Folklore

Bear Facts: {The History and Folklore of ls land Bears Part One

L By Jim Hornby

In this forest wilderness bears were very numerous. The heavy tramps of the brutes trotting in the dark around the little log homes would be heard by the inmates all through the weary nights. In the mornings owing to their being so very numerous, the strong, wild animal smell of them, where they would be sleeping around, would greet the nostrils of the people as they would emerge from their primitive dwellings.

Charlottetown Presbyterian and Evan-gelical Witness, December 6,1877

The peacefulness so commonly attributed to life on Prince Edward

Island has always depended largely on one's situation. For example, if you were a young woman walking with your baby in your arms along a forest path between Chelton and Pope's Shore on the south side of Bedeque Bay around 1826, and you met a large black bear,

the quality of peacefulness might seem to be lacking. This happened to Lydia Wright Pearson, and her encounter is but one of many such on record.

Such incidents were not limited to pioneer days. It is only 60 years since a bear was killed on the Island, and a number of more recent sightings have been reported. A prominent Island naturalist, Spurgeon Jenkins, wrote in 1954 that "In the Black Marsh country [near the Big Brook tributary of the Fortune River] a dozen bears could spend a lifetime... without being spot-ted provided they stayed put."

Today Islanders face other bugbears, yet it seems there is nothing in our col-lective memory to equal the fearsome-ness of the bear itself. The afterlife of bears in the Island imagination sug-gests that they fill a continuing need, perhaps as a concrete fix for free-floating anxiety.

Early History

Bear bone fragments have been found at sites left by the Island's first people, and bears are listed among the fauna by a number of early observers, includ-

ing Thomas Pichon in the late 1750s and Captain Samuel Holland in 1765. Despite Pichon's comment that some bears on the Island were white (possi-bly polar bears strayed this far south on ice pans), they were generally of the type Ursus americanus or black bear.

At maturity the black bear typically weighs about 300 pounds, "although exceptionally large animals weighing over 600 pounds have been recorded." Some Island reports of bears weighing up to 750 and 800 pounds must there-fore be considered questionable. How-ever, it would be disconcerting to meet even a relatively puny black bear in the woods, especially since "owing to their compactness bears often appear much heavier than they really are."

To maintain this large stature, the bear ate a variety of foods provided by nature. Island naturalist Francis Bain noted:

He is fond of oats. On coming into an oat field, the Bear sits on his haunches, and gathering a bundle of the grain in his arm, eats the heads off. When this is devoured, he scuttles along to obtain a fresh supply, and, in this manner, does great damage to the crop.

John Stewart reported that bears lived upon "berries, ants, small fish which they catch in the creeks, and a large insect, which they obtain by tear-ing the old wind-fallen trees to pieces." As Birch Bagster wryly observed, the bear is "both carnivorous and corn-ivorous." Furthermore, it was by nature a scavenger and a nightwalker.

Sheep Futures Turn Bearish

It is undeniable that the relationship between men and bears, each of whose instinct was to avoid the other, was complicated by the settlers' need to raise their own mutton and beef. Sheep, medium-sized and with a tendency to range far afield, were a favourite dietary item for bears (who did not need the urging of a recent Agriculture Canada pamphlet to "Discover the delicate, delicious flavour of fresh Canadian lamb").

On wakening from their winter den after several months of hibernation, bears were understandably attracted to the spring lambs, young cattle, and pigs of the settlers, this partiality being the source of conflict. John Hunter-Duvar fairly represented the bear's view of the matter in an unpublished manu-script, "My First Bear Hunt":

It is sometimes astonishing how so large an animal can manage to

support himself and keep fat on a precarious diet of nuts, berries, ants, rabbits, mice and such edi-ble things as he can pick up. It is true that in spring . . . he feels unusually peckish and longs for a bit of veal or mutton. He therefore goes to one of the farms that he has previously noted as likely to supply the required delicacy, and transfers a calf or sheep to his own larder. This he generally does openly in a frank and straight-forward way as if it were a thing scarcely worth apologizing for among neighbours.

In so doing, the bear tried to leave behind as little mess as possible; a report from Mount Albion tells of "a bear that took a lamb off the tether within a few feet of [Murphy's] door, skinned the lamb and folded the pelt up a lmos t as nicely as if done by a butcher."

