Bear Grease - Ep. 94: The Big Bear of Arkansas

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

On this episode Clay Newcomb is going to take you on a journey to explore an uncanny bear hunting story written in 1841 called “The Big Bear of Arkansas.” Its influence almost single-handedly branded Arkansas as the “Bear State” and paved a path for some of America’s greatest Southern authors.  Clay Newcomb and the crew will talk about the remarkable and pretty-durn-new-to-planet-earth power of media to influence our imaginations about people we’ll never meet, places we’ll never go, and how it can influence who we think we are. We'll hear from three of the greatest guests known West of the mighty Mississippi - renowned Ozark historian & author, Dr. Brooks Blevins, University of Arkansas Folklorist, Dr. Bob Cochran, and like a hickory nut between two acorns, MeatEater’s own Steven Rinella. This is one of Clay’s favorite stories our all time. If you’re a Bear Greaser at heart, I really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one… Sent from my iPhone Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Yes, I have it. I'll give you an idea of a hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived, none accepted. On this episode, we're going to explore an uncanny bear hunting story written in 1841 by a man from New York. I'd be surprised if you've ever heard it, but its influence almost single-handedly branded a state and plowed a furrow

from which some of America's greatest southern authors set root and arose. Its impact was more than significant. We'll talk about the remarkable and pretty darn new to planet Earth power of media to influence our imaginations about people will never meet, places we'll never go, and how it can influence who we think we are. For better or worse, it seems we're putty in the hands of the creative storytellers of our time. I've got a three-pack of some of the great things. guest known west of the mighty Mississippi.

Renowned Ozark historian and author Dr. Brooks Blevins. University of Arkansas Folklorist, Dr. Bob Cochran, and like a hickory nut between two acres, meat eater's own, Stephen Ronella. We're about to dive in deep into a story called the Big Bear of Arkansas, one of my personal favorite stories of all time. And if you're a bear greaser at heart, I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one. I'm very slow now to say, you know, just sort of with tremendous confidence,

there is no realm that's out there that I simply can't access. I think this is one of the great things about a story this good is it makes us aware of that. And so across 200 years, you know, I can stand in that guy's shoes. I can stand in the Bear Hunter shoes. I've had experiences that are uncanny. I do not live in a world that I fully understand. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we are. explore. A steamboat on the Mississippi frequently in making her regular trips, carries between places varying from one to two thousand miles apart, and as these boats advertised to land passengers and freight at all intermediate landings, the heterogeneous character of the passengers of one of these

upcountry boats can scarcely be imagined by one who's never seen it with his own eyes. Starting from New Orleans, in one of these boats, you'll find yourself associated with men from every state of the union and from every portion of the globe. And a man of observation, need not lack for amusement or instruction in such a crowd if he will take the trouble to read the great book of characters so favorably open before him. Here may be seen Jocelyn together the wealthy southern planter and the peddler of Tenware from New England, the northern merchant and the southern jockey, a venerable bishop and a desperate gambler, the land speculator, and the honest farmer, professional men of all creeds and characters, Wolverines, suckers, Hoosiers, Buckeyes, corncrackers,

and besides a plentiful sprinkling of the half-horse, half-alligator species of men who are peculiar to old Mississippi and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by going up and down the river in pursuit of pleasure or business, I have frequently found myself in such a crowd. In the beginning of our story, the listener finds himself on a Mississippi Riverboat headed north out of New Orleans. This wasn't America's first riverboat tail, but it was close, and the cultural atmospherics were beyond interesting to people in the east, hungry for tales of frontier life.

The regions west of the Mississippi were mysterious and in some ways a blank slate to Americans. But nothing on this planet can sit long without being labeled. Like a cocklebird of cotton breeches, identity has barbs and attaches itself and won't let go. But no one knew how much these early stories would stick. We're reading a story called The Big Bear of Arkansas written in 1841 by a New Yorker named Thomas Bangs Thorpe, who moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1837 for health reasons. He was a painter and an author known for his ability to describe nature, and even though he was new to the South, he was enamored with folk speech

and was gifted at capturing the dialect of his subjects. The Big Bear story would become the greatest by far story of this genre of writing called Southwest Humor. Later we'll learn how influential it was on the young state, Arkansas. And yep, I am foreshadowing. Do y'all remember when that iTunes reviewer said I foreshadowed too much? In this first section, Thorpe used colorful phrases to the same. described the men of the Mississippi River Valley, one that had been heard before, spoken by none other than David Crockett himself. While passing through Arkansas in 1835, he said at a public

speech in Little Rock that was recorded in a newspaper, he said, if I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where the men are the real half-horse, half-alligator breeds such as grows nowhere else on the face of the universal earth. It's interesting that Thorpe, used Crockett's exact words. Anyway, we're about to be back on the riverboat, and our narrator, an anonymous city slicker from New Orleans is about to introduce us to an interesting character. While I was thus busily employed in reading, and my companions were more busily still employed in discussing such subjects as suited their humor's best, we were startled most

unexpectedly by a loud Indian whoop uttered in the social hall, and that part of the cabin fitted off for a bar, then was to be heard a loud crowing, which would not have continued to have interested us, such sounds being quite common in that place of spirits, alcohol, had not the hero of these windy accomplishments, stuck his head into the cabin and hallooed out, hurrah for the big bear of Arkansas, and then might be heard a confused hum of voices. This continued interruption attracted the attention of everyone in the cabin. All conversation dropped, and in the midst of this surprise, the big bar walked into the cabin, took a chair, put his feet up on the stove, looking back over his shoulder,

past the general and familiar salute of strangers, how are you? He then expressed himself at home as much as if he had been in the forks of the Cyprus, and perhaps a little more so. Some of the company at this familiarity looked a little angry and some astonished. But in a moment every face was reed in a smile. There was something about the intruder that won the heart on sight. He appeared to be a man enjoying perfect health and contentment. His eyes were as sparkling as diamonds and good nature to simplicity.

