Speaker 1: Yes, I have it. I'll give you an idea of
Speaker 1: a hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that
Speaker 1: ever lived, none excepted. On this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: explore an uncanny bear hunting story written in eighteen forty
Speaker 1: one by a man from New York. I'd be surprised
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard it, but its influence almost single
Speaker 1: handedly branded estate and plowed a furrow from which some
Speaker 1: of America's greatest Southern authors set root in a rose.
Speaker 1: Its impact was more than significant. We'll talk about the
Speaker 1: remarkable and pretty darned new to Planet Earth power of
Speaker 1: media to influence our imaginations about people will never meet,
Speaker 1: places will never go, and how it can influence who
Speaker 1: we think we are, for better or worse. It seems
Speaker 1: we're putty in the hands of the creative storytellers of
Speaker 1: our time. I got a three pack of some of
Speaker 1: the greatest guests known west of the Mighty Mississippi, renowned
Speaker 1: Ozark historian and author doctor Brooks Blevins, University of Arkansas
Speaker 1: folkloris doctor Bob Cochrane, and like a hickory nut between
Speaker 1: two acorns, meat eaters own Stephen Ranella. We're about to
Speaker 1: dive in deep into a story called The Big Bear
Speaker 1: of Arkansas, one of my personal favorite stories of all time.
Speaker 1: And if you're a bear greezer at heart, I really
Speaker 1: doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. I'm very
Speaker 1: slow now to say, you know, just sort of with
Speaker 1: tremendous confidence, there is no realm that that's out there
Speaker 1: that I simply can't access. I think this is one
Speaker 1: of the great things about the story. This good is
Speaker 1: it makes us aware of that. And so across two
Speaker 1: hundred years, you know, I can stand in that guy's shoes,
Speaker 1: I can stand in the bear hunter shoes. I've had
Speaker 1: experiences that are uncanny. Do not live in a world
Speaker 1: did I fully understand? My name is Clay Nukeam, and
Speaker 1: this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things
Speaker 1: forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and
Speaker 1: where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their
Speaker 1: lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: A steamboat on the Mississippi frequently and making her regular
Speaker 1: trips carries between places varying from one to two thousand
Speaker 1: miles apart, and as these boats advertised to land passengers
Speaker 1: and freight at all intermediate dings, the heterogeneous character of
Speaker 1: the passengers of one of these upcountry boats can scarcely
Speaker 1: be imagined by one who's never seen it with his
Speaker 1: own eyes. Starting from New Orleans and one of these boats,
Speaker 1: you'll find yourself associated with men from every state of
Speaker 1: the Union and from every portion of the globe. And
Speaker 1: a man of observation need not lack for amusement or
Speaker 1: instruction in such a crowd, if he will take the
Speaker 1: trouble to read the great book of characters so favorably
Speaker 1: open before him. Here may be seen Joscelyn, together the
Speaker 1: wealthy Southern planter and the peddler of tinware from New England,
Speaker 1: the Northern merchant and the Southern jockey, a venerable bishop
Speaker 1: and a desperate gambler, the land speculator and the honest farmer,
Speaker 1: the professional men of all creeds and characters, wolverines, suckers, hoosiers, buckeyes,
Speaker 1: corn crackers, and besides a plentiful sprinkling of the half horse,
Speaker 1: half alligator species of men who are peculiar to old Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by going
Speaker 1: up and down the river in pursuit of pleasure or business.
Speaker 1: I have frequently found myself in such a crowd. In
Speaker 1: the beginning of our story, the listener finds himself on
Speaker 1: a Mississippi riverboat headed north out of New Orleans. This
Speaker 1: wasn't America's first riverboat tail, but it was close, and
Speaker 1: the cultural atmospherics were beyond interesting to people in the
Speaker 1: East hungry for tales of frontier life. The regions west
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi were mysterious and in some ways a
Speaker 1: blank slate to Americans. But nothing on this planet can
Speaker 1: sit long without being labeled. Like a cockle bird of
Speaker 1: cotton riches, identity has barbs and attaches itself and won't
Speaker 1: let go. But no one knew how much these early
Speaker 1: stories would stick. We're reading a story called The Big
Speaker 1: Bear of Arkansas, written in eighteen forty one by a
Speaker 1: New Yorker named Thomas bangs Or, who moved to Baton Rouge,
Speaker 1: Louisiana in eighteen thirty seven for health reasons. He was
Speaker 1: a painter and an author known for his ability to
Speaker 1: describe nature, and even though he was new to the South,
Speaker 1: he was enamored with folk speech and was gifted at
Speaker 1: capturing the dialect of his subjects. The Big Bear Story
Speaker 1: would become the greatest by far story of this genre
Speaker 1: of writing called Southwest humor. Later will learn how influential
Speaker 1: it was on the young state Arkansas. And yep, I
Speaker 1: am foreshadowing. Do y'all remember when that iTunes reviewer said
Speaker 1: I foreshadowed too much? In this first section, Thorpe used
Speaker 1: colorful phrases to describe the men of the Mississippi River Valley,
Speaker 1: one that had been heard before, spoken by none other
Speaker 1: than David Crockett himself. While passing through Arkansas in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, he said at a public speech in Little
Speaker 1: Rock that was recorded in a newspaper, he said, if
Speaker 1: I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where
Speaker 1: the men are the real half horse half alligator breed
Speaker 1: such as grows nowhere else on the face of the
Speaker 1: universal earth. It's interesting that Thorpe used Crockett's exact words. Anyway,
Speaker 1: We're about to be back on the riverboat, and our narrator,
Speaker 1: an anonymous city slicker from New Orleans, is about to
Speaker 1: introduce us to an interesting character. While I was thus
Speaker 1: busily employed in reading, and my companions were more busily
Speaker 1: still employed in discussing such subjects as suited their humor's best,
Speaker 1: we were startled most unexpectedly by loud Indian whoop uttered
Speaker 1: in the social hall, and that part of the cabin
Speaker 1: fitted off for a bar. Then was to be heard
Speaker 1: a loud crowing, which would not have continued to have
Speaker 1: interested us, such sounds, being quite common in that place
Speaker 1: of spirits, alcohol had not The hero of these windy
Speaker 1: accomplishments stuck his head into the cabin and hallooed out
Speaker 1: Hurrah for the Big Bear of Arkansas, and then might
Speaker 1: be heard a confused hum of voices. This continued interruption
Speaker 1: attracted the attention of everyone in the cabin. All conversation dropped,
Speaker 1: and in the midst of this surprise, the big bar
Speaker 1: walked into the cabin, took a chair, put his feet
Speaker 1: up on the stove, looking back over his shoulder past
Speaker 1: the general and familiar salute of strangers, how are you?
Speaker 1: He then expressed himself at home as much as if
Speaker 1: he had been in the forks of the Cypress, and
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more so. Some of the company at
Speaker 1: this familiarity looked a little angry and some astonished, But
Speaker 1: in a moment every face was read and a smile.
Speaker 1: There was something about the intruder that won the heart.
Speaker 1: On sight, he appeared to be a man enjoined perfect
Speaker 1: health and contentment. His eyes were a spark Lena's diamonds,
Speaker 1: and good natured to simplicity. Then his perfect confidence in
Speaker 1: himself was irresistibly droll. The word droll means curious or
Speaker 1: unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement. I had
Speaker 1: to look that up. This writing is now over one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty years old, and I find myself lost
Speaker 1: at times, but by the next sentence I'm usually understanding again.