An early historian of New London also wrote about the bear's dexterity:

Even as late as 1837, bears prowl-ed about the dwellings ...to carry off pigs and sheep from the out-buildings. In one instance, a bear on two successive nights pulled out the pin fastening the sheep house door, which, when opened by him, swung shut after him, and after he would be thus shut in with the sheep, feasting on them and on the best of the lambs, he would near morning open the door, letting it swing shut after him as he found it.

The bear's teeth marks were later found on the pin.

But can we blame the bears for these depredations when many of our settlers tempted potential sheep-consumers with provocative carelessness? In his 1826 book, addressed to British farmers interested in emigrating to the Island, J. L. Lewellin wrote. "The general mode of conducting a Farm is slovenly, often wretched. Cattle, sheep and pigs are turned into the woods, or on the shore to get their own living during Summer."

Despite their own contribution to the bear problem, the farmers did not, of course, take a broad view of raids on their livestock, as even the following facetious newspaper report from the Souris area indicates:

The bear has been visiting us again and tithing the flocks. He visited Mr. John Campbell's ranch a few nights ago and took a great fancy to two choice bleathers, so much so that he secured them regardless of cost. The neighbours

turned out fully prepared to settle with Mr. Bruin, but Mr. B. not being prepared for an interview with ten heavy shot guns break-fasted early and took the 6 o'clock train and went out West.

Here is the response by the settlers of Andersons Road (now Middleton), Lot 67, to news of a bear in 1856:

Soon after the alarm, a large posse of the brave settlers sallied forth in a most valiant manner, armed with pitchforks, broom-sticks and pokers, determined to lend their assistance to extermin-ate all the beasts of prey from the land....

Many are the tales of Island farmers seeking vengeance on these "beasts of prey." One of our most memorable, and briefest, bear-hunt stories comes from the Palmer Road area and runs as follows:

The story is told that a group of men in Waterford[Prince Edward Island] were hunting a bear that had been invading their sheep flocks. When Mr. William Kinch appeared out of the woods driv-ing the bear in front of him with a stick, he was asked how he did it. Replied Mr. Kinch, "Isurrounded him."

Of course, hunts were not usually so simple and amusing as suggested by Mr. Kinch. Nineteenth century Island newspapers contain many hunt stories, some of them quite involved accounts of a predator's crime and punishment.

Human Fatalities Contrasted with man's slaughter of bears on Prince Edward Island to the point of extinction is Bruin's threat to human life, which seems to have been less than may be imagined. Hunter-Duvar has vividly described a bear's attack:

Rapidly advancing on his hind legs, with open mouth and snap-ping jaws and standing more than six feet high, he attempts to embrace his opponent with his forepaws and to disembowel him with the sharp sickle-like claws of the hind feet.

Add to this the bear's ability to swim, climb trees, and run at 35 miles per hour and you have a formidable antag-onist. Nevertheless, John Stewart wrote in 1806 that "in upwards of twenty

years residence on the Island, I do not know a single instance of any persons losing their lives by a bear." I find accounts of perhaps eight human fatal-ities caused by bears, as follows. Some are based on supposition, others on local tradition. All are difficult to verify.

The Royal Gazette reported in late 1791 that Alexander Corbett was miss-ing and presumed "fallen a prey to bears" on journeying from the city to his home across the West River. Accord-ing to a recent history of the Hutchin-son family, Samuel Hutchinson was attacked by a bear in the woods at Bloody Hill, near Morell, in the winter of 1803. While he and his dog killed the bear, Hutchinson died two weeks later as a result of his injuries. Along the North Shore, the history of Lot 11, men-tions a Mrs. Banks who disappeared while walking to Lot 39 and was believed to have been killed by a bear.

The perceived threat to travellers from bears was perhaps greatest in the early colonization period, when bears were most plentiful and settlements scattered. The early travellers of Island forest paths often had to spend nights in the woods, and in 1877 it was written of earlier days that "several people in New London still living there are who have slept scores of times thus in the woods on the way to Town . . . and sometimes have spent a good part of the night in scaring off the prowling bears."

Genealogical records on one John Webster (d. 1813), an English settler at St. Peter's, state that one of his two daughters "was killed by a bear in walking to Charlottetown." A similar report from roughly the same area states that, "The story has persisted until the present day of a woman being killed by a bear on the north side of the Hillsboro River in the vicinity of what is now known as French Fort." This

Bear attacks, the settler's nightmare, were far less frequent than might be imagined.

may refer to the same incident as the previous.