Then his perfect confidence in himself was irresistibly droll. The word droll means curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement. I had to look that up. This writing is now over 180 years old and I find myself lost at times. But by the next sentence, I'm usually understanding again. You might be the same. The author is setting the context for our story. A riverboat is full of strangers from all over the country.

When a loud, charismatic, and unusually likable man enters the cabin. introducing himself as the big bar of Arkansas. The author spells the word like he wants us to say it, B-A-R, pronounced like an iron bar with a little more belly in it, bar. Many in the South still say it this way today. Later we'll learn that our storyteller's given name is Jim Dogget. He goes on to tell a story about killing a 40-pound turkey and how planting corn in Arkansas is dangerous

because he once had a sow hog fall asleep on some corn seed and the percussion of its sprouting killed her. He then says, I don't plan anymore. Nature intended Arkansas for a hunting ground, and I go according to nature. A passenger then asks in disbelief, where did all this happen again? Here's Doggett.

Where did all that happen? asked a cynical Hoosier. Happened. It happened in Arkansas. Where else could it have happened? But in the creation state, the finishing up country, a state where the soil runs deep to the center of the earth, and the government gives you a title to every inch of it. Then it's heirs, just breathe them,

and they'll make you snort like a horse. It's a state without fault it is. Doggett, the Big Bar, describes Arkansas, which he spells with a W at the end, as a state without fault, the creation state, finishing up country. Its meaning is a complete mystery, but it's clear he knows something we don't. The descriptor is clearly spiritual, almost as if God created Arkansas first and the rest of the world resulted from its wake. Americans on the frontier were heavily influenced by Native Americans,

and this was particularly strong in the Mississippi River Delta region of eastern Arkansas where the fictional character Doggett lived. Many tribes had site-specific religions and believed their homelands to be the center of the world. I'm speculating, but Doggett's doctrine doesn't mesh with Western religious doctrine. Arkansas became a state in 1836 just five years prior to this writing. Some of the first reporting of the Arkansas territory going back to America was in the 1820s from a dead gum New York Yankee, and I'm not talking about a baseball player, but a real Yankee named Henry Rose Schoolcraft, who despised the people he met here. and spoke extremely critical of their backwards grubby, crude frontier lives.

To this day, Schoolcraft's demeaning account still sting a little. It's interesting that Thorpe chose for his fictional character, Doggett, to be so certain that this Arkansas, spelled with the W, was a place without fault. We're going to learn that they were actually making fun of us, and this could easily be traced to a trend in the 20th century. And I'm saying us because I'll have you know that my great, great, great, great grandfather Thomas James Newcomb came to Arkansas via Kentucky in the early 1830s. So this whole thing is close to home for me.

Back to our story, the New Orleans traveler has now heard the big bar mention bears. So he asks if he hunts them and Doggett quickly brings up his two favorite things. his gun and his dog. The way I hunt them, the old black rascals know the crack of my gun as well as they know a pig squealing. They grow thin in our parts. It frightens them so, and they do take the noise dreadfully, poor things. That gun of mine is an epidemic among Barr. If not watched closely, it will go off as quick on a warm scent as my dog Bowie Knife will.

And then that dog, woo! Why the fella thinks that the world is full of Barry, He finds him so easy. It's lucky he don't talk as well as think, for with his natural modesty, if he should suddenly learn how much he is acknowledged to be ahead of all other dogs in the universe, he would be astonished to death in two minutes. Strangers, that dog knows a bar's way as well as a horse jockey knows a woman's. He always barks at the right time, bites at the exact place, and whips without getting a scratch.

I never could tell whether he was made expressly to hunt bar, or whether he was made expressly to hunt bar, a bar was made expressly for him to hunt. I hope you're beginning to hear the colorful way Doggett speaks. What made this story so famous was the brilliant dialect capture by Thorpe. Doggett's dog, Bowie Knife, was so good it isn't clear whether he was made to hunt or the bear was made for him to hunt. What a brilliant thought. This man was a genius.

The big bar was a larger-than-life character. articulate and opinionated. He proclaims his gun as an epidemic amongst bears, and Bowie Knife, who is naturally modest, but is the best bear dog on planet Earth, is kept humble only because he can't talk. With his verboseness,

the big bar is setting himself up to be one of those most interesting men in the world characters. The passengers are mesmerized and shocked at the life he's revealing, one that is more complex and interesting than their own. And I haven't even mentioned the wildly risque and suggestive horse jockey metaphor. We'll talk about this in a minute with Dr. Cochran. Now our narrator asked Doggett for a bar hunting story. In this manner, the evening was spent,

but conscious that my own association was so singular a personage would probably end before the morning, I asked him if he would not give me a description of some particular bear hunt, adding that I took great interest in such things, though I was no sportsman. The desire seemed to please him, and he squared himself round towards me, saying that he could give me an idea of a bar hunt that was never beat in this world or in any other. His manner was so singular that half of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it,

the great peculiarity of which was the happy manner he had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation. As near as I can recollect, I have italicized them, and given the story in his own words. Stranger, he said, in bar hunts I am numerous, and which particular one, as I say to you, I shall tell, puzzles me. There was an old she-devil I shot at the hurricane last fall, and then there was the old hog thief I popped over at the bloody crossing, and then, yes, I have it.

I'll give you an idea of a hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived, none excepted. Our New Orleans narrator includes how striking the delivery of the story was. You can feel the intensity and passion of the big bar. This is a fictional story, but it's clear our author Thorpe had heard men like this before. Doggett is an exaggerated caricature of the half-horse, half-alligator men that Crockett met here. This was the early stages of the southern storyteller, speaking in dialect, being exported to broader America. which will learn they would be highly interested in for centuries to come. Some would laugh.

