Information AboutPaul Bunyan |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PAUL BUNYAN | |
| american folklore | |
| bunyan, paul | |
| fictional characters from minnesota | |
| fictional characters from wisconsin | |
| minnesota folklore | |
| nonexistent people | |
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]] Paul Bunyan is a Myth ical Lumberjack in Tall Tale s, originating either with an American newspaperman or with French Canadians . ORIGIN Lumberjack legends ]] Paul Bunyan is said to be a lumberjack of gargantuan size and titanic strength. In stories about him, it is said that he and his blue Ox , Babe, were so large that 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. Once, he helped Paul to straighten a road simply by pulling it. 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). When he was old enough to clap and laugh, the vibration broke every window in the house. 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 America n "big man" who was popular in 19th century America. Further, the Bunyan myths sprang from lumber camp tales, sometimes bawdy ones, 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 that 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 watered down, were attributed to a single character, Bunyan, and became the stories we know today. Newspaper myths The earliest published versions of the myth of Paul Bunyan can be traced back to . 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 the blue ox and Johnny Inkslinger. {Link without Title} He can also be found in Akeley, MN....... in Bemidji, Minnesota ]] LOCATIONS Paul Bunyan has dozens of towns vying to be considered his home. Many consider Bemidji, Minnesota to be his official home, while other towns (such as the above mentioned Brainerd, Shelton, and Westwood; Bay City, Michigan , and even Eau Claire, Wisconsin ), vie for the title. 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 has declared Oscoda, Michigan as the official home of Paul Bunyan due to the earliest documented published stories by MacGillivray. One legend has Paul Bunyan born in in Wausau, Wisconsin , is Bunyan's grave site. TOURIST ATTRACTIONS , Klamath, California ]]
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