His Story - PaulBunyan.org

PAUL BUNYAN: HIS STORY

Born out of a time when the perils of Mother Nature tried North American woodsmen, through the harsh winters their determination shown through to befall something immortal. Little could they have dreamed that this same pioneer spirit was to be personified— into one of the most enduring characters of American fantasy.

PAUL BUNYAN is a household name that evokes connotations of size, strength and determination. Paul has emerged beyond his humble beginnings into a true American icon. However, despite being the very emblem of the tall tale, he is the subject of much dispute. While some hail him as the only true American myth, others contest him as a fraud. That he is not a legend, but the money-making product of an advertising campaign. Here we come to set the record straight, to separate the mascot from the myth and above all to vindicate the good name of Paul Bunyan.

It is not the aim of this brief study to deny Paul Bunyan’s exploitation by commercial interest nor his depreciation by the latter authors of childrens’ literature. Simply, the intent here is to demonstrate that while the Paul Bunyan name and image has been exploited over time, his roots in folklore are nonetheless concrete.

So, let’s imagine, way back when, in a logging camp, no one knows quite well where, the snow topples the trees. Overnight it rises to a height of 6 feet, 30 yards. It is so cold that a hundred below would have looked like the 4th of July next to it. That was the “Winter of the Blue Snow,” so versed the old-time lumberjack to assess the gullibility of a new recruit. At the turn of the twentieth century, the logger commonly employed such jests as a means to test tenderfoots, those unfamiliar with the woods, as well as for leisure. What is more oral tradition supplied a means which to honor and commemorate the character and exploits of the lumberjack. While many a town may lay claim to being birthplace of Paul, it is through such stories, colorful, exaggerated, oftentimes crass, where ol’ Paul was truly “born.”

Records are easier kept on the written rather than spoken word. Accordingly, it is difficult to trace the exact period Paul Bunyan first sprang into existence. Although, an anonymous 1904 article tells us—

“His pet joke and the one with which the green horn at the camp is sure to be tried, consists of a series of imaginative tales about the year Paul Bunyan lumbered in North Dakota. The great Paul is represented as getting out countless millions of timber in the year of the ‘blue snow.’ ”

—Duluth News Tribune, August 4, 1904¹

With these details one thing is for certain. The above printing appears over a decade before any commercial use of the Paul Bunyan name. Evidently, there must have been a Paul Bunyan of legend, but who was he? How closely did the Paul Bunyan of fable tie in with the figure we know him today?

J. E. Rockwell in the nature journal The Outer’s Book introduces us to an eight foot, three-hundred pound, quick tempered, peerless smoking, lumber baron who ruled over his subordinates “with an iron hand.” He is a man of great might, resourcefulness, harder than rock, whose voice shook the earth and made his workers jump (not quite the jolly, kid friendly incarnation of Disney). Here the rigid Paul Bunyan is accompanied by his logging crew, his cook and a peculiar blue ox. This beast, here nameless, is of enormous proportions. The extraordinary creature, “measured eight ax-handles between the horns” and “hauled all the wood and water for the camp.” We are further acquainted with a setting: the Little Onion and the Big Tobacco rivers in Maine during the 1880s. There is even mention of Mrs. Bunyan, “a lady of leisure who waited in the city for her husband’s return,” and an arch-nemesis in the personage of rival timber boss “Old Drumbeater.”

As elemental to these tales as Bunyan, there are several outlandish, mythical creatures. Among these are the sidehill gouger, snow snake and hodag (part of a group lumberjack animals collectively known as fearsome critters). These varmints own a legacy just as old as that of Paul. While at one time they may have been an integral part of the same tradition, today, the two sagas typically come across independently. It is also worth mentioning that Rockwell affirms us that Paul Bunyan stories are, “innumerable” and, indeed,—

“This famous hero of lumberjack mythology was the center of almost every tale told in the camps in the old days. His exploits were related in every tie camp, every cedar camp, and every white pine logging camp in Northern Minnesota, and they lost nothing in the telling. Each camp had its own set of stories, and the men, in traveling from camp to camp—for the old time lumberjack was a rover—swapped these yarns in the long winter evenings, when the steaming socks were hung over the roaring sheet iron stove’ ”

—J. E. Rockwell, “Some Lumberjack Myths,” The Outer’s Book, February 1910²

That same year columnist James MacGillivray published, “The Round River Drive” in Detroit News Tribune (an extended version of what appeared in The Oscoda Press, August 10, 1906). It featured Paul Bunyan with a now named supporting cast. The title alludes to Paul clearing the “pyramid forty” on the Round River. The pyramid forty is a prism-shaped forest atop a single forty acre lot. An odd twist occurs after all four sides have been cleared and skidded to a stream. Upon passing the camp several times, the river is found to be a complete 360 having no mouth (hence the name). The Peavey Prince is once again the fiery, dogmatic lumber boss. Whereas his persona closely favors that in “Some Lumber Stories,” and we are affirmed that he employed some big men (“all six-footers, and two hundred pounds weight.”) Gone is allusion to his size or his blue ox.³