Speaker 1: You might be the same. The author is setting the
Speaker 1: context for our story. The riverboat is full of strangers
Speaker 1: from all over the country. When a loud, charismatic, and
Speaker 1: unusually likable man enters the cabin, introducing himself as the
Speaker 1: Big Bar of Arkansas. The author spells the word like
Speaker 1: he wants us to say. It be a r pronounced
Speaker 1: like an iron bar with a little more belly in
Speaker 1: it bar. Many in the South still say it this
Speaker 1: way today. Later we'll learn that our storyteller's given name
Speaker 1: is Jim Doggett. He goes on to tell a story
Speaker 1: about killing a forty pound turkey and how planting corn
Speaker 1: in Arkansas is dangerous because he once had a soal
Speaker 1: hog fall asleep on some corn seed and the percussion
Speaker 1: of its sprouting killed her. He then says, I don't
Speaker 1: plan anymore. Nature intended Arkansas for a hunting ground, and
Speaker 1: I go according to nature. A passenger then asked, in disbelief,
Speaker 1: where did all this happen? Again, here's dogged Where did
Speaker 1: all that happened? Ask to cynical Hoosier, happen. It happened
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. Where else could it have happened? But in
Speaker 1: the creation state the finishing up country. A state where
Speaker 1: the soil runs deep to the center of the earth,
Speaker 1: and the government gives you a title to every inch
Speaker 1: of it. Then it's airs. Just breathe them and they'll
Speaker 1: make you a snort like a horse. It's a state
Speaker 1: without thought. It is dog it. The Big bar describes Arkansas,
Speaker 1: which he spells with a W at the end, as
Speaker 1: a state without thought, the creation state, the finishing up country.
Speaker 1: Its meaning is a complete mystery. But it's clear he
Speaker 1: knows something we don't. The descriptor is clearly spiritual, almost
Speaker 1: as if God created Arkansas first and the rest of
Speaker 1: the world resulted from its wake. Americans on the frontier
Speaker 1: were heavily influenced by Native Americans, and this was particularly
Speaker 1: strong in the Mississippi River Delta region of eastern Arkansas,
Speaker 1: where the fictional character dog It lived. Many tribes had
Speaker 1: site specific religions and believed their homelands to be the
Speaker 1: center of the world. I'm speculating, but dog It's doctrine
Speaker 1: doesn't mesh with Western religious doctrine. Arkansas became a state
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six, just five years prior to this writing.
Speaker 1: Some of the first reporting of the Arkansas territory going
Speaker 1: back to America was in the eighteen twenties from a
Speaker 1: dad gum New York Yankee, and I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: a baseball player, but a real Yankee named Henry Rose Schoolcraft,
Speaker 1: who despised the people he met here and spoke extremely
Speaker 1: critical of their backwards, grubby, crude Frontier lives to this day,
Speaker 1: Schoolcraft's demeaning accounts still sting a little. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: Thorpe chose for his fictional character dogg It to be
Speaker 1: so certain that this Arkansas spelled with a W was
Speaker 1: a place without fault. We're gonna learn that they were
Speaker 1: actually making fun of us, and this could easily be
Speaker 1: traced to a trend in the twentieth century. And I'm
Speaker 1: saying us because I'll have you know that my great
Speaker 1: great great great grandfather, Thomas James Newcomb came to Arkansas
Speaker 1: via Kentucky in the early eighteen thirties, So this whole
Speaker 1: thing is close to home for me. Back to our story,
Speaker 1: the New Orleans traveler has now heard the big bar
Speaker 1: mentioned bears, so he asked if he hunts them and dog.
Speaker 1: It quickly brings up his two favorite things, his gun
Speaker 1: and his dog. The way I hunt them. The old
Speaker 1: black rascals know the crack of my gun as well
Speaker 1: as they know a pig squealing. They grow thin in
Speaker 1: our parts. It frightens them so, and they do take
Speaker 1: the noise dreadfully, poor things. That gun of mine is
Speaker 1: an epidemic among bar If not watched closely, it will
Speaker 1: go off as quick on a warm scent as my
Speaker 1: dog boy knife will. And then that dog, whoa why
Speaker 1: the fella thinks that the world is full of Barry
Speaker 1: finds them so easy. It's lucky he don't talk as
Speaker 1: well as think, for with his natural modesty, if he
Speaker 1: should suddenly learn how much he is acknowledged to be
Speaker 1: ahead of all other dogs in the universe, he would
Speaker 1: be astonished to death in two minutes, strangers. That dog
Speaker 1: knows a bar's way as well as a horse jockey
Speaker 1: knows a woman's. He always barks at the right time,
Speaker 1: bites at the exact place, and whips without getting a scratch.
Speaker 1: I never could tell whether he was made expressly to
Speaker 1: hunt bar or whether a bar was made expressly for
Speaker 1: him to hunt. I hope you're beginning to hear the
Speaker 1: colorful way dog it speaks. What made this story so
Speaker 1: famous was the brilliant dialect capture by Thorpe Doget's dog
Speaker 1: bowie knife was so good. It isn't clear whether he
Speaker 1: was made to hunt bear or the bear was made
Speaker 1: for him to hunt. What a brilliant thought. This man
Speaker 1: was a genius. The Big Bar was a larger than
Speaker 1: life character, articulate and opinionated. He proclaims his gun is
Speaker 1: an epidemic amongst bears and Bowie Knife, who is naturally
Speaker 1: modest but is the best bear dog on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: is kept humble only because he can't talk with his verboseness.
Speaker 1: The big bar is setting himself up to be one
Speaker 1: of those most interesting men in the world characters. The
Speaker 1: passengers are mesmerized and shocked at the life he's revealing,
Speaker 1: one that is more complex and interesting than their own.
Speaker 1: And I haven't even mentioned the wildly risque and suggestive
Speaker 1: horse jockey metaphor. We'll talk about this in a minute
Speaker 1: with Doctor Cochrane. Now, our narrator asked dog It for
Speaker 1: a bar hunting story in this manner, The evening was spent,
Speaker 1: but conscious that my own association with so singular a
Speaker 1: personage would probably end before the morning, I asked him
Speaker 1: if he would not give me a description of some
Speaker 1: particular bear hunt, adding that I took great interest in
Speaker 1: such things, though I was no sportsman. The desire seemed
Speaker 1: to please him, and he squared himself round towards me,
Speaker 1: saying that he could give me an idea of a
Speaker 1: bar hunt that was never beat in this world or
Speaker 1: in any other. His manner was so singular that half
Speaker 1: of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it,
Speaker 1: the great peculiarity of which was the happy manner he
Speaker 1: had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation. As
Speaker 1: near as I can recollect, I have italicized them and
Speaker 1: given the story in his own words. Stranger he said,
Speaker 1: in bar hunts, I am numerous, and which particular one,
Speaker 1: as I say to you, I shall tell, puzzles me.
Speaker 1: There was an old she devil I shot at the
Speaker 1: hurricane last fall, and then there was the old hog
Speaker 1: thief I've popped over at the bloody crossing. And then, yes,
Speaker 1: I have it. I'll give you an idea of a
Speaker 1: hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived.
Speaker 1: None accepted. Our New Orleans narrator includes how striking the
Speaker 1: delivery of the story was. You can feel the intensity
Speaker 1: and passion of the big bar. This is a fictional story,
Speaker 1: but it's clear our author Thorpe had heard men like
Speaker 1: this before. Doggett is an exaggerated caricature of the half horse,
Speaker 1: half alligator men that Crockett met here. This was the
Speaker 1: early stages of the Southern storyteller speaking in dialect being
Speaker 1: exported to broader America, which will learn would be highly
Speaker 1: interested in for centuries to come. Some would laugh, some
Speaker 1: were endeared to these people. Some would see them as
Speaker 1: sensational and simple minded, crude and grotesque, and some love
Speaker 1: to just have someone to sneer down their noses at.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, America couldn't get enough of the Southern voice,
Speaker 1: the big bar dog. It is now going to tell
Speaker 1: us about the greatest bar that ever lived, none excepted
Speaker 1: well stranger. The first chase I ever had with that
Speaker 1: big critter, I saw him no less than three distinct
Speaker 1: times at a distance. The dogs would run him over
Speaker 1: eighteen miles and broke down, and my horse gave out,
Speaker 1: and I was nearly as used up as a man
Speaker 1: could be made by my principle, which is patent. Before
Speaker 1: this adventure, such things were unknown to me to be possible.
