Paul Bunyan

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Paul Bunyan in Akeley, Minnesota.

Paul Bunyan is a mythological lumberjack who appears in tall tales of American folklore. He is usually believed to be a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill. The character was first documented in the work of American journalist James MacGillivray. Historically, the character has been popular in oral histories of the 19th-century northern logging region of the United States, around Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Origin

Lumberjack legends

Bunyan's birth was strange, as are the births of many mythic heroes, as it took three storks to carry the infant (ordinarily, one stork could carry several babies and drop them off at their parents' homes). When he was old enough to clap and laugh, the vibration broke every window in the house. When he was seven months old, he sawed the legs off his parent's bed in the middle of the night. Paul and Babe the Blue Ox, his companion, dug the Grand Canyon when he dragged his axe behind him. He created Mount Hood by piling rocks on top of his campfire to put it out.

He is a classic American "big man" who was popular in the 19th century United States. The Bunyan myths sprang from lumber camp tales, sometimes bawdy ones. In one such tale, extreme cold forced bears to look for food; one wandered into a lumber camp. It chased the lumberjacks up a tree on which they had a ladder. To keep the bear from climbing after them (despite the fact that bears do not need ladders to climb trees), the men kicked down the ladder. This saved them from the bear, but trapped them in the tree. To escape, the lumberjacks urinated in unison and created a frozen pole, which they slid down. Such tall tales, though later watered down, were attributed to a single character, Bunyan, and became the stories known today.

Babe the Blue Ox, Bunyan's companion, was a massive creature with exceptional strength.^[1] Most imagery of Bunyan shows Babe the Blue Ox as being of proportionate size (meaning massive compared to everything else). Babe the Blue Ox became a regular part of the Bunyan stories because oxen were the preferred domestic animal (over horses or donkeys) for logging during the turn of the century. They were noted for their ability to haul heavy loads in teams in areas of uneven footing. Among other subjects, a myth about the formation of Great Lakes was created centered around Babe: Paul Bunyan needed to create a watering hole large enough for Babe to drink from. ^[2] Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett were said to give Babe to Paul Bunyan, because they were all "woodsey" pioneer types.

Newspaper myths

Paul Bunyan in Bangor, Maine.

The earliest published versions of the myth of Paul Bunyan can be traced back to James MacGillivray, an itinerant newspaper reporter who wrote the first Paul Bunyan article in 1906, and an expanded version of the same article for the Detroit News. He was said to have collected stories from lumberjacks, combined them with his own embellishments, and begun disseminating the legend with the July 24, 1910 printing of "The Round River Drive". The story concerned Dutch Jake (another mythical lumberjack of great strength) and the narrator's participating in a Bunyan-sponsored contest to cut down the biggest tree in the forest. Paul Bunyan moved to the small town of Rusk, Texas when he was 11 years old and built the Texas State Railroad park. He also had a son named Colton Bunyan.

"Dutch Jake and me had picked out the biggest tree we could find on the forty, and we'd put three days on the cut with our big saw, what was three crosscuts brazed together, making 30 feet (9.1 m) of teeth. We was getting along fine on the fourth day when lunchtime comes, and we thought we'd best get to the sunny side to eat. So we grabs our grub and starts around that tree.

'We hadn't gone far when we heard a noise. Blamed if there wasn't Bill Carter and Sailor Jack sawin' at the same tree. It looked like a fight at first, but we compromised, meetin' each other at the heart on the seventh day. They'd hacked her to fall to the north, and we'd hacked her to fall to the south, and there that blamed tree stood for a month or more, clean sawed through, but not knowin' which way to drop 'til a windstorm came along and throwed her over."

William B. Laughead's "Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, California", one of a series of Bunyan advertising pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company, helped popularize the myth, before then most common in northern logging states. Some of the pamphlet tales were based on Laughead's recollections of stories he had heard ten years earlier in a Minnesota lumber camp. Others were highly exaggerated tales of his own experiences. Through the ad pamphlets, Laughead created much of the Bunyan "canon", including the blue ox and Johnny Inkslinger.^[3] Overall, Paul Bunyan was considered to be a strong brave man who feared nothing, including his beloved pet, Babe, the blue ox.

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Locations

Paul Bunyan has dozens of towns vying to be considered his home. Several authors, including James Stevens and D. Laurence Rogers, have traced the tales to the exploits of French-Canadian lumberjack Fabian "Saginaw Joe" Fournier, 1845-1875. Fournier worked for the H.M. Loud Company in the Grayling, Michigan area, 1865-1875, where MacGillivray later worked and apparently picked up the stories.

The state of Michigan declared Oscoda, Michigan as the official home of Paul Bunyan because it had the earliest documented published stories by MacGillivray. Other towns such as Bemidji, Brainerd, Shelton, and Westwood, Minnesota; Bay City, Michigan; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; and even Bangor, Maine also claim the title.

