TRUE BEAR STORIES
JOAQUIN MILLER
TRUE
BEAR STORIES
TOGETHER WITH A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF THE
CAPTURE OF THE CELEBRATED
GRIZZLY “MONARCH.”
FULLY ILLUSTRATED.
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.
Copyright, 1900, by Rand, McNally & Co.
DEDICATED
to
My Dear Little Daughter,
JUANITA MILLER,
FOR WHOSE PLEASURE AND INSTRUCTION I HAVE MANY TIMES
DUG UP THE MOST OF THESE STORIES FROM
OUT THE DAYS OF MY BOYHOOD.
PREFACE.
My Bright Young Reader: I was once exactly your own age. Like allboys, I was, from the first, fond of bear stories, and above all, Idid not like stories that seemed the least bit untrue. I alwayspreferred a natural and reasonable story and one that would instructas well as interest. This I think best for us all, and I have acted onthis line in compiling these comparatively few bear stories from along life of action in our mountains and up and down the continent.
As a rule, the modern bear is not a bloody, bad fellow, whatever hemay have been in Bible days. You read, almost any circus season, aboutthe killing of his keeper by a lion, a tiger, a panther, or even thedreary old elephant, but you never hear of a tame bear’s hurtinganybody.
I suppose you have been told, and believe, that bears will eat boys,good or bad, if they meet them in the woods. This is not true. On thecontrary, there are several well-authenticated cases, in Germanymostly, where bears have taken lost children under their protection,one boy having been[Pg 1]
[Pg 2] reared from the age of four to sixteen by a shebear without ever seeing the face of man.
I have known several persons to be maimed or killed in battles withbears, but in every case it was not the bear that began the fight, andin all my experience of about half a century I never knew a bear toeat human flesh, as does the tiger and like beasts.
Each branch of the bear family is represented here and each has itscharacteristics. By noting these as you go along you may learnsomething not set down in the schoolbooks. For the bear is a shy oldhermit and is rarely encountered in his wild state by anyone save thehardy hunter, whose only interest in the event is to secure the skinand carcass.
Of course, now and then, a man of science meets a bear in the woods,but the meeting is of short duration. If the bear does not leave, theman of books does, and so we seldom get his photograph as he reallyappears in his wild state. The first and only bear I ever saw thatseemed to be sitting for his photograph was the swamp, or “sloth,”bear—Ursus Labiatus—found in[Pg 3] the marshes at the mouth of theMississippi River. You will read of an encounter with him further on.
I know very well that there exists a good deal of bad feeling betweenboys and bears, particularly on the part of boys. The