'To him almost everything is food'

By KEN ROGERS

William Clark continued his journal entry for that day: "I saw several fresh tracks of those animals which is 3 times as large as a mans track."

The goat was an antelope or, more aptly, a pronghorn. The white bear was the grizzly bear.

Grizzlies roamed the Missouri River valley between Bismarck and Mandan when the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived late in 1804.

Russell Reid's footnote to the journal entry, in "Lewis and Clark in North Dakota," reads:

"The Great Plains grizzly bears were light in color and were frequently referred to as White Bears. These large bears were common throughout North Dakota in Lewis and Clark's time and as they were malicous they were not molested by hunters unless they were well armed."

Members of the Lewis and Clark killed their first grizzly near the present day North Dakota-Montana border, near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, in the spring of 1805.

In "The Natural History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," Raymond Darwin Burroughs, reports: Between the mouth of the Yellowstone River and Three Forks, Mont., in 1805, 23 grizzly bears were killed, and several escaped the hunters.

Ursus horribilis Height: 6-7 feet, head and body. 3-3.5 feet at shoulders. Hump above shoulders. Weight: 325-850 pounds. Color: From pale yellow-brown to black, white tips on hair. Claws: 4 inches long on front feet. Teeth: 42. Historic range: Rocky Mountains south to New Mexico, out onto the Plains as far as the Missouri River, north through wilderness areas of Canada and Alaska. Modern range: High mountains of the west, northern Canadian and American wilderness areas. Habits: Prefers twilight. Can be found singly or in family groups. Eats meat, fruit, grass, insects, grubs. Hibernates. Breeds when three years old. Young born in twos or sometimes 3, in January. -- Peterson Field Guide for Mammals

Lewis wrote on the grizzly [May 11, 1805]: "I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had rather fight 2 Indians than one bear; there is no chance to conquer them with a single ball but by shooting them through the brains, and this becomes difficult in consequence of two large muscles which cover the sides of the forehead and the sharp projection of the frontal, which is also of pretty good thickness. The fleece and skin were as much as two men could possibly carry."

Lewis Š "directed the two cooks to render the bear's oil, and put it in the kegs, which was done. There was about eight gallons of it."

From the November 9, 1998, issue of the High Country News:

"An adult male grizzly can stand eight feet tall, weigh up to 1,000 pounds and run as fast as a racehorse - 35 miles per hour -- uphill or downhill. Females are just as fast as males, but may be half their size."

Lewis again: "The Indians give a very formidable account of the strength and ferocity of this animal, which they never dare to attack but in parties of six, or eight or ten persons; and are even then frequently defeated with the loss of one or more of their party.

"When Indians are about to go in quest of the white bear, previous to their departure, they paint themselves and perform all of those supersticous rites commonly observed when they are about to make war on a neighboring nation."

Remember, we are talking about an animal that ranged the valley where more than 75,000 people now make their homes. The grizzly has been gone a long time.

The men of the Corps of Discovery came to respect the grizzly. The journal entry for May 14, 1805 (Between the Milk and Musselshell Rivers):

"One of the party wounded a brown bear very badly, but being alone did not think proper to pursue him. In the evening the men in two of the rear canoes descovered a large brown bear lying in the open grounds about 300 yds. from the river, and six of them went out to attack him, all good hunters; they took the advantage of a small eminince which concealed them and got within 40 paces of him unperceived; two of them reserved their fires as had been prevously concerted, and the four others fired nearly at the same time and each put his bullet through him, two of the balls passing through the bulk of both lobes of his lungs. in an instant the monster ran at them with open mouth, and the two who had reserved their fires discharged their pieces at him as he came towards them, both of them struck him, one only slightly and the other fortunately broke his shoulder, this however retarded his motion for a moment only, the men unable to reload their guns took flight, the bear pursued and had very nearly over taken them before they reached the river; two of the party betook themselves to a canoe and the others separated and concealed themselves among the willows, reloaded their pieces, each discharged his piece at him as they had an opportunity. They struck him several times again but the guns served only to direct the bear to them. In this manner he pursued two of them separately so close they they were obliged to throw aside their guns and pouches and throw themselves into the river although the bank was nearly 20 ft. perpendiular; so enraged was this animal that he plunged into the river a few feet behind the second man Š when one of those remaining on shore shot him through the head and finally killed him; they then took him to shore and buchered him when they found eight balls had passed through him in different directions."