Some were endeared to these people. Some would see them as sensational and simple-minded, crude, and grotesque. And some love to just have someone to sneer down their noses at. Whatever the reason, America couldn't get enough of the Southern Voice. The big bar, Doggett, is now going to tell us about the greatest bar that ever lived, none accepted. stranger, the first chase ever had with that big critter, I saw him no less than three distinct times at a distance. The dogs would run him over 18 miles and broke down, and my horse gave out, and I was nearly as used up as a man could be, made by my principal, which is patent. Before this

adventure, such things were unknown to me to be possible, but strange as it was, that bear got me used to it before I was done with him, for he got so at last that he would leave me on long chase quite easily. How he did it, I never could understand, that a bar runs at all as puzzling, but how this one could tire down and bust up a pack of hounds and a horse that were used to overhauling everything they started after no time was past my understanding. Well, Stranger, that bar finally got so sassy that he used to help himself to a hog off my premises whenever he wanted. The buzzards followed after what he left, and so between that bar and the buzzard, I'd rather think I was out of pork.

Doggett, like any good storyteller, is setting us up with the backstory of his hunt for a bear that we'll learn is unhunnable. Things had gotten personal as this sassy bear was still in pigs and could mysteriously outrun his hounds and horse. Horses and hunting dogs are a big thing down here, and his desire to kill this bear starts to affect his health. An agger is slang for the ague. which is like malaria.

Well, missing that bar so often took hold of my vitals, and I was wasted away. The thing had been carried too far, and it reduced me in flesh faster than an agger, and I would see that bar and everything I did. He hunted me, and that too, like a devil, which I began to think he was. While in this fix, I made preparations to give him a last brush and to be done with it, Having completed everything to my satisfaction, I started at sunrise. And to my great joy, I discovered from the way the dogs ran that they were near him. Finding his trail was nothing, for that had become as plain to the pack as a turnpike road.

On we went and coming to an open country, what should I see, but the bar very leisurely ascending a hill in the dogs close at his heels. Either a match for him this time in speed, or else he did not care to get out of their way. I do not know which. But wasn't he a beauty, though? I loved him like a brother. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest moments in American literature. Doggett sees the bear with bay and hounds surrounding him.

He can't tell if the dogs had him hemmed up and caught or if the beast just didn't care that they were there. But he declares, wasn't he a beauty, though? I loved him like a brother. You'll hear me and Steve Ronella talk about this later, but Thorpe's insight seems beyond his time. This is also when the reader begins to see that the big bear of Arkansas is more than an uncultured barbarian.

The hunt continues. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. but when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com.

I think you'll be glad you do. did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. On he went until he came to a tree, the limbs of which formed a crotch about six feet from the ground. In the crotch, he got and seated himself, and the dogs were yelling all around it, and there he set, I and them as quiet as a pond and low water. A greenhorn friend of mine and company reached shooting distance before me,

and blazed away, hitting the critter in the center of the forehead. The bar shook his head as the ball struck it, and then walked down from that tree as gently as the lady would from a carriage. T'was a beautiful sight to see him do that. He was in such a rage that he seemed to be as little afraid of the dogs as if they had been suckling pigs, and the dogs weren't slow in making a ring around him at a respectful distance. I tell you, even Bowie Knife himself stood off.

Then the way his eyes flashed. Why the fire of them would have singed a cat's hair. In fact, that bar was in a wrath all over. Only one pup came near him, and he was brushed out so to tally with the bear's left paw that he entirely disappeared. And that made the old dogs even more cautious still. In the meantime, I came up and taken deliberate aim as a man should do at his side just at the back of the foreleg. If my gun did not snap, call me a coward, and I won't take it for. personal. Yes, stranger, it snapped, and I could not find a cap about my person. His eyes flashed

with such fire it would have scorched a cat, and we now see that this is no ordinary bear. He swatted a dog, and it vanished. And this veteran hunter's muzzleloader popped a cap, meaning it didn't fire. But now he's beginning to plan for his final hunt, and if he doesn't kill it, he's leaving Arkansas, or maybe he'll be dead. It's unclear. Then I told my son. neighbors on that Monday morning, naming the day, that I would start that bar and bring him home with me, or they might divide my settlement among them, the owner having disappeared. Well, stranger, on that morning, previous to the great day of my hunting expedition, I went into the woods near my house, taking my gun and bowie knife along, just from habit, and they're sitting

down, also from habit, what should I see getting over my fence? But the bar! Yes, the old varment It was within a hundred yards of me, and the way he walked over that fence. Stranger, he loomed up like a black mist, and he seemed so large, he walked right towards me. I raised myself, took deliberate aim, and fired. Instantly, the varmint wheeled and gave yell and walked through the fence like a fallen tree would through a cobweb. I started after, but was tripped up by my inexpressibles, which either from habit or the excitement of the moment, were about my heels, and before I had really gathered myself up, I heard the old varmint groaning in a thicket nearby like a thousand sinners,

and by the time I reached him, he was a corpse. Stranger, it took five men and myself to put that carcass on a mule's back, and old long-ears waddled under his load, and if he was foundered in every leg of his body, and with a common whopper of a bar, he would have trotted off and enjoyed himself. "'T wouldn't astonish you to know how big he was. "'I made a bedspread of his skin,

"'and the way it used to cover my bar mattress "'and leave several feet on each side to tuck up "'would have delighted you. "'It was, in fact, a creation bar, "'and if it had lived in Samson's time, "'and if it had met him, in a fair fight, "'it would have licked him in the twinkling of a dice box. "'But, stranger, I never liked the way I hunted him

"'and missed him. "'There's something curiously. about it I never could understand and I never was satisfied at his giving in so easily at last. Perhaps he had heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day, so he'd just come in like Captain Scott's Coon to save his wind to grunt with and dying. But that ain't likely. My private opinion is that the bar was an unhontable bar and died when his time had come. The bear was groaning like a thousand sinners. I'm impressed. The rest that Thorpe knew that a black bear is one of the few animals that we hunt on the planet that has a death moan. A double lung shot bear, one that dies quickly, will often give a loud, sometimes spooky, elongated groan that can be heard at great distance.

