Paul Bunyan and his loggers

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Paul Bunyan and His
Loggers

-By —
OTIS T. AND CLOICE RJ HOWD

Paul Bunyati and His
Loggers

-By —

OTIS T. AND CLOICE R J HOWD

C

c^SL S,

Paul Bunyan and His Loggers

By CLOICE R. HOWD AND OTIS T. HOWD

Paul Bunyan was the logging industry ; not, to be sure,
as it is found in Forest Service Reports or in profit and loss
statements, but rather as it burned in the bones of the true
North Woods lumberjack. To understand the significance of
the Bunyan stories one must know something of the men
who first told them.

While the lumber industry has found a place in every
section of the country except the treeless plains, it was the
pineries of the Lake States which furnished most of its
romance. Logging had begun on the Atlantic Coast even be
fore the first permanent English settlement, but it never
reached a size sufficient to challenge the imagination until
it came to the Lake States. While the industry had begun on
Lake Erie about 1800, its development in the West was slow
until after the Civil War. By that time saw mill machinery
was ready to make lumber rapidly and cheaply, and the fast
growing population of the Mississippi Valley brought the
market within reach of the forests. After 1865 the lumber
men swept across Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota like
a whirlwind, laying waste with ax and saw that mighty pine
forest, until by 1900 all that remained were small fragments
of the original forest and hundreds of miles of stumps. Then
they passed on to the Gulf States or the Pacific Coast.

"Down East" logging had been largely a side line to
agriculture or other occupations, although there were some
men who were full-time loggers, but with the opening up of
the Lake States, logging became a distinct profession, with a
professional pride in work and a devotion to it which kept
the logger from straying off into other industries. The log
ger went into the woods early in the fall, spent the entire
winter snow-bound in a lonely camp with other men like-
minded with himself, a dozen to a hundred or more of them.
With the spring thaw they brought the logs down the river
in a great drive, and then spent their winter stake in a blaze
of glory among the bright lights of a sawdust town. Then
they went into the saw mills till it was time to return to the
woods in the fall. It was during the long winter evenings in
the bunk houses, with the loggers gathered about the red-
hot stove and the air full of the smell of drying clothes and
tobacco smoke, that the Paul Bunyan tales were born and
grew.

These stories find their original in a French-Canadian,
Paul Bunybn, who first came into prominence during the
Papineau rebellion in 1837, when, by remarkable feats of

M666623

2 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

strength and daring, he won the admiration of his country
men. Then for many years he was the outstanding logging
boss in all the St. Lawrence River country. When the loggers
from this region went into the Michigan woods about 1850
they took with them the stories of their great hero, which
stories, naturally, lost nothing in the telling, particularly as
they served admirably as a form of compensation device for
their feelings of inferiority. Nor is it remarkable that the
Yankee loggers should parody these stories to ridicule the
French-Canadians.

Another element which entered into the making of the
Bunyan myth was the tendency to exaggeration which
is common to all of us and which finds expression on
so many occasions. The lumber camps had long been filled
with extreme stories of many sorts, but these were usually
only isolated tales. Many of them had been told to impress
the tenderfoot, while many others had been wish projections,
a sort of day-dreaming in which one was able to do that
which he never could accomplish when he had to work with
stern reality. After the French-Canadians brought Paul
Bunyon to the camps and the practice had begun of improv
ing on these stories, it became easy to invent a new Bunyon
tale or connect up one of the other stories with the Bunyon
cycle wherever the need arose for over-awing a tenderfoot
or of securing a refuge from the sense of frustration, or
just for simple amusement. In the process the French-Can
adian Bunyon became naturalized into the Yankee Bunyan
and all contact with reality was lost. Bunyan, his old Blue
Ox, Babe, and their exploits grew to fantastic extremes. Size
was never measured in terms of feet or pounds and so it is
difficult for us to give exact dimensions, but it was agreed
that the blue ox, Babe, measured forty-two axehandles and
a plug of tobacco between the eyes, while Bunyan himself
once had the misfortune to lose two large logging engines
in his mackinaw pocket and did not find them for a month.