Circa 1914, the American Lumberman magazine ran an episode unique amid Paul Bunyan accounts. In that it was related wholly in rhythmic prose. An ambitious piece, by Douglas Malloch, in style it is suggestive of olden epics such as Beowulf or Homer’s Odyssey. Yet, being a faithfully American take on the genre, this entry evokes the same humor and exaggeration as the aforesaid. The ballad has it that Paul Bunyan is the archetypal brawler, drinker and woodsman. Constant, whilst the poem reflects the deeds of several of the camp’s crew, Paul remains its chief character.⁴

These accounts, while differing on a few points, provide us a consistent image. Paul is a lumber boss of great might and expertise, but he is one of very human character. He is short-tempered, rugged, a heavy drinker, smoker and brawler. He possesses all the triumphs and imperfections definitive of a rugged outdoorsman, and he is all the more celebrated for it. By all accounts, he is a very different kind of Paul Bunyan than we know him today.

The apocryphal, Gulliver-sized, patently-inoffensive Bunyan first materialized in the offices of the Red River Lumber Company in a leaflet, first in 1914 and later in 1916. A staffer named William Laughead was tasked out with the responsibility of devising a suitable gimmick to help boost sales. Familiar with the basic story of Paul Bunyan, he transformed the epitome of lumberjack ideals into just the marketable character the enterprise was looking for. The end result was an advertising pamphlet, later published in book-format entitled, The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan. The booklet opens up on how Paul, by notice of Red River Lumber, came to The Golden State to do some hefty logging. Afterwards, the leaflet relates several of his exploits some new and others loosely familiar.⁵

Many critical of Bunyan have taken this to construe that Paul Bunyan is utterly a money-making invention, with no basis in myth. Whereas Paul Bunyan legends have been subjected to censorship or expounded upon, it fails to take in to light how we regard other “authentic” myths. To dismiss Paul Bunyan as a fraud, on these ground, one would have to write-off nearly every other legendary figure. Since the advent of modern media a faithful adaptation of mythology is extremely rare, and characters of myth seldom, if ever, are drawn from sources faithfully. Simply, take a look at Robin Hood, Hercules, Sindbad, or King Arthur to name a few. As with his counterparts, Paul Bunyan is not immune from this kind of transformation. While the canonical Paul Bunyan would never lend himself to appearances in juvenile literature, he probably would have never received the attention he did otherwise.

For better or worse, this kind of change is not simply how things are, but, perhaps, how they should be. Folklore is a fluid process and every generation, every storyteller, adds a bit of his or her own imagination into the mix. Drawing to a close, here is a quote from Carl Sandburg who said it best in his book, The People, Yes:

“WHO made Paul Bunyan, who gave him birth as a myth, who joked him into life as a Master Lumberjack, who fashioned him forth as an apparition easing the hours of men amid axes and trees, saws and lumber? The people, the bookless people, they made Paul and had him alive long before he got into the books for those who read. He grew up in shanties, around the hot stoves of winter, among socks and mittens drying, in the smell of tobacco smoke and the roar of laughter mocking the outsider weather. And some of Paul came overseas in wooden bunks below decks in sailing vessels. And some of Paul is old as the hills, young as the alphabet’ ”

—Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes, 1936, qtd. A Treasury of American Folklore, B.A. Botkin, 1955.⁶

BIBLIOGRAPHY

¹ Anonymous, ”Caught on the Run,“ Duluth News Tribune. Aug. 4, 1904, 4. Paul Bunyan Fine Art.
² J. E. Rockwell, ”Some Lumberjack Myths,“ The Outer's Book, February 1910: 157-160.Paul Bunyan Fine Art.
³ James MacGillivray, ”Round River,“ The Oscoda Press. Aug. 10, 1906. Paul Bunyan Fine Art.
⁴ Douglas Malloch & James MacGillivray., ”The Round River Drive,“ American Lumberman, 25 April 1914: 33. Paul Bunyan Fine Art.
⁵ William B. Laughead, The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan (Westwood, CA: Red River Lumber Company, 1922). Project Gutenberg.
⁶ B.A. Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore (New York: Crown Publishers, 1955).

"Paul Bunyan: His Story" by L. S. Sharpe
Created: 03/17/2011 --- Last Updated: 06/11/2020