Paul Bunyan

For other uses, see Paul Bunyan (disambiguation).

Paul Bunyan in Akeley, Minnesota

Paul Bunyan is a mythical lumberjack in tall tales, originating either with an American newspaperman or with French Canadians.

Origin

Lumberjack legends

Paul Bunyan in Bangor, Maine

FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Newspaper myths

The earliest published versions of the myth of Paul Bunyan can be traced back to James MacGillivray, an itinerant newspaper reporter who wrote the first Paul Bunyan article for the Oscoda Press in 1906, and an expanded version of the same article for the Detroit News. He is alleged to have collected stories from lumberjacks, combined them with his own embellishments, and began disseminating the legend with the July 24, 1910 printing of The Round River Drive which included the following, concerning Dutch Jake (another mythical lumberjack of great strength) and the narrator participating in a Bunyan-sponsored contest to cut down the biggest tree in the forest.

"Dutch Jake and me had picked out the biggest tree we could find on the forty, and we'd put three days on the cut with our big saw, what was three crosscuts brazed together, making 30 feet of teeth. We was getting along fine on the fourth day when lunchtime comes, and we thought we'd best get to the sunny side to eat. So we grabs our grub and starts around that tree.

'We hadn't gone far when we heard a noise. Blamed if there wasn't Bill Carter and Sailor Jack sawin' at the same tree. It looked like a fight at first, but we compromised, meetin' each other at the heart on the seventh day. They'd hacked her to fall to the north, and we'd hacked her to fall to the south, and there that blamed tree stood for a month or more, clean sawed through, but not knowin' which way to drop 'til a windstorm came along and throwed her over."

The popularization of the myth started with William B. Laughead's "Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, California", one of a series of Bunyan advertising pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company. Some of the pamphlet tales were based on Laughead's recollections of stories he had heard ten years earlier in a Minnesota lumber camp. Others were highly exaggerated tales of his own experiences.

Laughead, through the ad pamphlets, created much of the Bunyan "canon", including the blue ox and Johnny Inkslinger.[1] He can also be found in Akeley, MN.......

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox in Bemidji, Minnesota

Locations

Paul Bunyan has dozens of towns vying to be considered his home. Many consider Bemidji, Minnesota to be his official home, while other towns (such as the above mentioned Brainerd, Shelton, and Westwood; Bay City, Michigan, and even Eau Claire, Wisconsin), vie for the title. Several authors, including James Stevens and D. Laurence Rogers, have traced the tales to the exploits of French Canadian lumberjack Fabian "Saginaw Joe" Fournier, 1845-1875. Fournier worked for the H.M. Loud Company in the Grayling, Michigan area, 1865-1875, where MacGillivray later worked and apparently picked up the stories. The state of Michigan has declared Oscoda, Michigan as the official home of Paul Bunyan due to the earliest documented published stories by MacGillivray.

One legend has Paul Bunyan born in Bangor, Maine (one of the great lumber capitals) and eventually going west to find more timber. Kelliher, Minnesota is the home of Paul Bunyan Memorial Park, which contains a site purporting to be Paul Bunyan's grave [2]. Another legend claims that Rib Mountain in Wausau, Wisconsin, is Bunyan's grave site.

Tourist attractions

Ten meter tall statue of Babe the Blue Ox at Trees of Mystery, Klamath, California

• Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox are statues of both Bunyan and Babe in Bemidji, Minnesota. Other statues exist in Brainerd, Minnesota; Westwood, California; Del Norte County, California; St. Ignace, Michigan, Ossineke, Michigan; and in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
• Paul Bunyan Land, an amusement park 7 miles (11 km) east of Brainerd, Minnesota, features a talking statue of Paul with a statue of Babe (its original Baxter location was cleared in 2003 to make room for new commercial development). There are two other (smaller, non-talking) statues located in Brainerd.
• Trees of Mystery, a roadside attraction in Klamath, California, features a 49 ft (15m) tall statue of Bunyan and a 35 ft (10m) tall statue of Babe. Also features carvings and characters from storys of Paul.
• Statues of Bunyan (alone) exist in Old Forge, New York; Akeley, Minnesota; Tucson, Arizona; Bangor, Maine; Oscoda, Michigan[3]; Portland, Oregon; St. Maries, Idaho; Shelton, Washington; Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin and also on top of a Vietnamese restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• A statue depicting Bunyan's wife can be found in Hackensack, Minnesota.
• Bunyan is depicted on the world's largest wood carving, at the entrance to Sequoia National Park in California. There is a group called the Mystic Knights of the Blue Ox in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
• There is a tiny 25' tall Paul Bunyan at the Paul Bunyan's Northwoods Cook Shanty in Minocqua, Wisconsin