I'm talking like a couple hundred yards. It usually lasts longer than you think it should, and it's a sure sign of the bear's death. For a bear hunter, it's a bewildering moment of internal conflict as the excitement of certain success. access wars with a sobriety delivered by the beast's grandstanding auditory expression of death. Both feelings are usually of equal measure. Doggett also suggests that the bear heard his plans for his hunt and basically turned himself in. This sounds like a sensational thought, but in the book, Make Prayers to the Raven by Richard K. Nelson, we learned that the co-eukon people of Alaska believe the black bear was near the apex of spiritual power in the

natural world. They believe that when a person plans a bear hunt, they should be careful not to speak directly about their hunt plans because the bear will hear them and avoid being killed. A hunter must speak in code using vague terms if he wishes to invite others or discuss hunting plans. And Doggett suggests that this creation bear may have heard him. The death of a hunted bear is regarded with such ceremony with the Kou Khan that it's second only to a human funeral. They regarded bear meat as a delicacy, but killing one was a, quote, quest for prestige and a high expression of manhood. This is similar to what bear hunting became in the South. And I hope you caught it, but Doggett says that the bear was a creation bar,

which is the same descriptor he used to describe Arkansas, the creation state. This is a spiritual place and beast. No one I've talked to really knows exactly what he meant. It's a It's mysterious, but the climax of the story is that Doggett says the bar was an unhuntable bar that died when his time had come, almost as if his death had been scripted and the hunter had nothing to do with it. The story is now handed back to our New Orleans traveler, and he describes the peculiar response of the big bar. When the story was ended, our hero set some minutes with his auditors in grave silence. I saw there was a mystery to him connected with the bear whose death he had just related and had evidently made a strong impression on his mind. It was also evident that there was some superstitious awe connected with the affair,

a feeling common with all children of the wood when they meet with anything out of their everyday experience. He was the first one, however, to break the silence. In jumping up, he asked all present to liquor before going to bed, a thing which he did with a number of his companions evidently to his heart's content. Long before day I was put ashore at my place of destination and I can only follow with the reader in imagination, our Arkansas friend, and his adventures at the Forks of the Cyprus on the Mississippi. There was some superstitious awe connected with the bear.

Doggett was moved by his own story, and he left a major impression on the fictional people, but the story left an impression on the real people of America and the writers who would script some parts of our American identity. We didn't read the full story, probably only about half of it, but now you know the premise. I've known for a good part of my life that Arkansas was once known as the Bear State. I discovered this while in college studying the thesis writing

of University of Arkansas students and faculty, but deep in the literature, this golden-acre and laid there for the taken. No one ever told me this. I never heard about it growing up. Dr. Brooks Blevins is the undisputed historian of the Ozarks. I wanted to ask him about why we were called the bear state. Arkansas, the bear state, you know, the truth is no one really knows exactly when or how the state got that nickname. There's no, you know, it wasn't an official nickname, but we know that before the Civil War, the state had earned the nickname the Bear State unofficially. Did you show up in literature?

Yeah, and I would say there are probably two reasons for that. One is that Arkansas did become known as a state full of bears. I mean, it was a state where bear hunting was very good. And you think about in the days before the Civil War, you're talking about a really sparsely populated state that has a combination of highlands and swan. But probably more than that was because of the literary component. You have, and I think timing is really important in this, Arkansas becomes a state. And at that very moment, you've got really the genre of Southwestern humor is really starting to take off.

And it becomes, in some ways, the most popular genre of literature before the Civil War. Arkansas became a state in 1836 and it's hard to say if it was expressly created for the bear or if the bear was expressly created for Arkansas. And literature is a powerful tool for identity. Dr. Blevins believes the Big Bear of Arkansas in 1841, along with other bear hunting stories, branded the young state, sucking the backwoods bear hunting image into the identity vacuum created by the, new statehood. America desperately wondered who we were. So we don't know who said it first, but it's clear it's connected to Jim Doggett in this new genre of writing called Southwest Humor. But what is Southwest humor? As the name would suggest, it's a humorous kind of writing that is

based in the Southwest. And in those days, the Southwest wasn't New Mexico and Arizona. It was Arkansas in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana and basically the westernmost part of the United States at that time. Right. So, yeah, that becomes the Southwest. And all these stories are, for the most part, published back east in sporting magazines,

sporting periodicals. The Spirit of the Times in New York was the most prominent publisher of these southwestern humor stories. And a lot of these stories have to do with hunting. A lot of them have to do with bear hunting. They also have to do with horse racing and politics and all kinds of stuff that you see out in these kind of frontier rural communities, but so many of them have to do with with bear hunting and you've got the most famous bear hunting story that comes out. That's the big bear of Arkansas.

This story becomes so popular and so famous that some later literary historians in the 20th century would even refer to southwestern humor as the big bear genre of literature. I mean, that's how much the big bear of Arkansas that story. It influenced a whole bunch of other writers after him. Yeah, all the way down to Faulkner and people in the 20th century. And Mark Twain. Right. And all these people are fascinated with these

Southwestern humor stories, frontier characters, and the dialect and all that kind of stuff. Here's the University of Arkansas professor and folklore specialist Dr. Bob Cochran. What a cool guy. Tell me why this short story, the Big Bear of Arkansas, was so influential, though, that when this one came out,

it was a climax piece that was a line in the sand almost. And they called them, you know, the Big Bear humorous after that. And then that later would influence other American writers. Like, why was this one so good? I think it was, it became so famous because it was recognized right away as better. It was more complex. You know, it had the language, it had the jokes. It was deeper.