Near North Lake, in what one source estimates as the early 1840s, a man named Timothy is said to have been killed by a bear; the area where his bones were found is known (though not widely) as "Timothy's Bush." The story is told in an 1886 his tory of St. Columba's Parish:

Near to St. Columba's church was a dense thicket, known as "Tim-othy's bush," a spot generally avoided by the timid in the gloam-ing, or after dark.

Long, long ago, when the U. E. Loyalists first came to East Point, there was an old soldier named Timothy living at Campbell's Cove. It was his custom to come up to the [North] lake to fish for eels and trout and at such times, he would usually stay all night at the house of Peter Rose, another disbanded soldier, somewhat bet-ter off than himself. One night, however, Timothy refused to hearken to Mr. Rose's offers of hospitality and although it was very dark and drear, he persisted in starting for home. He was never more seen by man; but a long time afterwards, in a wood that lay on his homeward route, Peter Rose found some bones and the remains of fishing tackle which caused him to conclude that poor Timothy had fallen a victim of the bears which then infested those parts.

The man was probably Timothy Syl-vester, an old resident whose name

appears on the 1841 Loyalist Claim-ants' List.

A history of Montague reports that sometime before 1890, "a woman was killed by a bear on the Murray Harbour road, south of Kinross." In another local history, reference is made to a John Crossman killed along the North Shore near Park Corner when he met a mother bear with cubs (the most dan-gerous sort of bear encounter).

But the fact is that, as John Stewart wrote, "The bear, unless surprised and closely attacked, almost always runs away from a man." Of course, many exceptions were found in pioneer times, when settlers were often quite isolated. For example, when Isabella Robins of Bedeque "would be alone in the cabin during the first few winters, the bears would come and put their paws on the banking and look in the window." On several occasions bears entered settlers' homes, and one caused a sensation at an early school. As one account has it, "Two bears were shot from one of the windows of the first school in Brackley Point."

Escapes While one of the main themes of Island bear stories is the discovery, pursuit, and killing of the animal, another group of stories focuses on humans who nar-rowly avoided injury from bears — and this brings us back to the plight of Lydia Wright Pearson and her infant on the forest path near Bedeque. Was that bear a problem? No. Lydia merely "stepped off the path, walked out around the bear, then back onto the path . . . and proceeded on her way."

The bear sniffed and kept going. Similar in her calmness was a Mrs.

Donnelly. On a journey from Charlotte-town to Bedeque in 1824, Mrs. Don-nelly found herself in the company of an adult bear and two cubs near Eliot River. The newspaper account records that

she sat down to await her fate, when Bruin, instead of giving her a hug, as is the usual mode of sal-utation with the tribe, was con-tented with perambulating round her two or three times, and occa-sionally putting its face under her bonnet: after this ceremony, it withdrew, leaving her to feel happy at the civil behaviour of her fellow traveller.

William Bell was on horseback when he was accosted by a bear on the Mill River Road near Alberton. He dropped a sack of flour to distract the animal while he rode away.

In 1820 the following story was at-tached to the presentation of a bear's nose for the bounty. A Highland woman, home alone with her children, "observed a Bear about her Premises, and watching his movements saw him go into an Out-house, where she heroi-cally and with great presence of mind followed, and shut the door of the build-ing and made him a prisoner" until a neighbour arrived with his gun. The bear's reaction is better imagined than described. Another resourceful woman is depicted in Hunter-Duvar's tale of

an Indian girl who, pursued by a bear, retreated with her back against a young tree. The animal clasped the girl and tree in one embrace, on which she drew a sharp knife from her girdle and set the hilt firmly against her breast, so that the beast, continu-ing to press on the shining blade, committed suicide.

The paradoxical bravery of some women was well summarized by a New London man, who observed, "I had a woman friend who chased a bear into the woods near her home, took a lamb from him and nursed it back to health; and yet if a mouse ran across her kit-chen floor she would jump upon a chair and scream."