Recent fiction

• Paul Bunyan makes an appearance in the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
• In Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, Paul Bunyan is ridiculed as a fake mythology.
• A fictional Paul Bunyan statue is seen in the Coen brothers' movie Fargo.
• He is the subject of an opera by Benjamin Britten called Paul Bunyan, libretto by W.H. Auden (1941).
• He is the subject of "Paul Bunyan and the Photocopier" by Larry Hammer.
• The story is a subject of the Simpsons episode "Simpsons Tall Tales", in which the Simpsons board a train to Delaware and meet a hobo who tells them a selection of "tall tales".
• In the webcomic "The Adventures of Dr. McNinja", the "Paul Bunyan's disease" causes people to turn into giant lumberjacks.
• Paul Bunyan's character appeared in the movie "Tall Tales", featuring Oliver Platt as Paul Bunyan. Patrick Swayze also stars as the legendary cowboy Pecos Bill.
• Paul was briefly shown in the 1954 Warner Brothers' only 3-D animated short "Lumber Jack-Rabbit". In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny stumbles upon Bunyan's giant carrot patch, which is guarded by Smidgen, a 124-foot (38 m) dog.
• Paul Bunyan is alluded to as the name "The Tall Man With The Big Axe" in the novel Summerland by Michael Chabon.
• In the 70's TV series Land of the Lost, in the episode "Snowman" from third season, Uncle Jack calls Will "A regular Paul Bunyan" when the boy chops a tree in order to make a bridge over a big cliff
• Paul Bunyan appears in the one-act play "Mr Charles, currently of Palm Beach" (1998) by Paul Rudnick in the line "A gay woman is not simply Paul Bunyan with a cat."
• The Woodsman character voiced by James Belushi in the film Hoodwinked! auditions for the part of Paul Bunyan for an advert in the film.
• Paul Bunyan is mentioned in the lyrics to the Kid Dakota song "Ten Thousand Lakes" from the album "The West Is The Future".
• Paul Bunyan appears the film Tall Tale: The Adventures of Pecos Bill (portrayed by Oliver Platt) along with John Henry and Pecos Bill
• In 1958, Disney released an animated short about Paul's life directed by Les Clark.

See also

A Paul Bunyan statue in Portland, Oregon

• American folklore
• Fakelore
• Operation Paul Bunyan
• Paul Bunyan's Axe
• Paul Bunyan Trophy
• Paul Bunyan (operetta)
• Fearsome critters

Other "Big Men"

• Little John
• Big Joe Mufferaw a.k.a. Jos. Montferrand of the Ottawa Valley
• Gargantua
• Pecos Bill
• Iron John of Michigan
• John Henry
• Johnny Kaw
• Mike Fink
• Hiawatha
• Fionn mac Cumhaill
• Venture Smith, the black Paul Bunyan
• Crooked Mick of the Speewah, an Australian analogue to Paul Bunyan
• Nätti-Jussi ("Beautiful Johnny") is a Finnish tall tale character analogous to Paul Bunyan. He is also a lumberjack, as Paul Bunyan. In a typical Nätti-Jussi joke, Nätti-Jussi is asked, where he trained to be a lumberjack. "Sahara", is the answer. "But there are no trees there!" "No more", answers Nätti-Jussi, implying that there were a lot, but that he cut them down himself. Nätti-Jussi is based on a real person, Juho Vihtori Nätti (1890-1964), who was both a lumberjack and an accomplished story-teller. It is entirely thinkable that Finnish lore about Nätti-Jussi was influenced by Paul Bunyan stories brought back by migrant lumberjacks returning from the United States and Canada.

References

• Gartenberg, Max. "Paul Bunyan and Little John", Journal of American Folklore, volume 62, 1949.
• Maltin, Leonard, "Of Mice and Magic - the History of American Animation", Plume Books, Revised edition, May, 1990
• Bélanger, Georges, "La collection Les Vieux m'ont conté du père Germain Lemieux, s.j." Francophonies d'Amérique, Ottawa. Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, no. 1, 1991, pages 35-42
• Germain, Georges-Hébert, "Adventurers in the New World: The Saga of the Coureurs des Bois", Libre-Expression, Montréal, 2003

External links

• The Story of Paul Bunyan
• The Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum and re-created logging camp.
• Folklore History of the Paul Bunyan Legend Paul Bunyan: How A Terrible Timber Feller Became the Legend, book tracing the origin and how the Paul Bunyan legends were created
• The Straight Dope: Is Paul Bunyan a fraud? Describes the links between the Bunyan legend and the Red River Lumber Company.
• Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol
• Roadside America Giants and other weird stuff along America's roads.
• Paul Bunyan at Microsoft as a Support Knowledge Base article.
  
• The Story of Paul Bunyan with Paul Bunyan dress-up game. Great resource for teachers