How was it complex? Well, just the, it's a bear hunt story, but it's more than a bear hunt story. It's about crossing into an experience, which is the unknown. It's a burning bush story. You know, it's something that shocks you out of the way you perceive the very world. You don't think the world has this in it, and it does. You know, it's one of those kind of, you know, you're walking. along and a bush catches on fire will it changes your life well he's walking along and he sees this this bear

walk through a fence you know there's a sense on that line remember it's italicized that he walked through a fence like a tree falling through a cobweb yeah and it almost dematerializes the bear right and there's a place where the bear hits one of the dogs and the dog disappears right it doesn't say it's yelping off to the side or killed or he says he uses that word he said the dog it's not there. He atomizes the dog. You know, so in other words, it's, I think it's a complex story because it's, it takes you into the unknown. It takes you into the unknown.

I have more questions for Dr. Cochran. Let me ask you this. Is there a modern example of what this would have been like inside of our media today? Would it have been like my 75 year old dad looking at TikTok or? Well, the first thing I think is that many readers. would have spurned it. Okay. Many readers would have regarded it as subliterary, you know, as sort of just not...

Just like a shame to our culture. You got it. You got it. The way my grandmother felt about country music from West Virginia. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. She didn't like country music?

She thought there was a world of difference between a mountaineer and a hillbilly. And she was proud of being a mountaineer, and she would not abide the word hillbill. Really? Yeah. So, you know, we were to... When we were little kids, we were said, don't. and say hillbilly around grandma. Really?

In West Virginia. West Virginia. But mountaineer, you'd stand up and salute. And so your grandma wouldn't have liked this because it was kind of hillbilly. It made fun. It was a demeaning stereotype. And that would have been true about a lot of people in respectable Little Rock wouldn't have liked it either because the same thing.

We still have that today. The state being judged by what some people in the state would think of as it's lowliest members. But to the people that this appealed to, this was wildly popular. Wildly popular. Wildly popular. Literature was usually quite formal and authors' writing and dialect was something new. People loved it. I've got more questions. Tell me about where this was published, the spirit of the times. Right. It had some competitors because it was so successful, but it was the most successful. It had a wide readership. And it, And its readership was much wider than the people it was discussing.

It wasn't read just by hunters or, you know, people. But it was a sporting journal. Absolutely. If it was interested in one thing more than hunting, and I think it might have been, it's not like I've sat down and read all the back issues of this thing. Yeah. What would be the first? Horse racing.

Horse racing. Yes, sir. And horse racing was a big thing back then, too. It would have been like today's NASCAR. Yeah. And interestingly, in the first bit of this story, the Big Bear of Ar, Arkansas, he makes a horse jockey joke. He said his bear dog Bowie Knife knows a bear the way a horse jockey knows a woman. Yeah. Which I can only assume it means that the horse jockeys were the cool guys

that the women favored. Yeah, that's because they were stars in a way. Yeah. You know, it's about as risque as you can get. Although this genre of writing was was pretty risque for the day. You could get away with stuff that you couldn't get away with. My grandmother would have gasped when she read that. Yeah, she might not even picked it out. Yeah, this was like rebel stuff. Yeah, yeah, and trashy in some ways. But the people who read it were not trashy financially.

They were, you know, pretty well off. It cost money to subscribe to these things. Yeah, would it have been like a print magazine? Yeah, it would have been like... But a kind of tabloid. Yeah. And it was extraordinarily popular. Thorpe used colorful descriptors and metaphors.

In some sections I didn't read, he said he didn't plan to go to New Orleans in a crow's life, using its lifespan to describe a measure of time. He said running a bear in warm weather would turn him into a skin full of bars grease. And once Doggett proclaimed, mosquitoes is nature, and I never find fault with her. If they are large, Arkansas is large. Her varmots are large. her trees are large, her rivers are large, and a small mosquito would be of no more use in Arkansas

than preaching in a cane break. That kind of sounds like something Brent Reeves would say. I'm still trying to understand just how popular the story was in America. Here's the old Hickory Nut himself, Stephen Ronella, who happens to be one of those highfalutin New York Times bestselling authors. He's going to talk about what he noted about the Big Bear of Arkansas. It was very poetic but not in an obnoxious, annoying way. That they were at that time, people were using poetic description so effectively.

But him describing in one passage, when a bear comes over the fence, it rises over the fence like a black mist. And when it goes back through the fence, it goes through a fence like a falling tree cutting through cobweb. And, yeah, it's poetic. Born of the earth and born of the land and not born of some, uh, some, um, some, um, writing workshop. You know, you think about these guys, they did not have YouTube, they didn't have Netflix and Hulu. This was their craft, writing. Writing was the primary means of communication, and even a primary means of entertainment for people. This story, written as it was, it would essentially be like saying, dude, you should check out that Netflix documentary. It is

awesome. Do you think writers have gotten better, worse, at the command of the English language? And really, when you talk about the command of the English language, what you're really saying is, are people able to really describe what's happening on planet Earth and inside the body of a human? I don't want to talk about the population writ large. I don't want to just refer to just general adult Americans. But I'll say of our leaders, okay, of our prominent figures, the use of the English language has suffered. Since this time. Since then. I mean, just go simply, go read transcripts of.