A woman at Ascension, just west of Tignish, once threw a sickle at a bear that surprised her and her husband while they were cutting grain:

On raconte qu' Eusebe et sa femme etaient unjour a couper du grain a la faucille assez pres de leur demeure quand un gros ours

sortit du bois vols in. 'Marie, Fours/ cria Eusebe a sa femme, qui avait le dos tourne a Vanimal. Avant de se sauuer a la maison Marie prit le temps de lancer sa faucille au maraudeur. Lafacuille ne fut jamais retrouve. Peut-etre avait elle atteint so but et fut emportee au fond des bois.

The following adventure happened to a man named Brown who worked for James Yeo at the shipyards at Port Hill early in the 19th century. A bear was sighted and Brown fired his gun, slight-ly wounding it:

The settler went to hit Bruin with the butt of his gun •— going too near, however, the bear seized him in his hugging embrace, made off with him, walking upright and thus carrying him a mile and a half through the woods around what is called "Polly's Creek. "As the bear opened his mouth to bite, Brown pushed his elbow into it. The more Bruin would open, the more the man would thrust his elbow down his throat. Thus, the bear gnawed away and choked as he walked along carrying his human burden. At length, arrived where now the shipyard is, Brown managed to get his other arm free from the confinement of Bruin's embrace, and reaching into his pocket he got his knife and stab-bed the bear so that he bled to

death. Brown's arm was so much bitten, his legs so much scratched and his clothes so much torn and bespattered with blood that he would not undress till he first went to Malpeque and New Lon-don, just as he was, to tell his tale and show the evidence of his pluck and bravery.

Somewhat similar is another report from Brackley Point: "The father of Neil McCallum killed a slightly wounded, large bear in a thicket, by jumping on his back while running, catching him by the ears and cutting his throat with his pocket knife."

Several anecdotes concerning escapes from bears mention the help given by dogs. John Stewart of Red Point, Lot 46, once met a bear in the woods between the two arms of Basin Head, and his dog attacked it; the dog was killed and carried off, but its master got away. There was a happier ending involving a ferryman named Fyfe, who lived at Fyfe's Ferry (called Stanley Bridge since a bridge was built in the 1850s). A bear chased Fyfe up a tree and bit a piece from his heel but his dog arrived under the tree in time to harass the bear until help arrived. And finally, among the accoutrements of noted bear-hunter Philip Sellick were "two sagacious dogs."

Most animals were badly frightened at the scent of a bear. Once, a bear-cub was shot from a tree-limb near a settler's cabin in New London, and the cub's

These engravings from H. Hamilton Gibson's Camp Life in the Woods (1881) illustrate four different methods of capturing a black bear: the dead fall; the gun trap; the wooden box trip; and a steel bear trap.

meat was roasted and thrown to the pig. Pig did not like it: "As soon as he smelt the bear meat, though nicely fried, he squealed like as if he became crazy, and rushed into the dwelling house for refuge."

The brute fear that bears caused in Island communities cannot be dis-missed. One report of a hunt on the Souris Line Road concluded: "Thus has ended the career of an old intruder upon farmers' sheep-folds, and a terror to the whole neighbourhood." And while homesickness may have exag-gerated his complaint, a Scottish bard living in Murray Harbour lamented in verse that he would rather be back in Scotland, where he could "go about alone without fear of being killed by wild beasts in the forests."

Even a dead bear could inspire fear, as settlers at Andersons Road, Lot 67, found in 1856. Even after they had sung "the Temperance closing ode — 'Oh! dread monster, here thy triumph now shall end'" over the corpse of a large marauder, some among them were still too afraid "to be placed within the grasp of the huge forepaws of the dead animal."

Mighty N i m r o d s

In every sphere of activity there are those who excel, and a number of Islanders rose to the fore in the hunting and killing of bears. In the 1820s Wal-ter Johnstone met "a Highlandman at the head of St. Peters Bay [who] told me, that he had killed 38 bears in 29 years, by shooting them, and by set-ting traps of wood which the Indians have learned them to construct. He told me he sometimes made them shoot themselves." Johnstone concisely sums up the three main ways by which bears were killed: by fatally wounding with a gun or other weapon, with a dead-fall trap ("formed," writes Hunter-Duvar, "by propping up one end of a heavy log on an upright pole attached to the bait so that when the animal comes to eat the ponderous beam falls and kills it"), or with a trap-gun (fired when the bear tripped a cord attached to the carcass it was feeding on).