Speaker 1: But strange as it was, that bear got me used
Speaker 1: to it before I was done with him, For he
Speaker 1: got so at lass that he would leave me on
Speaker 1: a long chase quite easily. How he did it, I
Speaker 1: never could understand that a bar runs at all is puzzling.
Speaker 1: But how this one could tire down and bust up
Speaker 1: a pack of hounds and a horse that were used
Speaker 1: to overhauling everything they started after no time was past
Speaker 1: my understanding. Well stranger, that bar finally got so sassy
Speaker 1: that he used to help himself to a hog off
Speaker 1: my premises whenever he wanted. The buzzards followed after what
Speaker 1: he left. And so between that bar and the buzzard,
Speaker 1: I'd rather think I was out of pork dog it.
Speaker 1: Like any good storyteller, is setting us up with the
Speaker 1: backstory of his hunt for a bear that will learn
Speaker 1: is unhuntable. Things had gotten personal, as this sassy bear
Speaker 1: was still in pigs and could mysteriously outrun his hounds.
Speaker 1: And horse horses and hunting dogs are big thing down here,
Speaker 1: and his desire to kill this bear starts to effect
Speaker 1: his health, and agger is slang for the ague, which
Speaker 1: is like malaria. Well, missing that bar so often took
Speaker 1: hold of my vitals, and I was wasted away. The
Speaker 1: thing had been carried too far and reduced me in
Speaker 1: flesh faster than an agar. And I would see that
Speaker 1: bar and everything I did he hunted me, and that too,
Speaker 1: like a devil, which I began to think he was.
Speaker 1: While in this fix, I made preparations to give him
Speaker 1: a last brush and to be done with it, having
Speaker 1: completed everything. To my satisfaction, I started at sunrise, and
Speaker 1: to my great joy, I discovered from the way the
Speaker 1: dogs ran that they were near him. Finding his trail
Speaker 1: was nothing, for that had become as plain to the
Speaker 1: pack as a turnpike road. On we went, and coming
Speaker 1: to an open country, what should I see but the
Speaker 1: bar very leisurely ascending a hill, and the dogs close
Speaker 1: at his hills, either a match for him this time
Speaker 1: and speed, or else he did not care to get
Speaker 1: out of their way. I do not know which, But
Speaker 1: wasn't he a beauty? Though I loved him like a brother?
Speaker 1: In my opinion, this is one of the greatest moments
Speaker 1: in American literature. Dog it seizes the bear with bay
Speaker 1: and hounds surrounding him. He can't tell if the dogs
Speaker 1: had him hemmed up and caught, or if the beast
Speaker 1: just didn't care that they were there, but he declares,
Speaker 1: wasn't he a beauty? Though I loved him like a brother.
Speaker 1: You'll hear me and Steve Vernella talk about this later,
Speaker 1: but Thorpe's insight seems beyond his time. This is also
Speaker 1: when the reader begins to see that the big bear
Speaker 1: of Arkansas is more than an uncultured barbarian. The hunt
Speaker 1: continues on he went until he came to a tree,
Speaker 1: the limbs of which formed a crotch, about six feet
Speaker 1: from the ground. In the crotch he got and seated himself,
Speaker 1: and the dogs were yelling all around it. And there
Speaker 1: he sat I and them as quiet as a bond
Speaker 1: and low water. A green horned friend of mine and
Speaker 1: company reached shooting distance before me and blazed away, hitting
Speaker 1: the critter in the center of the forehead. The bar
Speaker 1: shook his head as the ball struck it, and then
Speaker 1: walked down from that tree as gently as a lady
Speaker 1: would from a carriage. Twas a beautiful sight to see
Speaker 1: him do that. He was in such a rage that
Speaker 1: he seemed to be as little afraid of the dogs
Speaker 1: as if they had been suckling pigs. And the dogs
Speaker 1: weren't slow and making a ring around him at a
Speaker 1: respectful distance. I tell you, even Bowie Knife himself stood
Speaker 1: off then the way his eyes flashed while the fire
Speaker 1: of them would have singed a cat's hair. In fact,
Speaker 1: that bar was in a wrath all over. Only one
Speaker 1: pup came near him, and he was brushed out so
Speaker 1: to tally with the bears left Paul that he entirely disappeared,
Speaker 1: and that made the old dogs even more cautious. Still,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I came up and taking deliberate aim,
Speaker 1: as a man should do, at his side, just as
Speaker 1: the back of the fore leg. If my gun did
Speaker 1: not snap, call me a coward, and I won't take
Speaker 1: it personal. Yes, Stranger, it snapped, and I could not
Speaker 1: find a cap about my person. His eyes flashed with
Speaker 1: such fire it would have scorched a cap. And we
Speaker 1: now see that this is no ordinary bear. He swatted
Speaker 1: a dog and it vanished, and this veteran hunter's muzzloader
Speaker 1: popped a cap, meaning it didn't fire. But now he's
Speaker 1: beginning to plan for his final hunt, and if he
Speaker 1: doesn't kill it, he's leaving Arkansas. Or maybe he'll be dead,
Speaker 1: it's unclear. Then I told my neighbors on that Monday morning,
Speaker 1: naming the day, that I would start that bar and
Speaker 1: bring him home with me, or they might divide my
Speaker 1: settlement among them, the owner having disappeared, well, Stranger. On
Speaker 1: that morning previous to the great day of my hunting expedition,
Speaker 1: I went into the woods near my house, taking my
Speaker 1: gun and bowie knife along just from habit, and they're
Speaker 1: sitting down also from habit. What should I see getting
Speaker 1: over my fence but the bar. Yes, the old varmint
Speaker 1: was within a hundred yards of me, and the way
Speaker 1: he walked over that fence stranger. He loomed up like
Speaker 1: a black mist, and he seemed so large. He walked
Speaker 1: right towards me. I raised myself, took deliberate aim, and
Speaker 1: fired instantly. The varmint wheeled and gave yale and walked
Speaker 1: through the fence like a fallen tree wood through a cobweb.
Speaker 1: I started after, but was tripped up by my inexpressibles,
Speaker 1: which either from habit or the excitement of the moment,
Speaker 1: where about my heels. And before I had really gathered
Speaker 1: myself up, I heard the old varmint groaning in a
Speaker 1: thicket nearby like a thousand centers, And by the time
Speaker 1: I reached him, he was a corpse. Stranger. It took
Speaker 1: five men and myself to put that carcass on a
Speaker 1: mule's back, and old long airs waddled under his load,
Speaker 1: and if he was foundered in every leg of his body,
Speaker 1: and with a common whopper of a bar, he would
Speaker 1: have trotted off and enjoyed himself. Wouldn't astonish you to
Speaker 1: know how big he was. I made a bedspread of
Speaker 1: his skin, and the way it used to cover my
Speaker 1: bar mattress and leave several feet on each side to
Speaker 1: tuck up would have delighted you. It was, in fact
Speaker 1: a creation bar, and if it had lived in Sampson's time,
Speaker 1: and if it had met him in a fair fight,
Speaker 1: it would have licked him in the twinkling of a
Speaker 1: dice box. But stranger, I never liked the way I
Speaker 1: hunted him and missed him. There's something curious about it.
Speaker 1: I never could understand, and I never was satisfied at
Speaker 1: his given in so easily at last. Perhaps he had
Speaker 1: heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day,
Speaker 1: so he'd just come in like Captain Scott's coon, to
Speaker 1: save his win, to grunt with and dying, But that
Speaker 1: ain't likely. My private opinion is that the bar was
Speaker 1: an unhuntable bar and died when its time had come.