Lincoln's, who would have been, you know, at his prime alive and well at the time of this writing, go look at his command and use of the English language compared to a transcript of any modern president speaking today. I think that, you know, more people, a higher percentage of people, are literate now than then, but the level of mastery of the English language as exemplified by like key individuals has suffered. And I think that that ability to speak in such a colorful, flamboyant, like, energy-laden way has gone away. However you feel about him, you know, and I've followed him and known him my whole life and spoke to him. But you go look at the fire inside the language of a figure like Ted Nugent, how fiery and colorful and exciting he's able to speak.

right it sort of brings to mind like the character speaking in this thing he just like he'll say a sentence you like i don't understand how you just strung that sentence together yeah without working on it earlier like an amazing ability to string sentences together um to hit two sides of the spectrum uh nugent will say sentences that blow me away uh obama could string a sentence together that when you read a transcript of the sentence i think to myself how could someone have formed that as a sentence having not written it out first. I'm not often blown away by people's sentences they put that they put together. But reading this, you know, and again, we're confusing. Like, this was created by a writer. This wasn't a transcript of a thing. So it was created by a writer

who did their research and spent their time. And reading it, I sort of lament that that flamboyance with language isn't normal. And I wonder how normal, like, was it normal? You know, were these characters out there who would speak so in just such a wild, colorful, passionate way. I bet you weren't expecting Uncle Ted and Barack Obama to come up in this conversation. Neither was I. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Here's Dr. Cochran continuing to describe how influential this big bear of Arkansas story was. There was one volume in his life that was published that had nothing but his stuff in it. And it was called Hive of the B-hunter, 1854, and there's 20. 24 pieces in that. Okay. The Big Bears won up.

And the second most frequently include a story in anthology is nothing next to the story. It's a trivial piece. It's called a piano in Arkansas. And it's a hook story. I mean, it's just got one point. You got a village Braggard who's very proud of the fact that he's made two trips to the capital, Little Rock. And he thinks he knows everything. In other words, he's the expert on the big world, right?

Yeah. And he's heard that a newly arrived family. in town has a piano. And there's great curiosity in the town called something like hard scrabble. You know how they name is. Yeah, a fake town. Fake town. Yeah.

Nobody knows what a piano is. And this guy says, well, he's seen more pianos than what they see woodchucks. I mean, he's, so, and what happens is, of course, that he is exposed as a, as a braggard and a liar because he mistakes a newly arrived washing machine for a piano. He thinks, okay. So that story is nothing. Just a one, one, that's it. Yeah.

I just told you the whole story. It's like a one-shot joke. Whereas this story, we could spend an hour and a two just trying to figure out what the final thing this story is about. Yeah. So I think it became the most popular story on really solid grounds. I think it's as good a story as there is in that genre. It's the most complex one I know. These Southwest humor stories created lovable and interesting characters, but they were also setting up my beloved homeland for a

rough 150 years of what scholars say was the most picked on state in America in the 20th century, by far. We've mentioned that the Big Bear School of Literature likely had notable effect on Mark Twain, who would begin publishing in the late 1860s becoming America's most famous writer. Here's Steve Renella. A thing that I noticed too, and it was evocative of Mark Twain. Yeah. What Mate Twain, Twain was his ability to capture vernacular, his ability to live a life of research and take almost, his characters were born of deep experience that he had personally, meaning there was no Huckleberry Finn,

there was no Tom Sawyer, but Mark Twain, and that was his pen name, Samuel Clemens, spent his life on the Mississippi, was raised on the Mississippi, had proximity to slaves, grew up in a slave holding place, fished catfish. He was a riverboat pilot. He did hang out with people. He knew these individuals.

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were perhaps more real than actual real people. And what gave him so much, his character so much, humanity is they were low-class people, but he loved them deeply, low-class people. that was his soul, right, was bringing these people to life and defying stereotypes. So here you have, you know, you're hearing this tale spun by

and this Arkansas bear hunter, but you're looking like, you know, how the narrative is captured is like clearly the writer had spent time around people. And you're like, this Arkansas bear hunter who's sort of being in jest portrayed as this rough and tumble individual. But in fact,

he's exceeding. He's a very clear communicator. He's full of compassion and empathy, and he's like a spiritual figure, right, who approaches life with like a great lust, you know? And so it's loving, right? It's loving in a way that a lot of stuff you see when you're watching something now

and you're watching some stupid Disney movie and a hunter comes up. It's not, it's hateful. Right. He prizes a southern accent. He's bloodthirsty. He's ignorant. I mean, these are all things you see all the time, right?

But at this time, you could have this person like, what steps in the door, here's this uneducated, uncouth, redneck bear hunter. But let's hear him talk. What emerges is all those things I said earlier, like a very passionate, deeply articulate, deeply feeling individual who ascribes like all these emotional things. to a bear hunt and takes a story in an unexpected direction. He loves this bear like his brother and misses the bear. And so it's this whole package of what comes in is like,

you know, you're expecting to have this guy be lampooned, but this guy is handled with great care. Yeah. You like, you read it, and you like dudes from Arkansas. Yeah, yeah. You wish you could talk to that guy. The dichotomy of the ignorant backwoodsman being a complex individual with his humanity on display is fascinating, but not new, even then.

Here's Dr. Cochran. It seems like this narrative of the simpletons of the South or the Hill Country or Appalachia or the Ozarks being portrayed in this complex way of being really simple, but also educated and in the know and kind of this striking contrast. This seems like a common narrative. The simpleton is actually the smart guy. Is that pretty common back in those days? Well, it's an old trope. It's an ancient trope.

Jack in the Beanstalk, you know, Jack is a simpleton. But Jack is smart enough to do what the guy's daughter tells him to do. And he wins. You know, he ends up winning. He ends up killing the giant. So sometimes they're making fun of the guy, like in that a piano in Arkansas story, that the town sophisticate is exposed as a fraud.