While Johnstone's unnamed High-lander is our most prolific bear-killer on record, a number of others have won recognition for exterminating the "dread monsters." John Jay of Mount Stewart was a well-known bear-hunter, reputed to have made 21 kills. John Shaw of Brackley was said to have put down 13 bears. The local celebrity of such men was considerable. Witness the headlines for Donald MacPherson of Launching (whose bear ended up as a sleigh robe for the Rev. Dr. Walker of

Rollo Bay): "The Veteran Huntsman, the Hero of the Hour, and the Idol of Timorous Ladies — Likely to be Cap-tured Himself as a Consequence of the Leap Year Privilege, and his Sudden Rise to Fame."

Philip Sellick was an Islander widely known for his skill with wild animals, especially as a trainer and exhibitor of bears and moose after he moved to New Brunswick. It is said of him that in the early days

he was known to have thrown lassoes around each of the bear's four paws, then secured the ropes to four trees. He then had the bear at his mercy — stretched out like a rug — and proceeded to put on his muzzle and collar.

Sellick, who lived near Pleasant Valley (an odd address for a bear-killer), killed several bears on the Island and was called out to the 1856 hunt at Ander-sons Road. Although he did not make the kill that time, his reputation and his enjoyment of the hunt were chron-icled in the Islander:

The forepaws were immensely large, showing great physical powers. The brave and intrepid huntsman Mr. Philip Sellick came up and clearing with his hands the brush, and shaking the big paw facetiously said — "Well brother, we have met at last. I have been a long time looking for you."

John Champion of Baltic, Lot 18, was another huntsman with a high local profile. The story goes that a new minister once got up in church and announced a meeting at John Cham-pion's, adding that he did not know the man; "a little man sitting up in the gallery spoke in a squeaky voice and said, 'John Champion! John Cham-pion! don't you know John Champion the man who shot the bear?"'

Near West Point, in 1869, inhabit-ants of Lot 8 were plagued by a group of bears hunting in a pack. Two of them were trapped by "a renowned hunter of these par t s , John Hickey," while "another disciple of Nimrod — John Auld" killed two more. John Hickey and his father, Angus, had killed a bear at the head of Stewarts Pond in the same area two years earlier, and probably others as well.

For some hunters, getting close to a bear was thrill enough: "It seems as if they got more excitement out of the escapes than if they had really killed," wrote one observer. The Robertsons of Munn's Road in Eastern Kings County, however, could be counted on to finish

the job. A James Robertson kill of two bears is reported in the Islander for September 30, 1864 (reprinted three days later in the Examiner). He might have bagged two more on that occasion had he not been hampered by having to re-load after every shot: "both bears immediately disappeared, much to the chagrin of Mr. Robertson, who regrets that any incident should have occurred to prevent his making a clean sweep of the lot." Both James, known as "The Old Bear Hunter," and his son, Johnny Jim, who had the advantage of a double-barrelled gun, were hard on bears. Johnny Jim is said to have slain 14 of them.

James Robertson's enthusiasm for a bear-hunt is recounted at length in an early history of Kingsboro. He was badly frightened by a bear at age ten, the account maintains. Later, at news of bear sign in the area, "he would be all excitement, and would spare neither labour nor pains to have a shot at him." In fact, "so delighted was he with the prospect of meeting a bear that even a wedding could not induce him to lose the opportunity." Once a large black pig happened upon the car-cass above which Robertson was wait-ing on a platform in the trees. On firing at this dark figure, the avid hunter was "mortified to hear the unearthly squeal of a dying pig. But he prided himself however, with the thought that [his] aim was good and he did not miss his mark, for he always considered himself a dead shot."

The Robertsons had the advantage of having the longest-lasting supply of bears on the Island. According to one account, "At East Point, a man climb-ing a tree when blue berries were ripe, saw eleven full grown bears at one sight." The identity of the intrepid observer is uncertain, but it may have been James Robertson.

Son John learned from his father the ways of bears. He recommended seat-ing yourself in a tree: "if you want to watch a bear it is not a good plan to settle yourself on the ground, for a bear's smelling powers are very acute" at ground level. "As for seeing you, he is like to many sinners . . . he looks every way but up, and this is the quar-ter from which both he and they are in the danger of greatest magnitude."