Respect.

Lewis gained his personal admiration for the grizzly at the Great Falls on June 14, 1805. He was walking that morning, striding out on to the prairie with rifle and his espontoon (pike). On the plain he found a herd of nearly 1,000 bison. He picked out a fat buffalo and shot it through the lungs.

Lewis was going to leave the buffalo there and, on his way back to camp later in the day, would either camp by the buffalo or have the men haul it in. Lewis was so caught up in his thinking that he did not immediately reload his gun, nor did he not notice a grizzly bear approaching until the beast was only 20 yards away. The bear was too close for Lewis to load his rifle and shoot. There was no tree within 300 yards, and the prairie sloped down to the river bank where the drop to the water was a mere three feet. It was a flat, even plain. Lewis wrote that he thought of retreating in a brisk walk, but no sooner than he turned that the bear "pitched at me, open mouthed and full speed." The fleet-footed explorer ran about 80 yards and looked back. The bear was gaining. So Lewis ran to the river and leaped in. He turned toward the bank, jammed one end of his espontoon into the riverbed, and angled the pointed, iron-tipped end at the advancing bear, hoping the waist deep water would give him an advantage over the monster.

Grizzley tidbits "In Alaska, where bear hunting is legal, 76 people -- an average of 3.6 per year -- were killed or injured badly enough to need hospitalization between 1976 and 1997. About a third of those were hunters." -- High Country News "Reintroducing the grizzly 'makes about as much sense as reintroducing the polio virus.' " -- Heber Stokes, a rancher and Lemhi County, Mont., Commission, in the High Country News.

For some reason, the bear stopped at the river's edge, gave up the chase and departed.

Or we would have lost Lewis.

The first thing he did as the bear left was load his rifle.

Such a bear today would make bank fishing for walleye along the Missouri River riskier.

The journals describe one of the bears:

"We had no way of weighing this monster; Capt. Clark thought he would weigh 500 pounds; for my own part I think the estimate was small by 100 pounds. He measured 8 ft. 7 1/2 inches from nose to extremity of hind feet; 5 ft 10 inches around the breast, 1 ft. 11 inches around the middle of the arm; 3 ft. 11 inches around the neck. His talons, five in number, on each foot were 4 3/8 inches in length."

The bear was associated with one of the Mandan clans. However, the Mandan bear clan died out in the small pox epidemic of 1837.

The Hidatsa had a Grizzly Ceremony. The bear stood for healing, because it took care of its young and had strength. There were grizzly bear sacred bundles, group and individual. If a person wanted a bear bundle, all they had to do was kill a grizzly, unaided.

The well-known bear at the Dakota Zoo was a Kodiak brown bear. There are two species of brown bear in North America, Kodiac and grizzly.

His scientific name: URSUS ARCTOS HORRIBILIS.

The great naturalist John Muir wrote of the grizzly:

"To him almost everything is food, except granite. Every tree helps to feed him, every bush and herb, with fruits and flowers, leaves and bark; and all the animals he can catch -- badgers, gophers, ground-squirrels, lizards, snakes, etc., and ants, bees, wasps, old and young, together with their eggs and larvae and nets. Craunched and hashed, down all go into his marvellous stomach, and vanish as if cast into a fire. What digestion! A Sheep or a wounded deer or a pig he eats warm, about as quickly as a boy eats a buttered muffin; or should the meat be a month old, it still is welcomed with tremendous relish. After so gross a meal as this, perhaps the next will be strawberries and clover, or raspberries with mushrooms and nuts, or puckery acorns and chokecherries."

In late summer, grizzlies enter a state during which they eat between 80 and 90 pounds of food a day to prepare for hibernation. The bear gains about 40 pounds of fat a week doing this. During winter hibernation, they lose from 15 to 40 percent of their body weight.

Again from the High Country News:

"There are between 400 and 600 bears, or more than double the number when the grizzley was officially listed as threatened in 1975"Šthis in in the lower 48 states, primarily in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

In December 1998, hunters sighted a black bear in the Badlands. It wasn't a grizzly, but on a certain level, a bear is a bear. One of the men, Bernie Rodel of Mandan said: "I thought, 'Am I dreaming this? Am I seeing things? It gave me chills to see that thing."