Speaker 1: The bear was growning like a thousand centers. I'm impressed
Speaker 1: that thorpe knew that a black bear is one of
Speaker 1: the few animals that we hunt on the planet that
Speaker 1: has a death moan. A double lung shot bear one
Speaker 1: that dies quickly will often give a loud, sometimes spooky,
Speaker 1: elongated groan that can be heard at great distance. I'm
Speaker 1: talking like a couple hundred yards. It usually lasts longer
Speaker 1: than you think it should, and it's a sure sign
Speaker 1: of the bear's death. For a bear hunter, it's a
Speaker 1: bewildering moment of internal conflict, as the excitement of certain
Speaker 1: success wars with a sobriety delivered by the beast's grandstanding
Speaker 1: auditory expression of death. Both feelings are usually of equal measure.
Speaker 1: Dog It also suggests that the bear heard his plans
Speaker 1: for his hunt and basically turned himself in. This sounds
Speaker 1: like a sensational thought, but in the book Make Prayers
Speaker 1: to the Raven by Richard K. Nelson, we learned that
Speaker 1: the Coyukan people of Alaska believe the black bear was
Speaker 1: near the apex of spiritual power in the natural world.
Speaker 1: They believe that when a person plans a bear hunt,
Speaker 1: they should be careful not to speak directly about their
Speaker 1: hunt plans, because the bear will hear them and avoid
Speaker 1: being killed. A hunter must speak in code, using vague
Speaker 1: terms if he wishes to invite others or discuss hunting plans,
Speaker 1: and dog Its suggests that this creation bear may have
Speaker 1: heard him. The death of a hunted bear is regarded
Speaker 1: with such ceremony with the Coyukan that it's second only
Speaker 1: to a human funeral. They regarded bear meat as a delicacy,
Speaker 1: but killing one was a quote quest for prestige in
Speaker 1: a high expression of manhood. This is similar to what
Speaker 1: bear hunting became in the South, and I hope you
Speaker 1: caught it. But dog It says that the bear was
Speaker 1: a creation bar, which is the same descriptor he used
Speaker 1: to describe Arkansas the creation state. This is a spiritual place,
Speaker 1: and beast, no one I've talked to really knows exactly
Speaker 1: what he meant. It's mysterious. But the climax of the
Speaker 1: story is that dog It says the bar was an
Speaker 1: unhuntable bar that died when his time had come, almost
Speaker 1: as if his death had been scripted and the hunter
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. The story is now
Speaker 1: handed back to our New Orleans traveler, and he describes
Speaker 1: the peculiar response of the Big Bar. When the story
Speaker 1: was ended, our hero sat some minutes with his auditors
Speaker 1: in grave silence. I saw there was a mystery to
Speaker 1: him connected with the bear, whose death he had just
Speaker 1: related and had evidently made a strong impression on his mind.
Speaker 1: It was also evident that there was some superstitious awe
Speaker 1: connected with the affair, a feeling common with all children
Speaker 1: of the wood when they meet with anything out of
Speaker 1: their everyday experience. He was the first one, however, to
Speaker 1: break the silence, and, jumping up, he asked all present
Speaker 1: to liquor before going to bed, a thing which he
Speaker 1: did with a number of his companions, evidently to his
Speaker 1: heart's content. Long before day, I was put ashore at
Speaker 1: my place of destination, and I can only follow with
Speaker 1: the reader and imagination our Arkansas friend and his adventures
Speaker 1: at the forks of the Cypress on the Mississippi. There
Speaker 1: was some superstitious awe connected with the bear. Doggett was
Speaker 1: moved by his own story, and he left a major
Speaker 1: impression on the fictional people. But the story left an
Speaker 1: impression on the real people of America and the writers
Speaker 1: who had script some parts of our American identity. We
Speaker 1: didn't read the full story, probably only about half of it,
Speaker 1: but now you know the premise. I've known for a
Speaker 1: good part of my life that our Kansas was once
Speaker 1: known as the Bear State. I discovered this while in college,
Speaker 1: studying the thesis writing of University of Arkansas students and faculty.
Speaker 1: But deep in the literature, this golden acren lay there
Speaker 1: for the taken. No one ever told me this. I
Speaker 1: never heard about it growing up. Doctor Brooks Blevins is
Speaker 1: the undisputed historian of the Ozarks. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: him about why we were called the Bear state Arkansas,
Speaker 1: the Bear State. You know, the truth is, no one
Speaker 1: really knows exactly when or how the state got that nickname.
Speaker 1: There's no you know, it wasn't an official nickname, but
Speaker 1: we know that before the Civil War the state had
Speaker 1: earned the nickname the Bear State. Unofficially. Did he show
Speaker 1: up in literature, Yeah, And I would say there are
Speaker 1: probably two reasons for that. One is that Arkansas did
Speaker 1: become known as a state full of bears. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a state where bear hunting was very good.
Speaker 1: And you think about in the days before the Civil War,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a really sparsely populated state that has
Speaker 1: a combination of highlands and swamps, but probably more than
Speaker 1: that was because of the literary component you have. And
Speaker 1: I think timing is really important in this. Arkansas becomes
Speaker 1: a state and at that very moment you've got really
Speaker 1: the genre of Southwestern humor is really starting to take off,
Speaker 1: and it becomes in some ways the most popular genre
Speaker 1: of literature before the Civil War. Arkansas became a state
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six, and it's hard to say if
Speaker 1: it was expressly created for the bear or if the
Speaker 1: bear was expressly created for Arkansas. And literature is a
Speaker 1: powerful tool for identity. Doctor Blevins believes the Big Bear
Speaker 1: of Arkansas in eighteen forty one, along with other bear
Speaker 1: hunting stories, branded the young state, sucking the backwoods bear
Speaker 1: hunting image into the identity vacuum created by new statehood.
Speaker 1: America desperately wondered who we were. So we don't know
Speaker 1: who said it first, but it's clear it's connected to
Speaker 1: Jim Doggett in this new genre of writing called Southwest humor.
Speaker 1: But what is Southwest humor? As the name would suggests,
Speaker 1: it's a humorous kind of writing that is based in
Speaker 1: the Southwest, and in those days of the Southwest, wasn't
Speaker 1: New Mexico and Arizona. It was Arkansas and Mississippi and
Speaker 1: Alabama and Louisiana and basically the westernmost part of the
Speaker 1: United States at that time, right, So, yeah, that becomes
Speaker 1: the Southwest, and all these these stories are for the
Speaker 1: most part published back east in sporting magazines, sporting periodicals.
Speaker 1: The Spirit of the Times in New York was the
Speaker 1: most prominent publisher of the Southwestern humor stories. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories have to do with hunting. A
Speaker 1: lot of them have to do with bear hunting. They
Speaker 1: have to They also have to do with horse racing
Speaker 1: and politics and all kinds of stuff that you see
Speaker 1: out in these kind of frontier rural communities, but so
Speaker 1: many of them have to do with bear hunting. And
Speaker 1: you've got the most famous bear hunting story that comes out.
Speaker 1: That's the Big Bear of Arkansas. This story becomes so
Speaker 1: popular and so famous that some later literary historians in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century would even refer to Southwestern humor as
Speaker 1: the Big Bear genre of literature. I mean, that's how
Speaker 1: much the Big Bear of Arkansas and stories a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other writers after him, Yeah, all the way
Speaker 1: down to Faulkner and people in the twentieth century, right,
Speaker 1: and all these people are fascinated with these Southwestern humor stories,
Speaker 1: frontier characters in the dialect and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's the universe, Jeve, Arkansas professor and folklore specialist, doctor
Speaker 1: Bob Cochrane, What a cool guy. Tell me why this
Speaker 1: short story, The Big Bear of Arkansas was so influential though?
Speaker 1: That it When this one came out, it was a
Speaker 1: climax piece that was lying in the sand almost of
Speaker 1: and they called them, you know, the Big Bear Humorous
Speaker 1: after that, and then that later would influence other American writers,
Speaker 1: like why was this one so good? I think it was.