A final story from this family tells how Johnny Jim once set out after a bear that had eluded a large group of pursuers for over a week, despite its repeated feeding from a single carcass. A man who saw the hunter pass with his horse and cart supposed that he had killed the bear and was fetching it home. He was surprised to hear that Robertson was only starting his hunt — but more surprised to see him again

within the hour with the bear in his cart, his confidence in bringing the conveyance rewarded.

The same History of Kingsborough, contains two instances of remarkable hunting luck by both human and ursine predators. William Stewart fired at what he thought was a bear, and was astonished to find that he had killed two bears with one shot. Similarly, and in the same area, a bear killed two cows within five yards, the supposition being that the second had come to the rescue of the first.

With all the gratitude and admira-tion expressed to bear-killers, there were yet some dissenting, even sarcastic voices, and some who felt sympathy for the animal. The Daily Examiner of November 7, 1890 published a letter from "Justice," St. Peters Bay, correct-ing the account of a hunt published earlier. After a sheep had been found killed by a bear at Cable Head, four lads from the Bay erected a sniper's stage in the trees above it. They also rigged a trap-gun, set to go off when the sheep was touched. "Justice" said that questions were being asked in the area about the bravery of the four "mighty Nimrods":

It does seem indicative of tim-idity, that the heroes, armed with double-barrelled shotguns, and having plenty of ammunition, should consider the building of a stage necessary for protection against a defenceless bear or two, but mayhap they feared chills or the grippe if they remained on the ground.

In the event, the trap-gun exploded in the bear's face, the hunters fired a round — and all missed. They finally ended the animal's struggles with their second broadside. "Justice" states that they were still too frightened to descend from their perch until dawn.

While the arms overkill seems un-sporting, it might be argued that at least it tended to be merciful by increasing the chance of a quick kill. But instances where bears were killed while swimming seem especially cruel in the panic that the animal must have experienced before it was dispatched from a boat. An early such case deals with a bear forced into the water and killed at Bedeque opposite Pope's ship-yard. This may even have been the same bear that merely watched Lydia and her infant pass by. Another memorable chase ended at sea:

At East Point, Mr James Bea-ton had occasion to pass through a bush not far from his home, in the bush he found a lamb partly

The Black Bear on Prince Edward Island: A Natural By Stan Vass It is difficult to reconstruct a picture of the black bear as it once lived on Prince Edward Island. Facts that would help us answer that question either do not exist in extant records or are sparse and sus-pect. Accordingly, one can infer only a few details and speculate about others on the basis of the known biology of bears and the surmised Island environment of a century or two ago. The background that follows, although indistinct, may help place the story of Islanders and Island bears in a broader context.

General Characteristics North American colonists found the black bear (Ursus americanus Pallas) abun-dant and widespread. As settlement fanned out westward, the bear, like most large animals, was virtually eradicated throughout much of the United States, although sizeable populations remained in southern Canada, where settlement was much less extensive. Despite pres-sure from human encroachment, the bear recovered so well that now, in many states and provinces, it must be man-aged to maintain tolerable numbers.

The black bear is a large, wide-ranging animal, intelligent and adaptable to changing conditions. Although omniver-ous, it subsists mainly (70%) on a wide range of vegetation, with a preference for berries and mast (seeds of such trees as beech, oak, and ash), which are thought to influence significantly the animal's health and reproductive success. In parti-cular, the bear is an opportunist with respect to food supplies, as is attested by

frequent sightings at garbage dumps, gardens and field crops, and unsecured habitation.

Bear habitat is, in a sense, two-fold. It requires dense year-round vegetation for hiding and denning; and it needs the open growth of deciduous woodlands and their ground plants for preferred foods, especially in late summer and autumn. In northeastern North Amer-ica, prime habitat comprises stands of beech, maple, birch, cedar, and fir, with thick swampy areas for refuge.

Breeding occurs in the summer, and nine-ounce young are born in winter dens late in January as litters of gener-ally two, but sometimes three to five, cubs. Not being a true hibernator and thus easily aroused when denning, the bear can tend its young as required. Denning continues for five months, more or less, in our latitudes, during which time the animal does not eat, drink, uri-nate, or defecate, relying on its body's food reserves for its own and its cubs' nutrition. An adequate late-season food supply, then, is essential if the adult and young are to emerge from the den in good condition — usually in March or April.