The sighting was not confirmed by wildlife agencies. But it could be true.

After all, the bear was a part of this valley. The grizzly ate here.

Gilbert Livingstone Wilson visited the Hidatsa and Mandan people between 1908-1918, and he collected material for an ethnobotany that was never published but is available to researchers. He wrote "Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden."

In the ethnobotany, Buffalo Bird Woman talks about digging the turnips in a strip 10 miles wide along the north side of the Missouri. She talks about how the turnips were dug, stored, prepared, cooked, etc. It's very interesting. Finally she says:

"Grizzly bears are fond of wild turnips. I never saw a bear eating the turnips, but I have seen where the grizzly had been sitting and the rinds of the turnip roots were lying on the ground there. Men who have seen them eating the turnips told me how they did it. The bear would sit up like a man, and hold the root in his two paws and bite and pull off the rind with his teeth just as a human being would do; and he would eat the inside of the root only.

"We thought bears dangerous. I used to carry a short gun, my own,when on horseback and going into the timber; I held the gun read in case I met a grizzly bear."

Confirmation, for me, of the bear reality.

"With respect to the black bear, they (Lewis and Clark) added to our knowledge of its geographic range and color variations; and, in case of the grizzly bear, their description of the species led to its recognition as a species and their records relating to its abundance, distribution, and habits are remarkable in scope and detail. Besides, their graphic accounts of encounters with the grizzly are as exciting as any fictional experience."

-- "The Natural History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," by Raymond Darwin Burroughs, 1961.

Alexander Henry writing:
Sept. 22, 1800 (Park River Post)
"Bears (black) make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows; the plum trees are torn to pieces, and every tree that bears fruit has shared the same fate; the tops of the oaks are aslo roughly handled, broken and torn down to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing; their dung lies about in the woods as plentiful as that of buffalo in the meadow."

-- "The Natural History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," by Raymond Darwin Burroughs, 1961.

Lewis and Clark were confused for a time by the color phases of both the black and grizzly bears. "Lewis, while camped in the Clearwater River valley near Weippe Prairie on May 31, 1806, summarized his observations and concusions relating to the problem.:

"'Goodrich and Willard visited the Indian Villages this morning and returned in the evening. Willard brought with him the dressed skin of a bear which he had purchased for Capt. C. this skin was an uniform pale redish brown colour, the indians informed us that it was not the Hoh-host or white bear, that it was the Yack-kah. this distinction of the indians induced us to make further inquiry relative to their opinions of the several speceis of bear in this country. we produced the several skins of the bear which we had killed at this place and one very nearly white which I had purchased. The white, the deep and pale red grizzle, the dark brown grizzle, and all those which had the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty colour whithout regard to the coulour of the ground of the poil, they designated Hoh-host and assured us that they were the same with the white bear, that they associated together, were very vicious, never climbed trees, and had much longer nails that the others. the black skins, those which were black with a number of entire white hairs intermixed, the black with the whiteŠ'"

-- "The Natural History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," by Raymond Darwin Burroughs, 1961.

"Grizzly bears were still plentiful in the Missouri valley above the mouth of the Little Missouri River in 1833. Maximillian found them plentiful when he visited Manuel Lisa's trading post at the mouth of the Yellowstone that year."

-- "The Natural History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," by Raymond Darwin Burroughs, 1961.

"In 1691 Henry Kelsey, an explorer in America for the Hudson's Bay Company, was the first white man to record an encounter with a grilley bear. 'To day we pitcht to ye outtermost edge of ye woods Š Nothing by short round sticky grass and buffalo and a bear which is bigger than my white bear Š and silver hair'd.'

"John Murray writes, 'Kelsey relates that, after killing a grizzly bear, he found the meat good but was discouraged from keeping the hide of the bear by the Indians because they said it was God.' "

-- "Lost Grizzlies" by Rick Bass.

"Murray (John) writes of Old Mose (a grizzly) in "Wildlife in Peril: 'The brain weighed fifteen ounces, just a tiny fraction of the gross body weight. This is about the weight of the brain of a normal newborn human baby. The centers of smelling and hearing were Š enormously developed. The optic nerve was small, and the optic regions at the rear of the brain poorly developed Š The brain was wide across the areas controlling motor activity."

-- "Lost Grizzlies" by Rick Bass.