Paul Bunyan

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For other uses see Paul Bunyan (disambiguation).
Paul and Babe in Bemidji, Minnesota
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Paul and Babe in Bemidji, Minnesota

Paul Bunyan is a mythical lumberjack in tall tales, whose origin originates either with an American newspaperman or with French Canadians.

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[edit] Voyageur origins

Many believe that the tales of Paul Bunyan were first told by French Canadian loggers, who called him Paul Bonjean, monikered as "Bonyenne". His name was anglicized and stories were eventually modified and added upon from storyteller to storyteller. Casting some doubt on this origin, however, is that this origin may conflate Paul Bunyan with "Ti-Jean" or "Lil'-John," who as the name suggests was actually quite small.

[edit] Lumberjack legends

A lumberjack of huge size and strength, Paul Bunyan has become a folkloric character in the American psyche. It is said that he and his blue ox, Babe, were so large their footsteps created Minnesota's ten thousand lakes (including Lake Bemidji, which resembles Paul's giant footprint). Babe measured 42 axe handles and a plug of chewing tobacco between his horns. He was found during the winter of the blue snow; his mate was Bessie, the Yaller Cow.

Like many myths, this explains a physical phenomenon. Bunyan's birth was strange, as are the births of many mythic heroes, as it took seventeen storks to carry the infant (ordinarily, one stork could carry several babies and drop them off at their parents' home). Paul and Babe dug the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe behind him, and created Mount Hood by piling rocks on top of their campfire to put it out.

He is a classic American "big man" who was popular in 19th century America. Further, the Bunyan myths sprang from lumber camp tales, bawdy to put it mildly. 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 bears do not need ladders to climb trees), they 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 toned down, were attributed to a single character, Bunyan, and became the stories we know today.

[edit] Newspaper legends

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 for the Oscoda (Michigan) Press in 1906 and an expanded version of the same article for the Detroit News. He is alleged to have collected stories from lumberjacks, combined them with his own embellishments and began disseminating the legend with the July 24, 1910 printing of The Round River Drive which included the following, concerning Dutch Jake (another mythical lumberjack of great strength) and the narrator participating in a Bunyan-sponsored contest to cut down the biggest tree in the forest.

"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 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."

The popularization of the myth started with 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. 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.

Laughead, through the ad pamphlets, created much of the Bunyan "canon", including Babe the blue ox and Johnny Inkslinger.[1]

[edit] Tourist attractions

Statues of both Bunyan and Babe exist in Bemidji, Minnesota; Westwood, California; Del Norte County, California; and in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. A talking statue of Paul with a statue of Babe is located in an amusement park 7 miles east of Brainerd, Minnesota (its original Baxter location was cleared in 2003 to make room for new commercial development).

Statues of Bunyan (alone) exist in Old Forge, New York; Akeley, Minnesota; Tucson, Arizona; Bangor, Maine; Ossineke, Michigan; Portland, Oregon; St. Maries, Idaho; Shelton, Washington; Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin and also on top of a Vietnamese restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to the talking statue (above) near Brainerd, there are two other (smaller, non-talking) statues located in that city.

Kelliher, Minnesota is the home of Paul Bunyan Memorial Park, which contains a site purporting to be Paul Bunyan's grave [2].

A statue depicting Bunyan's wife can be found in Hackensack, Minnesota.

Bunyan is depicted on the world's largest wood carving, at the entrance to Sequoia National Park in California. There is a group called the Mystic Knights of the Blue Ox in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Paul Bunyan has dozens of towns vying for being considered his home: the above mentioned Bemidji, Brainerd, Shelton, and Westwood; and Bay City, Michigan, where 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, MI, area, 1865-1875, where MacGillivray later worked and apparently picked up the stories. One legend even has Paul Bunyan born in Bangor, Maine (one of the great lumber capitals) and eventually going west to find more timber. Another legend claims that Rib Mountain in Wausau, Wisconsin, is Bunyan's grave site.

[edit] Recent fiction

  • Paul Bunyan makes an appearance in the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson and Fargo by Coen brothers.
  • He is the subject of a poem by Robert Frost called "Paul's Wife", found in New Hampshire
  • He is the subject of "Paul Bunyan and the Photocopier" by Larry Hammer.
  • The story is a subject of the Simpsons episode "Simpsons Tall Tales", in which the Simpsons board a train to Delaware and meet a hobo who tells them a selection of "tall tales".
  • Paul Bunyan is a character in Jack of Fables.
  • In the webcomic "The Adventures of Dr. McNinja", the "Paul Bunyan's disease" causes people to turn into giant lumberjacks.
  • Paul Bunyan's character appeared in the movie "Tall Tales", featuring Oliver Platt as Paul Bunyan. Patrick Swayze also stars as the legendary cowboy Pecos Bill.
  • A statue of Paul Bunyan tries to kill the character of Richie in Stephen King's It.


[edit] See also

A Paul Bunyan statue in Portland, Oregon
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A Paul Bunyan statue in Portland, Oregon

[edit] Other Big Men

Portal:Folklore
 Folklore Portal

[edit] References

  • Gartenberg, Max. "Paul Bunyan and Little John", Journal of American Folklore, volume 62, 1949.
  • Maltin, Leonard, "Of Mice and Magic - the History of American Animation", Plume Books, Revised edition, May, 1990
  • 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, pages 35-42
  • Germain, Georges-Hébert, "Adventurers in the New World: The Saga of the Coureurs des Bois", Libre-Expression, Montréal, 2003

[edit] External links

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