Many admire the bear above all other park animals, associating it intimately with wilderness scenery. Not seeing a bear can be a disappointment. But bears are shy and secretive; about 95 percent never come near the roads here. You might be surprised that bears, classed as carnivores, are about 80 percent vegetarian. But they will eat almost anything.
The sow will usually have two cubs every two years. They are born blind and hairless, no bigger than a young rabbit. In two months they will leave the den under the watchful, if indulgent, eye of a fiercely protective mother who is a stern disciplinarian. It is good training, for bears live by stealth and cunning as much as brute strength. (Scientists think bears may be almost as bright as primates.) Bears feed in summer on berries. In autumn they forage on hickory nuts and acorns to build fat reserves for the long winter they spend in the den.
Bears are tree climbers (see [note on denning] below), especially if climbing brings food within reach. Bears have been observed bending small trees double. Many they will break to get at the fruit. They may climb out on branches to get at fruit, or break the branches off and consume the fruit on the ground.
The relationship of a mother bear and her cubs can be fascinating to watch. Even hard-nosed biologists must quell the urge to describe this relationship in purely human terms! The relationship is best watched at a distance, however, because the mother is fiercely protective of her young. That protective instinct can prove dangerous for the unwary hiker or backpacker. Generally, however, bears will sense you first and avoid you entirely.
Cubs develop their strength and coordination in tumbling games of tag and wrestling. A cub is full grown at age 4. A bear is old by age 12. The park’s bear population varies from about 400 to 600.
A few years ago it was discovered here in the Smokies that bear denning sites are frequently in hollow trees 6 to 15 meters (20 to 50 feet) above the ground. Holes near the ground (photo) are not commonly used.
The intelligence of bears is often underrated. They seem to walk awkwardly, because their hindquarters are longer than their forelimbs, but they are agile and move rapidly.
Imagine hewing your own home out of the surrounding woodlands with just a few hand tools. Such was the life of Smokies pioneers. Today you can peer into the past at the Pioneer Farmstead beside the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.
The Tracks of Our Predecessors
Rocks rose out of the sea and became mountains. Plants clothed them and animals lived among the plants, all evolving and changing over the millions of years. A few thousand years ago, a dense green mantle of giant trees covered the Smokies. Bears roamed the forest and bison followed their ages-old trails across the mountains. Beavers built dams across lowland streams, and meadows followed when the beavers moved on. Elk and deer came out of the forest to feed in the meadows and cougars and wolves hunted the elk and deer. It might have gone on this way for even more thousands of years.
But then people came. First Indians, then settlers, then the lumber companies. What was the impact of this new element, this two-legged animal? How did the forest and its life change? Is it now returning to its former state? In trying to answer these questions we may learn something about the ecological role of people not only in the Smokies but also in much of eastern North America, most of which resembled the Smokies in its forest cover when people first arrived on the scene.
For at least several thousand years groups of humans have lived in the lowlands around the Great Smokies. Use of the highlands themselves by these earlier groups was probably limited, however. Our history of peoples in the mountains begins with reports of explorers who visited the Cherokees in the late 17th and 18th centuries. They found this tribe, which is thought to have left the ancestral Iroquoian territory and moved southward about the year 1000, dispersed in small villages along foothill streams in a great arc around the Southern Appalachians. Primarily an agricultural people, the Cherokees tended fields of corn, squash, beans, melons, and tobacco around their thatched log cabins. But they also hunted and fished, and gathered wild plant materials for both food and trade. Although the mountains harbored spirits that were not entirely friendly, the Cherokees camped in coves and gaps to hunt bear and deer, to gather nuts and berries, and to gather stone for implements. Early reports from the Smokies noted the large numbers of deer, bear, and beaver skins being traded by the Cherokees. Quite possibly, they set fire to attract game and promote the growth of berry bushes, thus creating some of the mysterious grass balds atop the Smokies. For purposes of trade and warfare they established trails through the mountains. Such a trail across Indian Gap remained the principal cross-mountain route until early this century.
What effect did all this have on the tapestry of life in the mountains? Undoubtedly the Cherokees increased the area of open land, although some of their cropland might have been established on old beaver meadows. They may also have reduced the numbers of game and fur animals, although 18th-century travelers in the region still could be amazed at the abundance of deer, bison, beaver, cougars, and other animals. No species except the bison is known to have disappeared during the years the Cherokees had sole dominion over the land, and they may have contributed in some way to this one loss. With relatively small numbers in the Smokies, and a lack of highly destructive implements, especially guns, the Cherokees apparently changed the ecological picture only slightly in the days before contact with Europeans.
In the 1790s settlers, legally or illegally, began taking over former Cherokee land in the Smokies, beginning with two of the broader lowland valleys, the Oconaluftee and Cades Cove. As the Cherokees yielded more and more land, by treaty or to theft, settlement by the new Americans proceeded up other valleys, until by 1826 almost every watershed was occupied by at least a few families. Clearing and occupation of land continued through the 19th century, the largest concentrations developing in the Sugarlands (along the West Prong of Little Pigeon River), Greenbrier Cove, and Cataloochee, in addition to the earliest areas of settlement. In 1926, when land buying for the newly authorized park began, there were 1,200 farms and 7,300 people within the park boundaries. By this time, however, farming in the Smokies had passed its peak.