The cubs and mother (a strict discipli-narian) stay together after denning, with the male (who dens alone) nearby. The female and cubs usually den together the second winter as well. Thereafter, the families remain associated and tolerant of neighbouring bears until the next breeding season, which, for the female, is every second or, perhaps, third year.

Black bear behaviour varies from docile to aggressive, although they are not nearly as aggressive towards man as is

Ursus amer icanus Pallas, the Black bear. H. Hamilton Gibson, Camp Life in the Woods (1881)

commonly supposed. They are best char-acterized as unpredictable, the uncer-tainty reinforced by the fact that the bear lacks the facial muscles that would otherwise betray its emotions and intentions.

Black bears range in length from SV2 to 6V2 feet, and in weight from 90 to 600 pounds, with averages differing greatly among various regions in North America. In the northeast, the bear is much larger, averaging 300 pounds. The animal ma-tures around 6 years of age, and few sur-vive beyond 10 to 15 years in the wild. While it may establish a territory around a preferred food source, it tends to range in more or less a straight line 10 to 20 miles in length. (Distances of 90 miles for males have been measured.) To the extent that densities can be estimated, these vary from less than one bear in 5 square miles to 12 per square mile in prime habitat.

At Home on Prince Edward Island Let us now consider the black bear as it might have been on Prince Edward Island, beginning with the habitat. The Acadian forest region, of which the Island is a part, is well understood and docu-mented. [See "The People's Forest" in this issue.] It is evident that one-third of the Island comprised beech, oak, maple, and ash, along with birch and poplar, thereby providing an abundance of mast and ground plants. The remainder — spruces, balsam fir, pine and hemlock — gave ample year-round cover for bears. In particular, there were, and still are, num-erous interspersions of poorly-drained sites with dense coniferous growth, af-fording idea refuge. In brief, the Island was ideal habitat for the black bear.

Next, what do official statistics tell us about the bear? Most of what they reveal is either suspect or, at best, confusing. Thus, these data cannot be interpreted with confidence (in a mathematical sense), and we are left to the risky criter-ion of value judgement in estimating numbers.

A bounty on bears apparently was es-tablished in the 1790s at the rate of fifteen shillings per bear — a surprisingly large sum for a cash-poor society but reflect-ing, no doubt, the real or perceived threat these animals presented. An Act passed in 1825 (and renewed in 1831) provided for a continuation of that bounty and added one of five shillings for each loup-cervier (wildcat) killed. This legislation was periodically renewed until about 1861 (the last year we find bounties being paid). Remarks relating to the abortive appeals for reinstatement of the bounty

History in 1874 testify to the then-dwindling numbers of both animals.

Using bounty payments to estimate bear populations requires some extra-polation. With few exceptions, payments for bears and loupcerviers are usually lumped together in extant records. How-ever, bounties were paid for 35 bears in 1820 and for 5 in 1821. Financial state-ments for 27 of the 36 years between 1825 and 1861 reveal a cumulative total of £678 paid in bounties for bears and wild-cats. Extrapolating from the breakdown of bears and wildcats given for 1857 and 1861, suggests that 1,066 bears and 357 wildcats were presented for bounty in the period 1820-1861. If Jim Hornby's asser-tion about the increase in bounty to £1 applies to the latter half of that period, then the bounties represent approximate-ly 700 bears. Let us, then, compromise on an estimate of 1,000 bears killed between 1790 and 1860.

What can we say, then, about the numbers of bears that growled greetings to the early Gallants and MacDonalds? The answer must be "nothing" for we lack the simplest estimate of bears then present and cannot address population dynamics. All we can say is that about 1,000 bears were killed during settlement and that they dwindled to extinction by the 1920s. From this it is obvious that changing land use crowded the bears into ever-decreasing areas of habitat and increased hunters' access to them. An educated guess is that the black bears' original numbers were many hundreds, rather than the thousands implied by some anecdotes. Nevertheless, that is a fairly significant number.

The details of many of our bear stories are surely apocryphal — tall tales to lighten long winter evenings, or accurate accounts that were embellished along the way; and to recognize is to forgive. What does stand out, however, is the real threat to life and the competition to set-tlement that the bear presented. It is clear that the bear did lend traumatic overtones to the lives of early settlers. But who should we blame: the bear? or ourselves? The history of the bear and settler in Prince Edward Island is yet another example of man's preoccupation with his needs and wants, resulting in the loss of other creatures. Surely, there is room for all of us.

