
or from inherited memory of place. There was nothing on the surface to
indicate the presence of buried roots beneath.
The young of most animals, wild or tame, make interesting pets. But of
all the pets I have known, none equal grizzly cubs for energy,
alertness, and individuality. They take naturally to new, unnatural
environments. A grizzly cub learns speedily and from the first tries to
know everything around him. So all-knowing are his senses and his
instincts that the approach of anything new at once attracts him; he
stops play and with rare curiosity and concentration tries to understand
it. If he solve the mystery he promptly continues play at the point
where he left it.
"Baby Sylvester" is a celebrated bear story by Bret Harte that
characteristically and humorously describes a bear in new environments.
This little bear lost none of his native energy, alertness, and
versatility under changed and unexacting conditions. The way he handled
every situation was a constant surprise and delight.
Pet cubs, if gently treated, quickly accept and make the best of new
environment; they become intimate and loving, in fact most intensely so.
If handled kindly, the cub is willing to do everything reasonable,
everything he understands one wants done. But whip or scold him, and he
at once becomes stubborn and unwilling, reserved and cross. The grizzly
is an animal of high type and to have him develop his best he needs
fine, high consideration.
The grizzly's real character stands out when he is associated with man.
He is ever true to himself. A dog will lick the hand of a cruel master
or fawn on a most unworthy one. Not so the grizzly; he will not go down
in the dust. Only a uniformly just man can win his loyalty or retain his
friendship; he has individuality and self-respect and will not willingly
serve a tyrant or even bow to him. The wearing of a hat, the holding of
a pipe, the sitting up in a silly attitude, tricks which many dogs do to
please a master, the grizzly will do only under compulsion. The grizzly
is ever faithful and loyal to a worthy master; he will do unto you as
you do unto him. Elsewhere in this book I give a number of stories
which show the high character and the great possibilities of the grizzly
as a companion of man if handled intelligently.
In eastern Washington, "Grizzly" Adams captured a yearling grizzly which
he named Lady Washington. With her he used but little discipline, and he
at all times treated her with consideration and kindness. She was
constantly with him on long journeys across the mountains from State to
State, in camp and on hunts. Of her Adams says:--
"She has always been with me; and often shared my dangers and
privations, borne my burdens, and partaken of my meals. The reader
may be surprised to hear of a grizzly companion and friend, but Lady
Washington has been both to me. He may hardly credit the accounts of
my nestling up between her and the fire to keep both sides warm
under the frosty skies of the mountains, but all this is true."
The ability to comprehend a new situation or incident and readjust one's
self to it is the act of an open and a thinking mind. The food,
religion, politics, and personal habits of an individual are changed
slowly and with difficulty. Progress is constantly being held back by
old customs--the inability of the race to form new habits meeting new
conditions. Many species of extinct animals have perished because of
over-specialization. "Leave your prejudice at home" was the best advice
I received just prior to a trip to Europe. Prejudice and its allied
mental conditions are binding and delaying. The grizzly does not allow
old prejudice to prevent his exploring for new information, and he is
ever ready for something new in his environment.
In a generation or two the grizzly has become expert in eluding the
pursuer; he rivals the fox in concealing his trail, in confounding the
trailer and escaping with his life. That he has developed this trait
since coming in contact with the white man and the repeating rifle--out
of necessity--there can be no doubt. Formerly, the rightful monarch of
the wilds through superiority, he roamed freely about, indifferent as to
where he went or whether or not he was seen. He has been wise enough to
readjust himself to the evolutionary and revolutionary forces introduced
by man. The king of the wilderness has survived through retreat; he has
become the master of strategy. Instinct hardly accounts for this swift
evolution. The readjustment--avoiding man--does not indicate cowardice;
it indicates brains. In the warfare of existence, in changing, exacting
environments, the grizzly bear has risen triumphant.