But here, again, it's part of the wonder of this story. It's much more complicated. If you move to the last paragraph or so that when he finishes the story, he's told a deep story about himself. He's told a story. He's a great hunter, but remember he says the bear was hunting me. Yeah. The bear came and sat across my fence and killed a hog whenever he wanted to. Right?

In other words, he tells a story about his own defeat. So here you have a ring-tailed roar. Well, there are scores of ring-tailed roar stories, but there are a few ring-tailed roar stories where the roar says, here's the story where I got beat. Right. Here's the story where I was in over my head. Yeah, and I don't even today really understand what happened there. I mean, this story almost is unique for that kind of depth in this genre.

And if you look at the last paragraph, I mean, you read that opening paragraph that he won people over right away in his total self-confidence. In the end, that self-confidence is gone. Yeah. When the story was ended, our hero set some minutes with his auditors in grave silence. Yeah. I saw that there was a mystery to him connected with the bear whose death he had just related that had evidently made a strong impression on his mind. The Big Bar of Arkansas turns out to be one of the most interesting, deepest people on the boat,

leaving the passengers in all of his life, his philosophy, and right, smart, enamored, maybe even envious. This is a popular theme. Dr. Blevins wrote about the times having a romantic, impulse to exalt and envy the supposed and unattainable simple life of the Hillman. This idea is no less strong today than it was then. Here's another layer of depth to this story from Steve and I. Today there's this narrative inside the hunting space that we all kind of have attached ourselves to is this deep respect for our quarry, which we sometimes think was absent during the market hunting era of this country.

And we kind of feel like it's new. You know, like now when we kill a deer, you know, we like think about. We've really taken something. And this is significant and this is meaningful. This is not a small thing. And, you know, pay respect to this animal. But really, that is so old. But what surprised me and what I loved so much,

but when Jim Doggett, the Arkansas bear hunter, when he saw his dogs walking the bear, The bear was walking and the dogs were all around it. He said he couldn't tell if the bear even knew the dogs were there. And he said, I loved him like a brother. I mean, if somebody said that today, that would seem like cutting edge. Yeah. He'd be like, wow, man, 1841, Thomas Bangthorps, fictional character Jim Doggett, Arkansas bear hunter, loved him like a brother.

And I think that that, inside of that, emerged a functionalization of that love, which turned into the North American Mall of Wildlife Conservation. Really, what we're doing, managing wildlife in this country, goes back to Jim Doggett loving that bear like a brother. And now his... Lamenting its passing. Yeah, and then when the bear dies, he said the bear hunter became extremely melancholy and sad. And he said he missed the bear.

And you wouldn't have thought that would have come out of the 1840s. Yeah, it would have been a sentiment. I think that's one of the greatest lines in America. American literature, especially as it pertains to the lasting ethic of the American sportsman that has functionalized that love of a beast into saving wild places and wildlife. Lordy, Lordy, my brothers, we have walked into a bird nest on the ground as we live in one of the greatest heydays of American wildlife, wild places, and access to hunting. I believe that's why these stories of our heritage, our identity as Americans are so powerful.

In the midst of a rapidly progressing society, seemingly trying to forget the backwoodsmen, we cannot forget who we are. Society needs to continue to create space for hunters to manage the lion's share of wild places and wildlife. We've got a long track record of success, and if we do, there will be space and wildlife for all the stakeholders to partake in whatever means they like. This is America, and we're hunters that love the great. beasts and our caretakers of the wild places where they live. Can you say amen to that? I wanted to ask Steve why hunters seem to be so enamored with the ones that got away or the

unkillable animal. Here's what he said. It's a good question. You could go super deep psychology and have it be that you're establishing that in the end the animal can prevail and that what you're doing is exceptionally difficult. and you might see that someone that had come from a line of resource destruction, market hunters, whoever, where you're like you're literally wiping species off the area's map, that you would have a mythology of the ones that can't be got as a way to alleviate some of the guilt or blame,

or it could be just that it creates that it's like an act of reverence. Here's a story from Steve's past About a mythical Uncatchable Fish On the lake that I grew up on We used to have a guy I don't know what happened with this guy This guy was named was Mr. Plang

And he was a He introduced us all to this thing called speed trolling Okay so basically he would troll Northerns By very fast trolling of Northerns He was the first guy I ever knew That had a fish finder back When it was a piece of graph paper and a pencil So when you got into fish

You'd have a paper roll And you would unroll three, four feet of graph paper. And it showed you could carry around your day of fishing on a piece of graph paper. And he put it in everyone's mind, including mine, that in this small 66 acre lake that I grew up on, which is about 22 feet in its deepest spot, that there was a five-foot northern pike in there.

I carried that around with me. Why can't you catch it? How come no one will catch it? We just talked about our dream would be the drained the lake and find that thing. So it appeals to people. Yeah. I think deep inside of it, it makes you want to go. When I think about the stories of the deer, the bear that I didn't kill, it makes me want to go back out there again. And ultimately, the predator has to be rooting for the prey because the prey is what keeps the predator alive.

So we're hunters, but we deeply want, like Jim Doggett, we deeply want our prey to beat us. hidden deep in the DNA of the predator are checks and balances offering general assurance that their prey will persist as enlightened beasts ourselves we can articulate that sentiment into our stories if wolves could talk perhaps they'd revere the uncatchable caribou or moose dr cochran asked me if i was familiar with the writer barry lopez here's what he had to say about the author yeah he wanted to nudge he wanted to nudge book award for a book called Arctic Dreams. Yes. But the book I know well, because I just taught it, is a book of his called Of Wolves and Men.