Speaker 1: It became so famous because it was recognized right away
Speaker 1: as better. It was more, it was more complex, you know,
Speaker 1: it had the language, it had the jokes, it was
Speaker 1: it was deeper. How was it complex? Well, just it's
Speaker 1: a bear hunt story. But it's more than a bear
Speaker 1: hunt story. It's about crossing into an experience, which is
Speaker 1: the unknown. It's a burning bush story. You know, it's
Speaker 1: something that shocks you out of the way you perceived
Speaker 1: the very world. You don't think the world has this
Speaker 1: in it, and it does. You know. It's one of
Speaker 1: those kind of you know, you're walking along in a
Speaker 1: bush catches on firewheel, it changes your life. Well, he's
Speaker 1: walking along in he sees this bear walk through a fence.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a sense on that line member where
Speaker 1: it's italicized that through a fence, like a tree falling
Speaker 1: through a cobboy web. Yeah, and it almost dematerializes the bear, right.
Speaker 1: And there's a place where the bear hits one of
Speaker 1: the dogs and the dog disappears, right. It doesn't say
Speaker 1: it's yelping off to the side or killed or and
Speaker 1: he says he uses that word, he said the dog
Speaker 1: it's not there. He atomizes the dog, you know. So
Speaker 1: in other words, it's I think it's a complex story
Speaker 1: because it's it takes you into the unknown. It takes
Speaker 1: you into the unknown. I have more questions for doctor Cochrane.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Is there a modern example
Speaker 1: of what this would have been like inside of our
Speaker 1: media today. Would it have been like my seventy five
Speaker 1: year old dad looking at TikTok or well? The first
Speaker 1: thing I think is that many readers would have spurned
Speaker 1: it okay, and many readers would have regarded it as subliterary,
Speaker 1: you know, as as sort of just like a shame
Speaker 1: to our culture. You got it, You got it. The
Speaker 1: way my grandmother felt about country music from West Virginia
Speaker 1: really yeah, oh yeah. She didn't like country music. She
Speaker 1: thought there was a world of difference between a mountaineer
Speaker 1: and a hillbilly, and she was proud of being a mountaineer,
Speaker 1: and she would not abide the word hillbill really yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know we were when we were little kids,
Speaker 1: we were said, don't say hillbilly around grandma. Really in
Speaker 1: West Virginia, West Virginia, and so mountaineers you'd stand up
Speaker 1: in salute. So your grandma wouldn't have liked this because
Speaker 1: it was kind of hillbilly. It made it made fun.
Speaker 1: It was a demeaning stereotype, and that would have been
Speaker 1: true about a lot of people in respectable Little Rock
Speaker 1: wouldn't have liked it either, because the same thing, you
Speaker 1: know it, we still have that today, the state being
Speaker 1: judged by what some people in the state would think
Speaker 1: of as as its lowliest members. But to the people
Speaker 1: that this appealed to, this was wildly popular, wildly popular.
Speaker 1: Wildly popular literature was usually quite formal, and authors writing
Speaker 1: in dialect with something new people loved it. I've got
Speaker 1: more questions. Tell me about where this was published. The
Speaker 1: Spirit of the Times, right, it had some competitors because
Speaker 1: it was so successful, but it was the most successful.
Speaker 1: It had a wide readership, and its readership was much
Speaker 1: wider than the people it was discussing it was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't read just by hunters or you know people. It
Speaker 1: was a sporting journal, absolutely if it was interested in
Speaker 1: one thing more than hunting, and I think it might
Speaker 1: have been. It's not like I've sat down and read
Speaker 1: all the back issues of this thing. Yeah, what would
Speaker 1: be the first horse horse racing? Yes, and horse racing
Speaker 1: was a was a big thing back then too. It
Speaker 1: would have been like today's NASCAR. Yeah, and interest In
Speaker 1: the first bit of this story, the Big Bear of Arkansas,
Speaker 1: he makes a horse jockey joke. He said his bear
Speaker 1: dog Bowie Knife, knows a bear the way a horse
Speaker 1: jockey knows a woman. Yeah, which I can only assume
Speaker 1: it means that the horse jockeys were the cool guys
Speaker 1: that the women favorite. Yeah, that's because they were stars
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's about as risque
Speaker 1: as you can get. Yeah, this genre of writing was
Speaker 1: was pretty risque for the day. You can get away
Speaker 1: with stuff that you couldn't get away with. And you
Speaker 1: my grandmother would have gasped when she read that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she might not even picked up. Yeah, this was like
Speaker 1: rebel stuff. Yeah, yeah, and trashy in some ways. But
Speaker 1: the people who read it were not trashy. Financially they were,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty well off. Would cost money to subscribe
Speaker 1: to these things. And yeah, would it have been like
Speaker 1: a print magazine would have been like but a kind
Speaker 1: of tableau. Yeah, and it was extraordinarily popular. Thorpe used
Speaker 1: colorful descriptors and metaphors in some sections I didn't read.
Speaker 1: He said he didn't plan to go to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: In a Crow's Life, using its lifespan to describe a
Speaker 1: measure of time, he said running a bear in warm
Speaker 1: weather would turn him into a skinful of bars grease,
Speaker 1: and once dog hat proclaimed mosquitoes is nature, and I
Speaker 1: never find fault with her if they are large. Arkansas
Speaker 1: is large, her varmints are large, her trees are large,
Speaker 1: her rivers are large, and a small mosquito would be
Speaker 1: of no more use in Arkansas than preaching in a
Speaker 1: cane break. That kind of sounds like something Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: would say. I'm still trying to understand just how popular
Speaker 1: this story was in America. Here's the old hickory nut himself,
Speaker 1: Stephen Ranella, who happens to be one of those high
Speaker 1: falutin New York Times bestselling authors. He's going to talk
Speaker 1: about what he noted about the Big Bear of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: It was very poetic, but in an obnoxious, annoying way
Speaker 1: that they were at that at that time, people were
Speaker 1: using poetic description so effectively. Put him describing in one passage,
Speaker 1: when a bear comes over the fence, it rises over
Speaker 1: the fence like a black mist, and when it goes
Speaker 1: back through the fence, it goes through a fence like
Speaker 1: a falling tree cutting through cobweb. And um, yeah, it's poetic.
Speaker 1: Born of the earth and born of the land, and
Speaker 1: not born of some some writing workshop. You know. You
Speaker 1: think about these guys. They did not have YouTube, they
Speaker 1: didn't have Netflix and Hulu. This was their craft. The
Speaker 1: writing was the primary means of communication and even a
Speaker 1: primary means of entertainment for people. This story, written as
Speaker 1: it was, it would essentially be like saying, dude, you
Speaker 1: should check out that Netflix documentary, It is awesome. Do
Speaker 1: you think writers have gotten better worse at the command
Speaker 1: of the English language community? And really, when you talk
Speaker 1: about the command of the English language, what you're saying
Speaker 1: is are people able to really describe what's happening on
Speaker 1: planet Earth and inside the body of a human. I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about the population writ large, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just refer to just general adult Americans.
Speaker 1: But I'll say of our leaders, okay, of our prominent figures,
Speaker 1: the use of the English language has suffered since this time,
Speaker 1: since then, I mean, just go simply go read transcripts
Speaker 1: of Lincoln's Wou'd have been, you know, at his prime,
Speaker 1: alive and well at this at the time of this writing.
Speaker 1: Go look at his command and use of the English
Speaker 1: language compared to a transcript of any modern president speaking today.