Yet these stories were never told lightly, for a true
lumberjack will never, by word, look or tone, give any sug
gestion that these stories are not the exact truth. In fact
elaborate precautions are taken to establish their veracity
and citation of proof is nearly universal. Sometimes the evi
dence cited is the word of one from whom the story was
heard, for few of the tales are told as the personal experience
of the story teller. The story came direct from one of Bun-
yan's loggers, from a pioneer, the Bull Cook, or some one
else equally well informed and reliable. Sometimes the proof
is to be found in the continued existence of something con
nected with the story. Thus the lack of stumps in North Da-

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 3

kota is cited as proof of the fact that Bunyan drove all the
stumps into the ground when he logged off that country,
while the story that the Mississippi River was started when
one of Bunyan's water tanks broke is proven by the fact that
the river is still running.

According to the best authenticated stories, Paul was
born in Maine some time before the Revolutionary War, so
far back that a century or so one way or the other made little
difference. He had been a lusty infant and a good-sizeable
boy, but he did not reach his full growth until he went to
Michigan. It was then that he really began his life work of
logging off the regions south and west of the Great Lakes.
He gained experience and some reputation in his logging
operations on the Big Onion, the Big Auger, the Little Gimb-
let and the Big Tadpole Rivers, but it was the logging of the
Dakotas that really made his reputation. Legend has played
around this event even more than is usual with Bunyan ex
ploits. This was really done to provide room for the Swedes
who were coming to the United States. There were many
lesser things which Bunyan did, most of which are men
tioned only incidentally, such as the logging of Missouri, the
accident when he dragged his skiing pole and so made the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, or the building of Crater
Lake or the Island of Cuba. Later Bunyan went to the Pacific
Coast where he did many mighty feats of landscape engin
eering ; in fact he largely made the West, but he never seem
ed to find logging on the West Coast congenial, probably due
to the fact that machinery had invaded the Western woods
by the time he got there. And Paul never could endure those
"pesky" donkey engines. While it was sometimes necessary
for him to resort to the use of power machinery in his cook
house, he would never have it in the woods. Even when he
had a crew so large that it took eight cement mixers to stir
the batter for their hot cakes and a stern-wheel steamer to
stir their soup, the Blue Ox could easily haul all the logs
they could cut without help of any donkey engines or any
other such "fandangoes."

Bunyan, however, was not alone in his logging ventures.
He had many helpers, but none of them were cast in quite
such an heroic mould as was Paul himself. There were the
seven axemen who helped him the winter he logged Dakota,
who kept a cord of four-foot wood on the table for tooth
picks, and whose singing could be heard of an evening down
on the Atlantic. There was the little chore boy who turned
the grindstone which was so large that every time it turned
around once it was payday. There was Johnny Inkslinger,
the bookkeeper, who made the first fountain pen, which held

4 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

twenty-four barrels of ink, and who kept two complete sets
of books, one with each hand. Brimstone Bill cared for Babe
and made for him those wonderful yokes of cranberry wood,
which made it possible for Babe to pull anything which had
two ends to it. Big Ole, the blacksmith, had two tasks. One
was to shoe Babe, and every time he did it he had to open up
a new iron mine. The other was to punch the holes in the
doughnuts for the cook. Another helper was Cris Crosshaul,
a careless cuss, who was responsible for taking wrong logs
down to New Orleans, which made it necessary for Paul to
bring them back up the river. This was done by feeding
Babe a large salt ration and then letting him drink out of
the upper river. He drank the river dry and the logs came
up stream faster than they went down. Of the other helpers
it is perhaps sufficient to mention only Joe McFrau, who
was able to ride anything which ever floated and in any
water, and the two cooks, Sourdough Sam and Big Joe.
Sourdough Sam made everything except coffee out of sour
dough. When Shot Gunderson put his winter's cut of logs
into Round River and then drove them around its whole
course three times before he found that it did not have any
outlet, Sam made up a large batch of sourdough and dumped
it into the river and when it got to working it lifted the logs
over the divide. But Sam was seriously injured one day
when his sourdough barrel blew up and Big Joe was em
ployed. His famous Black Duck dinner was so fine that none
of the American loggers cared to eat again for five weeks ;
but he could only satisfy the French-Canadians by dumping
a car load of split peas in a boiling lake.