You know, what he did was sit out there and watch prey predator interactions a lot. And most of the time he observed nothing happens. You know, and he's talking about wolves for the most part. And so he would see a wolf pack and they would find some caribou. And most of the time, they look at each other. And so there's a phrase he came up with called, and he called, and he called, it, the conversation of death. That fits perfectly with this story at the end where he says, I think he was an unhuntable bear. He died when his time had come. And he has the sense, the hunter

has a sense that he's the hunted in that passage that we were focusing in on where it's clear that the bear on a previous chase had easily tired out his horse and his dogs. Right. And this day, he says, or he did not care to get out of their way the next day. He could have left them like he did before. So Lopez's notion of the conversation of death that the bear is choosing, the bear is in charge. And one of the things is always strange to me about this story, and you could see it as a clumsy moment in the story.

You know, there's an island in a lake that appears very conveniently in this story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are we supposed to at this point? So in the story that his dogs chase what he believes to be the bear, cross a lake onto an island. Right.

He gets out there, kills the bear, and it's not the big bear. chosen bear. Right. So in that point, has he mistaken earlier or is the bear also among many other sort of almost magical things, a shapeshifter? He all of a sudden he becomes an old she bear of pathetic size. Remember the people in town make fun of it for it.

So, and the dog just disappears and he seems to walk through a fence, you know, as if he were not a substantial being, you know, that he was made out of mist or something. So there's all this, the word for this that scholars would use for the Washington Irving stories like Rip Van Winkle or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow would be to do stories about the uncanny. And literally uncanny just means you can't know it. You can't know it. Here's one of the most mysterious descriptors used by Doggett to describe the bear and Arkansas both. He used that term as a descriptor creation. He called Arkansas the creation state, and this bear, the creation bear, which, I mean,

creation has this idea of like a, like coming first. Yeah. But it also has this idea of not connected to something in this realm. To create something means that it, almost like it came from nothing. And creation bear, when you read it, you get a sense that, yeah, this is like a special bear, a bear of a different lineage than the average bear. And that felt like what he was saying about Arkansas. Creation bear and creation state?

What do you think, dog, it meant? I've got one final question for Dr. Cochran about what mysteries remain in modern times. Are there any mysteries left? To put this story in context in 1841, the knowledge base of the general populace or the elitly educated populace would have been vastly different than the knowledge we have today. I'm talking about science and technology, everything.

It seems like the audience would have been more susceptible to this idea of spirituality or a different realm or these mysteries that can't be explained. In some way, my question to you is it feels like we're still, even though we have all this technology, knowledge, answers about the natural world, that people still are asking some of these questions just about what reality is in a way. Makes great sense to me. All those people a couple hundred years ago, they were credulous about this kind of thing. They would believe in.

And you're right. You're absolutely right. I don't believe in those things. I don't believe in ghosts. And I've never seen a ghost. but I'm very slow now to say, you know, just sort of with tremendous confidence, there is no realm that's out there that I simply can't access. I think this one of the great things about a story this good is it makes us aware of that. And so across 200 years, you know, I can stand in that guy's shoes.

I can stand in the bear hunter's shoes. I've had experiences that are uncanny. I do not live in a world that I fully understand, you know. That's the easiest statement I've ever made. I like it. I don't think of myself as in any way have any kind of psychic powers or, you know, I'm a stone compared to some of the people I know. But I think all of us have had at least some experiences where you think, wow. The trend of the age, just with everything, but primarily having to do with technology and just general knowledge of what we believe we know about the earth.

the physical nature of the earth, humans. It's like we feel like all the questions about us are answered. But really, when you look at what we know, we have the same questions that they had back then. They're just a little bit different. Everything we know hasn't brought us really that much closer to the answer. And there is still an incredible amount of mystery inside the earth today. Amen. And I'll just say amen to that.

Yeah. It seems to me that there's this much. mysteries there ever was. And actually, one of the ways I like to understand knowledge, I mean, I work in a university and get paid for supposedly contributing to knowledge. What knowledge does if you cast it in a metaphor of light, if knowledge throws light into previously darkened areas, it also enlarges the area. So, you know, for every inch you gain in stuff you see clearly, maybe. There's another couple of yards of stuff that you see

dimly for the first time. That's fantastic. For me, that's always been a kind of dominant image. Just think of it. We live in a world. I don't know the numbers here, but I try to read these articles about scientists talking about the cosmos.

Something like three-fourths of the cosmos is made up of stuff that seems to me almost comically labeled. It's called dark energy and dark matter. Okay. Well, I think the word dark there implies that we don't see it very well. And here we've got, you know, I mean, I believe in the scientific enterprise. You know, I love it when telescopes see further and stuff like that. I just said amen. I can't. I think mystery surrounds us.

I think mystery is close to home and far away. Mystery surrounds us. It's close to home and far away. The short story, The Big Bear of Arkansas, is one of my all-time favorite pieces of American literature. It influenced the genre of incredible American writers who told our story to the world. It branded a young state to an America hungry to learn of this new place. It's not known who said it first, but Arkansas being known as the Bear State is directly linked to this one piece of literature. And the takeaway for me is that media is powerful.

And much of this story's influence was positive for Arkansas in the South. But we'll learn on the next episode about how Southwestern humor, characters like Jim Doggett, set up Arkansas to be the most ridiculed and belittled place in America. In 1954, writer Eugene Newsom said, It's safe to say, I believe, that Arkansas has been the butt of more jokes running from Railor, to ridicule than any other political entity in the country. An article in Time magazine in the 1930s said, Arkansas had developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.

On the next episode, we're going to explore the Arkansas image, from barefoot fiddle play and hillbillies to Fortune 500 companies, all the way to the Oval Office. I think you'll be fascinated by what we learn. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please share our podcast with somebody this week and leave us a review on iTunes. And I look forward to talking about the big bar of Arkansas

with all those grubby hillbillies on the render next week. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Felps. Help's Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.