Speaker 1: I think that the you know, more people of higher
Speaker 1: percentage of people are literate now than then. But the
Speaker 1: level of mastery of the English language, as exemplified by
Speaker 1: like key individuals, has suffered. And I think that that
Speaker 1: ability to speak in such a colorful, flamboyant, like energy
Speaker 1: laden way has gone away. However you feel about him,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've I've followed him and known him
Speaker 1: my whole life and spoke to him. But you go,
Speaker 1: look at the fire inside the language of a figure
Speaker 1: like Ted Nugent. How fiery and colorful and exciting he's
Speaker 1: able to speak, right. It sort of brings to mind
Speaker 1: like the character speaking in this thing, he just like
Speaker 1: he'll say a sentence. You're like, I don't understand how
Speaker 1: you just strung that sentence together without working on it earlier,
Speaker 1: Like an amazing ability to string sentences together to hit
Speaker 1: two sides of the spectrum. Nugent will say sentences that
Speaker 1: blow me away. Obama could string a sentence together that
Speaker 1: When you read a transcript of the sentence, I think
Speaker 1: to myself, how could someone have formed that as a
Speaker 1: spoken sentence having not written it out first. I'm not
Speaker 1: often blown away by people's sentences they put that they
Speaker 1: put together. But but reading this, you know, and again
Speaker 1: we're confusing, like this was created by a writer. This
Speaker 1: wasn't a transcript of a thing, So it was created
Speaker 1: by a writer who did their research and spent their
Speaker 1: time in reading it. I sort of lament that that
Speaker 1: flamboyance with languages isn't normal, And I wonder how normal,
Speaker 1: like was it normal? You know, were these characters out
Speaker 1: there who would speak so in just such a wild, colorful,
Speaker 1: passionate way. I bet you weren't expecting Uncle Ted and
Speaker 1: Barack Obama to come up in this conversation. Neither was
Speaker 1: I here's doctor Cochrane continuing to describe how influential this
Speaker 1: Big Bear of Arkansas story was. There was one volume
Speaker 1: in his life it was published that had nothing but
Speaker 1: his stuff in it, and it was called Hive of
Speaker 1: the b Hunter eighteen fifty four. And there's twenty four
Speaker 1: pieces in that The Big Bears one up and the
Speaker 1: second most frequently include a story in anthology is nothing
Speaker 1: next to the story. It's it's a trivial piece. It's
Speaker 1: called a Piano in Arkansas. And it's a hook story.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's just got one point. You got
Speaker 1: a village Braggart who's very proud of the fact that
Speaker 1: he's made two trips to the capitol Little Rock, and
Speaker 1: he thinks he knows everything, and he's, in other words,
Speaker 1: he's the expert on the big world, right Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he's heard that a newly arrived family in town has
Speaker 1: a piano and there's a great curiosity in the town
Speaker 1: called something like hard scrabble, you know how they name
Speaker 1: is Faketown. Yeah, nobody knows what a piano is. And
Speaker 1: this guy says, well, he's seen more pianist than what
Speaker 1: they see Woodchucks, I mean, he's see so. And what
Speaker 1: happens is, of course, that he is exposed as a
Speaker 1: as a braggart and a liar because he mistakes a
Speaker 1: newly arrived washing machine for a piano. He thinks, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that story is nothing. It's just a one one.
Speaker 1: That's it. Just told you the whereas this story we
Speaker 1: could spend an hour or two just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what the final thing this story is about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think it became the most popular story on
Speaker 1: really solid grounds. I think it's as good a story
Speaker 1: if there is, yeah genre, it's the most complex one
Speaker 1: I know. These Southwest humor stories created lovable and interesting characters,
Speaker 1: but they were also setting up my beloved homeland for
Speaker 1: a rough one hundred and fifty years of what scholars
Speaker 1: say was the most picked on state in America in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century by far. We've mentioned that the Big
Speaker 1: Bear school of literature likely had notable effect on Mark Twain,
Speaker 1: who would begin publishing in the late eighteen sixties, becoming
Speaker 1: America's most famous writer. Here's Steve Vernella. A thing that
Speaker 1: I noticed two and was the It was evocative of
Speaker 1: Mark Twain. Yeah. What made Twain Twain was his ability
Speaker 1: to capture vernacular, his ability to live a life of
Speaker 1: research and take almost his characters were born of deep
Speaker 1: experience that he had personally, meaning there was no Huckleberry Finn,
Speaker 1: there was no Tom Sawyer but Mark Twain, and that
Speaker 1: was his pen name. Samuel Clemens spent his life on
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, was raised on the Mississippi, had proximity two slaves,
Speaker 1: grew up in a slave holding place, fished catfish, He
Speaker 1: was a riverboat pilot. He did hang out with people
Speaker 1: he knew. These individuals, huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were
Speaker 1: perhaps more real than actual real people. And what gave
Speaker 1: him so much, his characters, so much humanity, is they
Speaker 1: were They were low class people, but he loved them
Speaker 1: and like he loved them deeply low class people. That
Speaker 1: was his soul, right, was bringing these people to life
Speaker 1: and defying stereotypes. So here you had have you know,
Speaker 1: you're hearing this tale spun by and and this this
Speaker 1: Arkansas bear hunter, but you're looking at like, you know,
Speaker 1: how the narrative is captured is like clearly the writer
Speaker 1: had spent time around people, and you're like this Arkansas
Speaker 1: bear hunter who's sort of being ingest portrayed as this
Speaker 1: this rough and tumble individual, but in fact he's exceedingly articulate.
Speaker 1: He's a very clear communicator. He's full of compassion and empathy,
Speaker 1: and he's he's like a spiritual figure, right, who approaches
Speaker 1: life with like a great lust, you know. And so
Speaker 1: it's loving, right, it's loving in a way that a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff you see when you're watching something now
Speaker 1: and you're watching some stupid Disney movie and a hunter
Speaker 1: comes up, it's not it's hateful, it's he prises a
Speaker 1: Southern accent. He's he's bloodthirsty, he's ignorant. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are all things you see all the time, right, But
Speaker 1: at this time, and you could have this person like
Speaker 1: what steps in the door. Here's this uneducated, uncouth, redneck
Speaker 1: bear hunter. But let's hear him talk. What emerges is
Speaker 1: all those things I said earlier, like very passionate, deeply articulate,
Speaker 1: deeply feeling individual who ascribes like all these emotional things
Speaker 1: to a bear hunt and takes a story in an
Speaker 1: unexpected direction. He loves this bear like his brother and
Speaker 1: misses the bear. And so it's this whole package of
Speaker 1: you know, what comes in is like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: expecting to have this guy be lampooned, but this guy
Speaker 1: is handled with great care. Yeah you like you read it,
Speaker 1: and you like dudes from Markan thought, Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: wish you could talk to that guy. The dichotomy of
Speaker 1: the ignorant backwoodsman being a complex individual with his humanity
Speaker 1: on display is fascinating but not new. Even then here's
Speaker 1: doctor Cochrane. It's like this narrative of the simpletons of
Speaker 1: the South or the or the hill country or Appalachia
Speaker 1: or the Ozarks being portrayed in this complex way of
Speaker 1: being really simple but also educated and in the know
Speaker 1: and kind of this striking contrast. This seems like a
Speaker 1: common narrative the simpleton is actually the the smart guy.
Speaker 1: Was that pretty common back in those days? Well, it's
Speaker 1: an old trope. It's an ancient trope. Jack and the
Speaker 1: Bean story. You know there these uh, you know, Jack
Speaker 1: is a simpleton. But Jack is smart enough to do
Speaker 1: what the guy's daughter tells him to do, and he wins,
Speaker 1: you know, he and winning and killing the giant. So
Speaker 1: the sometimes they're making fun of the guy liking that
Speaker 1: a piano in Arkansas story that the town sophisticate is
Speaker 1: exposed as a as a fraud. But here it's it's again,
Speaker 1: it's part of the wonder of this story. It's it's
Speaker 1: much more complicated if you move to the last paragraph
Speaker 1: or so that when he finishes the story, he's told
Speaker 1: a deep story about it himself. He's told a story
Speaker 1: he's a great hunter, but memory says the bear was
Speaker 1: hunting me. Yea, the bear came and sat across my
Speaker 1: fence and killed a hog whenever he wanted to right.