The most authentic group of Bunyan stories came from
the Lake States where they originated. A comparison of
these older stories with the newer ones from the Pacific
Coast shows a marked difference. (And it is noteworthy that
the Bunyan tales never had much of a vogue in the South.)
According to the Lake States version, Bunyan always stayed
in the logging camps or on the drives, he attended strictly
to business, while according to the Western tales he branched
out into all sorts of enterprises. The Lake States tales were
the product of the true, the professional lumberjack, the
winter recluse, who was shut in with others like minded with
himself and with none but his kind as auditors. The Western
logger was not so exclusive a type. There were many of the
professional loggers, but there were many men in the woods
whose main interest was elsewhere, and so the story teller
did not have such a select audience. There were other inter
ests in the West to divert Bunyan from his real job and nat
urally it suffered in consequence.

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 5

It was perhaps inevitable, but none the less unfortunate,
that the Bunyan stories did not reach the outside world dir
ectly from the Lake States story tellers, but first passed
through the hands or mouths of the Western loggers. Of all
the publications perhaps W. B. Laughead, in Paul Bunyan
and His Big Blue Ox, published by the Red River Lumber
Company of Minneapolis, has most nearly preserved the
Lake States flavor of the stories. Certainly James Stevens
and Esther Shepperd in their books of the same title, Paul
Bunyan, have more nearly portrayed the Western Bunyan
than the Eastern one. The same is largely true of the poems
here given. They take the Western point of view, and most
of them are Western stories. The first of these represents
the Western conflict between the professional and the part-
time logger, the second is unwarranted in bringing Noah in
to the picture, where he does not belong, while the others all
deal directly with the West. But certainly the Western
tales make better stories than do the Eastern ones.

PAUL BUNYAN'S TRICK

This story is one of the well-known Bunyan tales, told
from Michigan to the Coast, which shows some of the pro
fessional loggers' scorn for the part-time logger.

Come all you stump ranch loggers and slick shod choker men
And learn how we gathered the round stuff up on the
Skinney Ben.

You fellers call this logging, just sixty cars a day;

We kids beat that when I was young and thought that it was

play.

My first real throw at logging was in Big Ole's camp
When he was racing Bunyan to be the skidding champ.

From sun till sun he drove us, till we were nearly dead,
And many times in getting up I've met myself going to bed.

He bought a load of lanterns and made us earn our keep ;
The bed bugs even starved to death, we got so little sleep.

And talk about a driver ! Two men must fall and buck
A quarter section every day or they were out of luck.

Now that was not so very hard as it looks from where you sit,
For there the trees grew close enough to chop one with each

bit.

And every cussed feller used both ends of his swing,
And forests went like snow drifts before an early spring.
And talk about your skidding ; although, perhaps they lied,
They said the trees were in the pond before the echo died.
But I've seen one yoke skidding for seven falling crews,

6 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

And Bunyan bought an iron mine to keep his stock in shoes.
We sure got out the round stuff, but still we were too slow,
And just a trick of Bunyan's had brought us all our woe.

'Twas long and crooked skid roads that made our logging

late,
And Bunyan took his old Blue Ox and pulled his skid roads

straight.

Now when you slick shod loggers call this here logging fast,
It sure makes us old timers just hanker for the past.

SOME LOGGER

This is one of the Eastern stories, but with numerous
Western additions, chief of which is the introduction of
Noah.

