Paul Bunyan and His Loggers

by Otis T. Howd; Cloice R. Howd

What is the real significance of these stories? In the first place they are highly entertaining, with their remarkable 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 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 pictures Paul as a poor business man, opinionated and headstrong, three traits which were by no means rare in the lumber industry. After all, Bunyan never really did grow up, he was always only a boy, with great loyalty to his immediate group, but with but little social responsibility or provision 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 incongruous 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 responsibility, timber is being utilized as a social heritage to be managed 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.