It is common for those who believe that the grizzly is ferocious to believe also that he eats human flesh. There is no known instance of his having done so.
We are now hearing that the Alaska bears are especially ferocious. Yet, in Alaska at the present time, and for many years in the past, the bear trails are concealed as much as possible by being in the woods. This would prevent the bear on the trail being readily seen by man. Along the sea, where much bear food is cast ashore, the trails are not upon the open beach but some distance away behind the trees. The bears depend on scent to tell them if there is anything along the shore to eat. Both their trails and their daily life in Alaska conclusively show that their chief concern is to keep away from and out of sight of man.
The experience with bears in the Yellowstone Park demonstrates that the grizzly is not ferocious. The Park had a numerous grizzly population when it was made a wild-life reservation. The people who in increasing numbers visited the Park carried no fire-arms and they were not molested by the grizzlies. Yet grizzlies were all about. After some twenty years of this friendly association of people and grizzlies, a number of grizzlies, dyspeptic and demoralized from eating garbage, and annoyed by the teasing of thoughtless people, became cross and lately even dangerous. But these bears cannot be called ferocious. Eliminate the garbage-piles and cease harassing the bears, and they will again be friendly.
The grizzly bear has been a golden gift of the gods for the countless writers of highly colored alleged natural history. There is a type, too, of wild fiction-writers of the Captain Mayne Reid class whose thrilling stories of the grizzly and other wilderness animals are purely fictitious, and, though not even pretending to be fact, appear to have been taken seriously by thousands. So prolific and continuous has been the output of these writers that facts have been lost, and it is practically impossible for the average individual to know the real grizzly bear. This comes near to being the immortality of error. It is a national misfortune that the overwhelming majority of people should be imposed upon with erroneous natural history. The destiny of the human race is intimately tied up with nature, and for any one to misunderstand the simple facts which unite us with nature is to be out of harmony with the whole scheme of things. An accurate knowledge of natural history has an important place in guiding the judgments of our race.
Because of their intimate knowledge of the grizzly bear, James Capen Adams, William H. Wright, and Philip Ashton Rollins admired this animal. It would be a glorious thing if every one appreciated the real character of the grizzly bear. A changed attitude toward him—the great animal of the outdoors—might cause the wilderness to appeal to all as a friendly wonderland.