In the pre-historic ages, e're the Swedes ruled Minnesota,
Fairest spot in all the Westland was the woodland of Dakota.

'Twas a land of timbered ridges long before the axe was

known,
And there grew the largest timber on which the sun had

ever shown.

Many tales are told about it, how it grew so very high,
That the tops were broke and shattered where they rubbed

against the sky.

And no man had ever ventured in that forest deep and dark
Till old Noah got to thinking he would build himself an ark.

So he looked the timber over and decided it would take
Every tree if he would carry every bird and beast and snake ;

If he just could get it yarded; there he had a serious doubt,
Till Paul Bunyan finally told him he would get the round

stuff out.

So he harnessed up his Blue Ox, took the big logs on the run.
Never even stopped for dinner, worked right through from

sun to sun.
Many logs he dogged together, took three hundred turns a

day:
Still Old Noah hollered "Faster," said that snail's pace didn't

pay.
Then old Bunyan got quite peevish, sent the loggers all to

camp ;
Started hauling in the sections ; he'd put Noah on the tramp.

But he bragged a bit too early, tho each, day he hauled eight

score,
Noah cleared them off by noontime and sat down and yelled

for more.

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 7

Paul got madder than a logger, cussed and jumped upon his

hat;
Noah was a domned slave driver, contract didn't call for

that.

But old Noah only guyed him, called his ox a lazy slob,
Then to keep Paul Bunyan working put a bonus on the job.

Next Paul hooked upon a township and the ox pulled with a

will,
But the cable only parted when it caught upon a hill ;

Broke in twenty-seven pieces; the Blue Ox sure had the

power ;
Then Paul set his splicing record, twenty-six within an hour.

But he never got discouraged, he would still show Noah that
A true logger always finished anything he started at.

So he hooked onto the ridges, pulled them all into the mill ;
Then they say of real hard labor Noah finally got his fill.

Thus the task was finally finished, nor was that the only

gain:
Naught was left in the Dakotas but a large and level plain

Save in just two places only, where the logging had begun,
And where all the refuse ridges were left drying in the sun.

First is called the Black Hills district, there the ancient land

still stands,
And the pile of broken ridges is Dakota's famed Bad Lands.

THE YEAR OF THE GREAT HOT WINTER
This is probably a true Western story.

I was punching a half breed reader down on Shoalwater Bay
The year the nights came together, some called it the great
dark day.

We hit the deck at sunrise but the sun never rose at all,
So we sat by the light of the lantern waiting the breakfast
call.

Twas an event to call forth stories of wonderful times in

tho Past,
And I listened to marvelous stories till the Bull Cook's turn

came at last.
"I was just a lad," he started, "When I worked in Paul

Bunyan's camps,
Darkness was nothing in those days for we had volcanoes

for lamps.

"One year we were logging Missouri, before Bunyan came
to the coast,

8 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

And had just finished building the Ozarks to serve as a
snubbing post.

"We were working down an ice chute almost across the state,
When the weather turned suddenly warmer, hotter than

Satan's grate.

"'Twas the year of the great hot winter, hottest I ever felt,
And the ice cakes turned right into steam without even

stopping to melt.
"Well, that was the end of our logging, but Bunyan must

look around,
So he left his ox behind him and came to Puget Sound.

"And when he reached the water he picked himself a tree
And dug it out into a boat and so put out to sea.
"'Twas cooler on the water and so he sailed around
Till in the Caribbean Sea he finally run aground.

"For days he tried to float her, but it wasn't any use,
So he went and got his Blue Ox to pull the old tub loose.

"He gathered all the rigging he could from near and far,
But chains much larger than your leg were stretched into a

bar.

"And all the gear he didn't break was melted by the heat,
And there are lakes all over Texas where the Blue Ox braced

his feet.

"But every bit of timber was pulled loose from that boat
And still the old hulk lay there, she simply wouldn't float.