Kelliher, Minnesota is the home of Paul Bunyan Memorial Park, which contains a site purporting to be Paul Bunyan's grave. Another legend claims that Rib Mountain in Wausau, Wisconsin, is Bunyan's grave site.

Two Boy Scouts of America Order of the Arrow lodges have their original roots tied into the fable of Paul Bunyan. OA Lodge 196, Mesabi, from Hibbing, Minnesota, used Paul Bunyan as its lodge totem from 1941-1995. OA Lodge 26, Blue Ox, from Rochester, Minnesota, has used the Blue Ox (Babe) exclusively as its lodge totem and on nearly all patches and neckerchiefs since 1927.

Tourist attractions

Ten-meter tall statue of Babe the Blue Ox at Trees of Mystery, Klamath, California.

• Statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox were erected in Bemidji, Minnesota. Other statues exist in Brainerd, Minnesota; Westwood, California; Del Norte County, California; St. Ignace, Michigan, Ossineke, Michigan; Enchanted Forest Water Safari, New York, and in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
• Paul Bunyan Land, an amusement park 7 miles (11 km) east of Brainerd, Minnesota, features a talking statue of Paul with a statue of Babe (its original Baxter location was cleared in 2003 to make room for new commercial development). There are two other (smaller, non-talking) statues located in Brainerd.
• Trees of Mystery, a roadside attraction in Klamath, California, features a 49 ft (15 m) tall statue of Bunyan and a 35 ft (10 m) tall statue of Babe. It also features carvings and characters from stories of Paul. In November 2007 the statue of Babe's head fell off, owing to rain and old, rotted materials giving way.^[4]
• The State of Michigan has designated Oscoda, Michigan as the official home of Paul Bunyan due to the earliest documented publications in the Oscoda Press, August 10, 1906 by James MacGillivray (later revised and published in the Detroit News in 1910).^[5]
• Statues of Bunyan (alone) exist in Old Forge, New York; Akeley, Minnesota; Tucson, Arizona; Woodruff, Wisconsin; Bangor, Maine; Rumford, Maine; Oscoda, Michigan; Manistique Township, Michigan; a recently moved pair of statues sit in Ossineke, Michigan with a neutered Babe the Blue Ox^[6],Portland, Oregon; St. Maries, Idaho; Shelton, Washington; Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin; Aline, Oklahoma; and also on top of a Vietnamese (May Cafe 111 Louisiana Blvd. SE 87108) restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• Bunyan is depicted on the world's largest wood carving, at the entrance to Sequoia National Park in California.
• There is a 25' tall Paul Bunyan at the Paul Bunyan's Northwoods Cook Shanty in Minocqua, Wisconsin
• The unincorporated town of Union Lake, Michigan, previously held an annual Paul Bunyan Festival every year in July. The festival was sponsored and run by several local charitable and civic groups, including the Jaycees and the Chamber of Commerce but was discontinued in the 1990s. .^{[citation needed]}
• Hackensack, Minnesota is the home of Lucette, Paul Bunyan's sweetheart. The park downtown has the statue of Lucette and their son, Paul Jr.
• The character of Paul Bunyan features prominently in Jon Ludwig's Paul Bunyan & the Tall Tale Medicine Show at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia ^[7]

See also

The National Register of Historic Places-listed Paul Bunyan Statue in Portland, Oregon

Folklore portal

• Fakelore
• Jim Stevens
• Operation Paul Bunyan
• Paul Bunyan's Axe
• Paul Bunyan Trophy
• Paul Bunyan (operetta)
• Fearsome critters
• Bay City, Michigan concerning Fabian "Saginaw Joe" Fournier
• Log Chute

Footnotes

References

• Bélanger, Georges. La collection Les Vieux m'ont conté du père Germain Lemieux, s.j.: Francophonies d'Amérique, Ottawa. Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, no. 1, 1991, pp. 35–42.
• Gartenberg, Max (1949). "Paul Bunyan and Little John". Journal of American Folklore 62. 
• Germain, Georges-Hébert, Adventurers in the New World: The Saga of the Coureurs des Bois, Montréal: Libre-Expression, 2003.
• Maltin, Leonard (1990). Of Mice and Magic - the History of American Animation (Rev. ed.). Plume Books. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Paul Bunyan

• James MacGillivray, "Round River Joe"
• Inventory of the William B. Laughead Papers, 1897 - 1958 in the Forest History Society Library and Archives, Durham, NC
• "The Story of Paul Bunyan", Paul Bunyan Trail
• Paul Bunyan: How A Terrible Timber Feller Became the Legend, History of the Paul Bunyan Legend
• Is Paul Bunyan a fraud?, The Straight Dope
• Roadside statues and other tributes to the Great Tree-Biter, Paul Bunyan, Roadside America
• "The Story of Paul Bunyan", Microsoft Knowledge Base
• Animated stories of Paul Bunyan