Speaker 1: In other words, he tells a story about his own defeat.
Speaker 1: So here you have a ring tale roarer. Well, there
Speaker 1: are scores of ring tale roarer stories, but they're in
Speaker 1: a few ring tale Roarer stories where the roarer says,
Speaker 1: here's the story where I got beat. Here's the story
Speaker 1: where I was in over my head. But I don't
Speaker 1: even today really understood what happened there. I mean, this
Speaker 1: story almost is unique for that kind of depth in
Speaker 1: this genre. And if you look at the last paragraph,
Speaker 1: I mean, you read that opening paragraph that he won
Speaker 1: people over right away, and his total self confidence in
Speaker 1: the end, that self confidence is gone. Yeah. When the
Speaker 1: story was ended, our hero set some minutes with his
Speaker 1: auditors in grave silence. Yeah. I saw that there was
Speaker 1: a mystery to him connected with the bear whose death
Speaker 1: he had just related, that had evidently made a strong
Speaker 1: impression on his mind. The Big bar of Arkansas turns
Speaker 1: out to be one of the most interesting, deepest people
Speaker 1: on the boat, leaving the passengers in all his life,
Speaker 1: his philosophy and right smart enamored. Maybe even in this
Speaker 1: this is a popular theme. Doctor Blevins wrote about the
Speaker 1: times having a romantic impulse to exalt and envy the
Speaker 1: supposed and unattainable simple life of the hillman. This idea
Speaker 1: is no less strong today than it was then. Here's
Speaker 1: another layer of depth to this story from Steve and I. Today,
Speaker 1: there's this narrative inside the hunting space that we all
Speaker 1: kind of have attached ourselves to. Is this deep respect
Speaker 1: for our quarry which we sometimes think was absent during
Speaker 1: the market hunting era of this country, and we kind
Speaker 1: of feel like it's new, you know, like now when
Speaker 1: we kill a deer, you know, we like think about
Speaker 1: we've really taken something and this is significant, and this
Speaker 1: is meaningful. This is not a small thing, and you'll
Speaker 1: pay respect to this animal. But really that is so old.
Speaker 1: But what surprised me and what I loved so much,
Speaker 1: but when Jim Dogg, the Arkansas bear hunter, when he
Speaker 1: saw his dogs walking the bear. The bear was walking
Speaker 1: and the dogs were all around it. He said he
Speaker 1: couldn't tell if the bear even knew the dogs were there.
Speaker 1: And he said, I loved him like a brother. I mean,
Speaker 1: if somebody said that today, that would seem like cutting edge,
Speaker 1: like wow Man eighteen forty one. Thomas Bangthorpe's fictional character
Speaker 1: Jim Dogg at Arkansas Bear Hunter loved him like a brother.
Speaker 1: And I think that that inside of that, it emerged
Speaker 1: a functionalization of that love which turned into the North
Speaker 1: American wile of wildlife conservation. Really, what we're doing managing
Speaker 1: wildlife in this country goes back to Jim Dogg. It
Speaker 1: loving that bear like a brother and now his momenting
Speaker 1: his past. Yeah, and then when the bear dies, he
Speaker 1: said the bear hunter became extremely melancholy and sad, and
Speaker 1: he said he missed the bear, and you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: thought that would have come out of the eighteen four
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the greatest lines in American literature,
Speaker 1: especially as it pertains to the lasting ethic of the
Speaker 1: American sportsman that has functionalized that love of a beast
Speaker 1: into saving wild places in wildlife. Lordie, LORDI, my brothers,
Speaker 1: we have walked into a bird nest on the ground
Speaker 1: as we live in one of the greatest heydays of
Speaker 1: American wildlife, wild places and access to hunting. I believe
Speaker 1: that's why these stories of our heritage, our identity as
Speaker 1: Americans are so powerful in the midst of a rapidly
Speaker 1: progressing society seemingly trying to forget the backwoodsman. We cannot
Speaker 1: forgive who we are. Society needs to continue to create
Speaker 1: space for hunters to manage the lion's share of wild
Speaker 1: places and wildlife. We've got a long track record of success,
Speaker 1: and if we do, there will be space and wildlife
Speaker 1: for all the stakeholders to partake whatever means they like.
Speaker 1: This is America and we're hunters that love the great
Speaker 1: beasts and our caretakers of the wild places where they live.
Speaker 1: Can you say amen to that? I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: Steve why hunters seem to be so enamored with the
Speaker 1: ones that got away or the unkillable animal. Here's what
Speaker 1: he said. It's a good question. You go super deep
Speaker 1: psychology and have it be that you're establishing that in
Speaker 1: the end, the animal can prevail, and that what you're
Speaker 1: doing is exceptionally difficult. And you might see that someone
Speaker 1: that had come from a line of resource destruction, market hunters, whoever,
Speaker 1: where you were like, you're literally wiping species off the
Speaker 1: air his map, that you would have a mythology of
Speaker 1: the ones that can't be got as a way to
Speaker 1: alleviate some of the guilt or blame. Or it could
Speaker 1: be just that it creates that it's like an act
Speaker 1: of reverence. Here's a story from Steve's past about a
Speaker 1: mythical uncatchable fish on the lake that I grew up on.
Speaker 1: We used to have a guy, I don't have this guy.
Speaker 1: This guy whose name is mister Playing, and he was
Speaker 1: a He introduced us all to this thing called speed trolling. Okay,
Speaker 1: so basically he would troll northerns by very fast trolling
Speaker 1: of northerns. He was the first guy ever knew that
Speaker 1: had a fish finder, back when it was a piece
Speaker 1: of graph paper and a pencil. So you when you
Speaker 1: got into fishing, you'd have a paper roll and you
Speaker 1: would unroll three four feet a graph paper and it'd
Speaker 1: show you could carry around your day of fishing on
Speaker 1: a piece of graph paper. And he put it in
Speaker 1: everyone's mind, including mine, that in this small sixty six
Speaker 1: acre lake that I grew up on, which is about
Speaker 1: twenty two feet in as deep a spot, that there
Speaker 1: was a five foot northern pike in there. I carried
Speaker 1: that around with me. Why can't you catch it? No
Speaker 1: one will catch it. We talk about like our dream
Speaker 1: would be the dream and lay can find that thing.
Speaker 1: So it appeals to people. Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: deep inside of it, it makes you want to go.
Speaker 1: When I think about the stories of the deer, the
Speaker 1: bear that I didn't kill, it makes me want to
Speaker 1: go back out there again. And ultimately the predator has
Speaker 1: to be rooting for the prey because the prey is
Speaker 1: what keeps the predator alive. So we're hunters, but we
Speaker 1: deeply want like Jim dagga, we deeply want our prey
Speaker 1: to beat us. Hidden deep in the DNA of the predator,
Speaker 1: our checks and balances, offering general assurance that their prey
Speaker 1: will persist as enlightened beasts ourselves. We can articulate that
Speaker 1: sentiment into our stories. If wolves could talk, perhaps they'd
Speaker 1: revere the uncatchable caribou or moose. Doctor Cochrane asked me
Speaker 1: if I was familiar with the writer Barry Lopez. Here's
Speaker 1: what he had to say about the author. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: won a National Book Award for a book called Arctic Dreams.
Speaker 1: But the book I know well because I just taught
Speaker 1: it is a book of his called of Wolves and Men.