"Well, many years have passed since then and it's drifted

o'er with sand
And trees have grown upon it until it's solid land.

"Now boys, that's simply history, as right as God above,
And the little isle of Cuba is the place I'm speaking of."

The Bull Cook finished up his tale and went about his task,
But there've always been some questions I'd kinder like to

ask.

But he is dead and gathered to old Paul Bunyan's side,
And so I'll never know for sure if that old codger lied.

THE CHARMED LAND

A Western story of one of Paul's greatest feats of land
scape engineering.

Old Hewey wrought, so I've been taught, six days to make

the world;
He built the sky, and rearing high, the mighty mountains

hurled ;
One only spot he finished not, and then his tents he furled.

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 9

But e're on high, above the sky, he went up out of sight,
With final shout he called about his workers all of might,
And thus he spoke, e're like a cloak he clothed himself with
night :

"Good helpers all, both great and small, this is my last

command,

This place you see must finished be that all may understand
I hold it blest 'bove all the rest, the final promised land."

Old Puget then lined up his men, he asked each one to work,
Three mighty men stood by him then and labored like a

Turk,
While all the rest refused the test and did their best to shirk.

Paul Bunyan drew his fingers through his long and tangled

locks,
He hardly spoke but took the yoke and sought his old Blue

Ox;
He said "Watch me, I'll build a sea, you two may use the

rocks."

With cunning stroke the soil he broke, he flung the dirt

aside ;
The rocks he tore with mighty roar and flung them far and

wide,
He piled the earth till hills had birth and grew on either

side.

The old Blue Ox he hitched to rocks and tore the big ones out,
He rolled them out and all about and called each one a mount,
And lest I lie, against the sky, they witness if you doubt.

At reach and bay he dug away, he shaped a thousand isles ;
By headlands steep dug channels deep where rippling water

smiles ;
With generous hand he took the sand and built the beach for

miles.

Like golden gleam of painter's dream he built old Puget

Sound,

Where skies of blue the waters woo a thousand isles around,
With emerald sheen they're always green and always spring

abounds.

Then old Cascade took up his spade and reared against the

sky,

A row of peaks whose summit seeks a marriage with the sky,
A super land whose wonders grand enchant the human eye.

Olympus then laid down his pen and built with cunning
hand

10 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

A place so rare that e'en the air seems wilder and more

grand,
Of hill and stream beyond our dream, a greater Switzerland.

And thus these three, as you may see, beneath the Western

skies

Have built a land that's super grand, an earthly paradise ;
When God looked down they say it found great favor in

his eyes.

BUILDING COLUMBIA GORGE

Bunyan frequently went hunting or fishing, and on such
occasions anything might happen.

When Mount Rainier was a hole in the ground, e're Midad

made his stake,
The land to the west of the Rockies was all a mighty lake.

And there of a summer's evening Paul Bunyan came to fish,
For a mess of steelhead salmon was ever his favorite dish.

With a rod that was only eight leagues long and keen and

strong and light,
And a wondrous fly he'd made himself he lured the fish to

bite.

This day he'd landed some small ones, less than a league in

length,
But at last he hooked a beauty that tested the big boy's

strength.

It was fight from the time he hooked it, Oh, boy, but this

was bliss !
Who would fool with a pyramid when he could live like this ?

The light line sang through the f erruls and the water foamed

like beer,
The big fish raged to seawards but ever he drew it near ;

It was back and forth till the sunset and the stars came out

anon.
The fish was giving inch by inch but ever the fight went on.

Twas a fight that once in a lifetime comes to a fisher man,
And having thrilled to its power he's wed to the fishing clan.

Morning found Paul Bunyan ready to grasp the prize,
But the fish in growing larger had, too, grown wondrous
wise,

And dashing towards the nimrod it tried to foul the line
Around some broken branches of a waterlogged old pine.