Sources

Sources for this essay include standard works on North American mammals and assorted records at the PAPEI and Con-federation Centre Library.

eaten but not quite dead, he knew it was a Bears work, and he must be still in the bush. He acquainted his neighbours of the circum-stances, they gathered, surround-ed the bush and drove the Bear out, the Bear crossed the road and made for the shore, he got down under the cliff at the reef, here he was penned, he could not climb he took to the Sea, and pointed for Cape Breton. The pursuers did not give up the chase but got a boat and followed him, they overtook him about 3 miles off, he turned towards them deter-mined to make battle with them. But Capt. James MacDonald went to the bow of the boat, waited until the Bear was near enough, and gave him the contents of his blunderbuss. He dropped his head, and submitted to his pursuers, with some difficulty they got him into the boat for he was very large.

R e w a r d s of t h e Hunt

The main reasons for hunting bears were to exterminate a feared predator and, especially for some individuals, because it was a blood sport. A further incentive was a bounty that the govern-ment paid on bears for many years. One of the early payments for bear "scalps" was to a "Wm. Bearsto" (!) in the 1790s, when the bounty ranged from five to ten shillings.

For much of the first half of the 19th century the bounty was a pound — a considerable sum in a cash-poor econ-omy — and the story is told of a Chep-stow (Lot 46) man who attacked a half-grown bear up a tree armed only with a knife and axe, in order to earn the pound. In the Public Accounts of the Legislative Assembly one finds many such entries as (in 1834), "Reward for destroying Bears and Loupcerviers [wildcats] £64." In 1850 this amount was down to £35, and it may have appeared that bears were approaching extinction, for the Act providing the bounty was allowed to lapse in 1855.

In 1869 the Leader of the Opposition, Thomas Heath Haviland, Junior, used a bear story in the House to illustrate the growth of the Colony. He said that in the early days rural Members were forced to camp out during the session, due to a lack of city boarding-houses: "Once, when some of them went to their camp, they found, to their dis-may, that, during their absence, two bears had entered and devoured their dinner."

However, even as Haviland spoke the bear problem was still acute in the

Island's more remote and wooded dis-tricts, especially near the eastern and western ends of the province-to-be. In the spring of 1874, a group of people from Lots 10,11, and 12 petitioned the Legislature to restore the bounty. In the House on March 28,1874, William Welsh commented, "If this were a wild country and bears were numerous, he would not oppose the prayer of the peti-tion, but he did not think there were many bears now left on the Island"; he was not the last person to prematurely discount the bear problem. Speaking in favour of the bounty, another member stated, "Very few persons went out to shoot bears and loup-cerviers for amusement." In the end, the petition was rejected on a technicality and the bounty was never re-established.

The bear's carcass was also valued for its meat, rendered fat, and furry skin. George Sutherland stated of the bear in 1861 that "The flesh is some-times eaten." A century before, Thomas Pichon noted, "Their fat, or rather their oil, is very good to eat; and the flesh of the young bears is a perfect dainty." An article published by Jacob Gale, Murray Harbour, in 1853 men-tions that a bear had been killed and states that the Indians "will make fine pies of it." The account of a hunt near the Grand (or Boughton) River con-cluded: "The Indians heard of the bear hunt and came up from Mitchel River and traded some beautiful baskets for the meat, and the skins made fine sled robes." After a hunt on the Holmes Road, Baltic, Lot 18, around 1890, "the bear was skinned and dressed and the hams were sold in Summerside." Birch Bagster doubtless summarized matters when he wrote, "Bear hams are esteem-ed by some and despised by others."

One must agree that the farmer/ hunter was owed something by the bear. The Charlottetown Daily Exa-miner regarded a hunt as repayment by the bear, whose "skin and fat were taken possession of . . . and placed to the dead bear's credit in his mutton account."

The bear's pelt was also a valuable item. Birch Bagster observed that "The skin is always dressed with hair on, is a useful and highly ornamental covering for the sleigh, and makes an excellent travelling robe." Hunter-Duvar wrote that one large skin was sold for a guinea. Another, killed near the Marsh-field School, was presented to Lieu-tenant Governor Dundas. Along with several attendant gentlemen he had come out from Charlottetown to join the hunt along the St. Peter's Road — presumably at a safe distance. iSt

End of Part One. Next Issue: Bear Folklore