Speaker 1: You know, what he did was sit out there and
Speaker 1: watch prey predator interactions a lot, and most of the
Speaker 1: time he observed nothing happens, you know. And he's talking
Speaker 1: about wolves for the most part. And so he would
Speaker 1: see a wolfpack and they would find some caribou, and
Speaker 1: most of the time they look at each other. And
Speaker 1: so there's a phrase he came up with called and
Speaker 1: he called it the conversation of death. That fits perfectly
Speaker 1: with the story at the end where he says, I
Speaker 1: think he was an unhuntable bear. He died when his
Speaker 1: time had come, and he has the sense the hunter
Speaker 1: has a sense that he's the hunted. In that passage
Speaker 1: that we were focusing in on, where it's clear that
Speaker 1: the bear on a previous chase had easily tired out
Speaker 1: his horse and his dogs, right, and this day he
Speaker 1: says or he did not care to get out of
Speaker 1: their way. The next day he did, he could have
Speaker 1: left them like he did before. So Lopez's notion of
Speaker 1: the conversation of death that the bear is choosing, the
Speaker 1: bear is in charge and they're one of the things
Speaker 1: that's always strange to me about the story. And you
Speaker 1: could see it as a clumsy moment in the story.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an island in a lake that appears
Speaker 1: very conveniently in this story. Yeah, so are we supposed
Speaker 1: to at this point in the story that his dogs
Speaker 1: chase what he believes to be the bear cross a
Speaker 1: lake onto an island. Right, he gets out there, kills
Speaker 1: the bear and it's not not the chosen bear, right,
Speaker 1: So are in that point has he mistaken earlier or
Speaker 1: has the bear is the bear? Also, among many other
Speaker 1: sort of almost magical things, a shape shifter that he
Speaker 1: you know, he all of a sudden he becomes an
Speaker 1: old she bear of pathetic size. Remember, the people in
Speaker 1: town make fun of him for it. So and the
Speaker 1: dog just disappears, and he seems to walk through a fence. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, as if he were not a substantial being.
Speaker 1: You know that he was made out of mist or something.
Speaker 1: So there's all this. The word for this that would
Speaker 1: scholars would use for the Washington Irving stories like Rip
Speaker 1: van Winkle or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow would be
Speaker 1: to do stories about the uncanny. And literally uncanny just
Speaker 1: means you can't know it, you can't know it. Here's
Speaker 1: one of the most mysterious descriptors used by dog it
Speaker 1: to describe the bear and Arkansas both. He used that
Speaker 1: term as a descriptor creation. He called Arkansas the creation
Speaker 1: state and this bear the creation bear, which I mean
Speaker 1: creation has this idea of like a like coming first, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it also has this idea of not connected to
Speaker 1: something in this realm. To create something means that almost
Speaker 1: like it came from nothing. And creation bear, when you
Speaker 1: read it, you get a sense that, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like a special bear, a bear of a different lineage
Speaker 1: than the average bear. And that felt like what he
Speaker 1: was saying about Arkansas, creation bear and creation state. What
Speaker 1: do you think dog? It meant. I've got one final
Speaker 1: question for doctor cochrane about what mysteries remain in modern times?
Speaker 1: Are there any mysteries left? To put this story in context,
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty one, the knowledge base of the general
Speaker 1: populace or the elitely educated populace would have been vastly
Speaker 1: different than the knowledge we have today. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: science and technology, everything. It seems like the audience would
Speaker 1: have been more susceptible to this idea of spirituality or
Speaker 1: a different realm, or these mysteries that can't be explained
Speaker 1: in some way. My question to you is it feels
Speaker 1: like we're still, even though we have all this technology
Speaker 1: knowledge answers about the natural world, that people still are
Speaker 1: asking some of these questions just about what reality is.
Speaker 1: In a way, it makes great sense to me all
Speaker 1: those people a couple hundred years ago, and they were
Speaker 1: credulous about this kind of thing they would believe in,
Speaker 1: And you're right, You're absolutely right. I don't believe in
Speaker 1: those and you know, I don't believe in ghosts and
Speaker 1: I've never seen a ghost, but I'm very slow now
Speaker 1: to say, you know, just sort of with tremendous confidence,
Speaker 1: there is no realm that's out there that I simply
Speaker 1: can't access. I think this is one of the great
Speaker 1: things about the story. This good is it makes us
Speaker 1: aware of that, and so across two hundred years. You know,
Speaker 1: I can stand in that guy's shoes, I can stand
Speaker 1: in the bear hunter shoes. I've had experiences that are uncanny.
Speaker 1: I do not live in a world that I fully understand.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the easiest statement I've ever made. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think it myself as any in any way
Speaker 1: have any kind of psychic powers or you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a stone compared to some of the people I know.
Speaker 1: But I think all of us have had at least
Speaker 1: some experiences where you think, wow, the trend of the
Speaker 1: age just with everything, but primarily having to do with
Speaker 1: technology and just general knowledge of what we believe we
Speaker 1: know about the earth, the physical nature of the earth. Humans.
Speaker 1: It's like we feel like all the questions about us
Speaker 1: are answered, but really, when you look at what we know,
Speaker 1: we have the same questions that they had back then.
Speaker 1: They're just a little bit different. Everything we know hasn't
Speaker 1: brought us really that much closer to the answer, and
Speaker 1: there is still an incredible amount of mystery inside the
Speaker 1: earth today. Amen, I say amen to that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that there's as much mystery as there
Speaker 1: ever was. And actually one of the one of the
Speaker 1: ways I'd like to understand knowledge. I mean, I'm working
Speaker 1: a university and get paid for supposedly contributing to knowledge.
Speaker 1: What knowledge does if you cast it in a metaphor
Speaker 1: of light, When if knowledge throws light into previously darkened areas,
Speaker 1: it also enlarges the area. So you know, the for
Speaker 1: every inch you gain and stuff you see clearly, maybe
Speaker 1: there's another couple of yards of stuff that you that
Speaker 1: you see dimly for the first time. So there's you know,
Speaker 1: for me, that's always been a kind of dominant image.
Speaker 1: Just think of it. We live in a world. I
Speaker 1: don't know the numbers here, but I you know, I
Speaker 1: try to read these these articles about scientists talking about
Speaker 1: the cosmos, something like, you know, three fourths of the
Speaker 1: cosmos is made up of stuff that seems to me
Speaker 1: almost comically labeled. It's called dark energy and dark matter. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I think the word dark there implies that we don't
Speaker 1: see it very well, you know, And here we've got
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I believe in the scientific enterprise,
Speaker 1: you know. I love it when telescopes see further and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I just said, Amen, I can't. I
Speaker 1: think mystery surrounds us. I think mystery is close to
Speaker 1: home and far away. Mystery surrounds us. It's close to
Speaker 1: home and far away. The short story The Big Bear
Speaker 1: of Arkansas is one of my all time favorite pieces
Speaker 1: of American literature. It influences genre of incredible American writers
Speaker 1: who told our story to the world. It branded the
Speaker 1: young state to an America hungry to learn this new place.
Speaker 1: It's not known who said it first, but Arkansas being
Speaker 1: known as the Bear State is directly linked to this
Speaker 1: one piece of literature. And the takeaway for me is
Speaker 1: that media is powerful, and much of this story's influence
Speaker 1: was positive for Arkansas in the South. But we'll learn
Speaker 1: on the next episode about how Southwestern humor characters like
Speaker 1: Jim Doggett set up Arkansas to be the most ridiculed
Speaker 1: and belittle place in America. In nineteen fifty four, writer
Speaker 1: Eugene Newsom said, it's safe to say I believe that
Speaker 1: Arkansas has been the butt of more jokes running from
Speaker 1: raillery to ridicule than any other political entity in the country.
Speaker 1: An article in Time magazine in the nineteen thirties said
Speaker 1: Arkansans had developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.
Speaker 1: On the next episode, we're going to explore the Arkansas
Speaker 1: image from barefoot fiddle play and Hillbillies to fortune five
Speaker 1: hundred companies all the way to the Oval Office. I
Speaker 1: think you'll be fascinated by what we learned. I can't
Speaker 1: thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please share
Speaker 1: our podcast with somebody this week and leave us a
Speaker 1: review on iTunes, And I look forward to talking about
Speaker 1: the big bar of Arkansas with all those grubby hillbillies
Speaker 1: on the Render next week. Who