It was nip and tuck for a moment but Bunyan was forced
to see

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 11

The strong line part like a raveling and the fish go tearing
free.

With one quick burst of anger he sat down limp as a rag,
And when he wended homeward his feet would scarcely
drag.

But rest brought resolution and an overpowering wish:
He'd camp there by that lakeside till he caught that cussed
fish.

For weeks he fished those waters in sunshine and in shade,
A thousand different spots he tried, a hundred lures he
made.

But often as the sunset his dream fish would arise
And sport its lazy beauty before his longing eyes,

And ever it seemed to laugh at him and ever he madder

grew,
He cussed and fought it in his sleep till he knew not what

to do.

But finally said Paul Bunyan, "There's one way left to try,
I'll have that fish by sunset or know the reason why;

"I'll drain this cussed puddle right through the old Cascades,
And grill this fish for supper on the hottest plate in Hades."

The old Blue Ox he harnessed, he didn't give a dern,

As around old Mount Baker he took a double turn ;

He almost pulled the Mountain loose but he pulled the Range

in two,
And all those inland waters like mad came tumbling through.

And right where the torrent widened he stood with his
mighty spear

And said "I'll get sir mister fish when he comes out through
here."

Well, Paul had his fish for supper and there's no more in
land lake,

And the Columbia River rages through right where he made
the break.

Now some say this is a fable, but I know that it is true,

For I have it straight from a logger, just as it's told
to you.

BUILDING CRATER LAKE

This story reflects something of the Northwesterner's
scorn and contempt for California and Californians.

I camped one year by Crater Lake, in the State of Oregon,
And there I met a pioneer who lived by trap and gun.

12 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

And often of an evening by the camp fire's ruddy light,
He told me how the West was made and of great men of
might.

He told of the two Joe McFraus, the one whose name was

Pete,
And how he labored for his board to get enough to eat.

And also of the Terrible Swede who gloried in a brawl,
One day he fought the riot squad and licked them one and all.

But master of the mighty men he loved to tell the best,
The tales of old Paul Bunyan and how he built the West.

He told of how he built the Sound, and how once on a spree
He dug the Strait of Bering to drain the Arctic Sea.

And how he split the old Cascades, and, by the way, said he,
"That reminds me of this very lake and how it came to be."

And so he smoked of my cigars and sampled my home brew,
And told the tale about the lake and swore that it was true.

He said it was the very time when Bunyan pulled in two
The Cascade Mountains and thus let the Columbia River
through ;

He said the Blue Ox braced his feet and came within a dime
Of pulling California loose from its sunny clime.

And he swore 'twas true as gospel, that day the "Native Son"
Had first come down from out the trees to see what could
be done.

Well, Bunyan listened to their wail, and checked his ox of

blue,
Then staking down the southern end had pulled the range

in two.

Then when he finished up his job he just pulled up the stake,
And water ran into the hole and there was Crater Lake.

Now you can take this tale or not, he swore that it was true,
And I don't think he'd lie to me while drinking my home
brew.

THE DEATH OF THE BLUE Ox

This story, better than any other I know, shows the
characteristic weaknesses of the lumber industry.

This is a tale of the West land, the fartherest end of the

earth ;
A tale of the great Northwest land where every man proves

his worth.

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 13

Cascade was king of the mountains, Puget was lord of the

sea;
Though Paul Bunyan took their orders, mightiest of all

was he.

He dug the Sound for old Puget, he built the Peaks for
Cascade,

Like the last great dream of a Painter, the Olympic Moun
tains he made.

But he was gyped by St. Helens on plans for a mountain

mold,
So he pastured his ox and traveled to the north in search

of gold.

He stopped at the mighty Yukon, it looked like a likely

stream ;
He never looked to his tailings, he was only after the cream.

But his plans were too ambitious and they'll tell you to this

day
Of how Bunyan panned the Yukon but couldn't make it pay.

But about that time came rumors which he soon found were

true,
How two friends took a contract and could not put it through.

It seemed that Joe McFrau and his friend, The Terrible

Swede,
Had started to earn a grub stake on which they stood in

need.

They started to level the Prairies, but their knowledge was

not an iota,
So soon the two were stranded in the Bad Lands of Dakota.

They wrote to old Paul Bunyan and asked if he would bring
His old Blue Ox and help them finish the job in the spring.

So Bunyan took his Blue Ox and started on his way,
Right in the dead of winter, for he wanted to finish in May.

But hills and plains were buried full two squaws deep in

snow,
And Passes were filled to the summit, so they told him

'twas foolish to go.

But Paul would not listen to reason ; he had too much faith

in his bull,
He swore that the snow couldn't stop him e'en though the

Great Basin was full.

But as they reached the Rockies and camped by a pile of
rocks,

14 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

The snow came down so thickly that he couldn't see his ox.

The temperature dropped swiftly, it seemed a hundred

below ;
The coals from the fire were frozen before they had ceased

to glow.

You've often heard of blue cold and wondered if it was true,
But it got so cold that winter that even the snow was blue.

The Blue Ox froze and Bunyan was never the same again,
He wandered, God knows whither, away from the haunts of

men.
But clear to the end of history and wherever the loggers

may go,
You'll hear how perished the Blue Ox in the year of the

great Blue Snow.

RIDING SUNSET FALLS

This story is one of the minor cycle, dealing with Bun-
yan's helpers, but one in which Bunyan himself does not
figure. It is the absence of the great hero which makes it
possible to introduce the love note here.

Come all you friends of the Red Gods and I will tell you a

wonderful tale
Of the time when all men were he-men who followed the

Wanigan trail.

It happened the year of the big wind up on the river Ski,
The snow was deep in the mountains and the river was
running high.

Joe McFrau was the boss of the crew and king of the river

dogs;
He walked like a bear on the solid ground but was light as

a cat on the logs.
They had reached the break of the river where Sunset Falls

foams white,
Where the Red Gods laugh at the might o f men and dance in

the evening light.

Where the water roars down a devil's chute, pure white like

a river of milk,
And fairy rainbows come and go like ever changing silk.

The river above is wide and calm and lures like a siren's

song,
But the crest of the falls is swift and dark and cruel and

fierce and strong,

And down below where the water strikes the great waves
break like rain

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 15

And the creamy waters heave and sigh like a river god in

pain.

But close beside the catarack lived the hunter John McGraw
With a winsome daughter Rosa who had smiled at Joe

McFrau,

She stood below by the water, watching the white foam fly,
And the logs that her Joe was driving like straws come

whirling by.
And above McFrau was thinking what a picture, fair, she

made,
How she seemed to love the water and was not a bit afraid.

But even as he watched her he saw her slip and fall;

He was stricken dumb and helpless, he could neither move

nor call.

But as a press on the trigger came her despairing cry,
With one great leap he was riding a log that was drifting by.

Right in the maw of the torrent! My God! was the man

insane?
Few men entered that catarack ; none ever came out again.

And now to ride with the log drive ! 'Twas crazy suicide !
Who would dream he'd been hit so hard that he'd want to
die at her side?

But he rode like a fiend incarnate. They stood with eyes apop.
They knew each plunge would drown him, but ever he rose

to the top.

It seemed an age they watched him, a dozen times go down,
Each time a little longer, but I guess frogs never drown.

At last he reached the bottom, the men all gave a cheer,
But his thoughts were on that curly head and he didn't

seem to hear.

And presently he spied her, a dozen feet away,
Sometimes lost in the billows, scarcely seen for spray.

But he plunged into the water and brought her safe to land
And laid her on a bed of moss, though scarcely he could

stand.
But Rose was no worse for the wetting, and I'll be a son of

a gun,
If she didn't turn round and marry a Swede named Peterson.

Well, Joe got drunk as a devil and swore he didn't care ;
He'd pulled a stunt on the river that no one else would dare ;

And a man was a fool to marry, but he hoped the square
head Swede,

16 PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS

Would still remember to thank him when he had ten kids
to feed.

And wherever the drivers gather and wherever white water

calls,
They tell how the crazy Frenchman rode the Sunset Falls.

What is the real significance of these stories? In the
first place they are highly entertaining, with their remark
able flights of fancy and the introduction of the unexpected.
This is enhanced by the tang of the pine woods and the lure
of the great out-of-doors. In the camps they served to while
away many a weary hour and to lighten up the seriousness
of many a knotty problem. They brought the gigantic tasks
of the great woods down to manageable proportions and
saved many a logger from an inferiority complex. Since
they have come into civilization many a task has been made
easier by their rare humor.

Perhaps it is pendantry to try to find in these impossible
tales of the illiterate lumberjacks anything except what they
consciously put there; a beautiful fancy to brighten the
weary days and nights of the long winters. But sometimes
the unconscious contributions are of more significance than
the conscious, for we often do more than we mean. Such
seems to have been the case here, for these uncouth story
tellers have given us some insights into their lives and their
industry. Unconsciously these tales reflect the absorption
of these men in their tasks. The men who made these tales
were men with a far greater interest in the woods than the
stake they were to take out in the spring, whatever might
have been true of those who repeated them. Here is a love
of the woods and of a woodsman's life which has the ring
of reality. These were men with a pride in their industry
and in good work. If they had any interest in religion or
morals or art it was likely like that of Jim Bludso, the river
engineer, of whom John Hay says :

"And this was all the religion he had,
To treat his engine well,
Never to be passed on the river,
And to mind the pilot's bell."

Such were these lumberjacks. Their religion, their whole
life, was to cut and haul as many logs as possible, and then
in the spring to drive these logs down river to the saw mill.
And he was greatest in the camp who could fell a tree most
accurately and quickly, pile logs highest on the sleds, or ride
a log in the roughest water. And the camp boss had to really
be boss : he must be able to handle obstreperous loggers, he

PAUL BUNYAN AND HIS LOGGERS 17

must provide for all the needs of his crew without any molly
coddling, and he must be able to get out the round stuff. In
all of these ways Paul Bunyan is the idealization of the
lumberjack.

But the stories reflect the weaknesses as well as the
strengths of the loggers and of the industry. This is best
shown in the story of the Death of the Blue Ox, which pic
tures Paul as a poor business man, opinionated and head
strong, three traits which were by no means rare in the lum
ber industry. After all, Bunyan never really did grow up,
he was always only a boy, with great loyalty to his immed
iate group, but with but little social responsibility or pro
vision for the future. He was a primitive man, never fully
civilized. It is significant that there is not a suggestion of
love in the whole cycle of Bunyan stories, and that we must
go outside of the genuine Bunyan stories to find anything
such. After they left Bunyan some of his helpers might fall
in love, but not Bunyan or any of the men while they were
with him. To be sure, Bunyan was married, but there is no
trace of affection between him and his wife, and she rarely
even enters the picture. There was no place for such incon
gruous things. Bunyan was out of place in the modern
world. He was never a conservationist, never a business
man ; in the pine woods and on the Yukon he was only after
the cream.

The reign of Bunyan is over and he has gone. Some
say he is dead, others that he has gone to Alaska, some think
he has gone to South America or Africa, but nearly all agree
that he is no longer in the logging game in the United
States. A new era has come, and not the greatest of the
revolutions is the substitution of power machinery for the
ox. The logger is coming to recognize his social responsibil
ity, timber is being utilized as a social heritage to be man
aged for posterity, and the isolation of the camps has been
ended. The logging- game is becoming civilized and Bunyan
was not able to make such great adjustments. He had to
retire to other and wilder haunts. The great days are over ;
the old gods are dead, and Bunyan is only a myth.