Reprinted from the
Sierra Club Bulletin
1938
Page 70-81
PAGE 70
When talking about "bears" in the West, sharp distinction must be made between the two existing types, the black (or cinnamon) and the true grizzly. These two types are very different, both structurally and as regards their natural history. The black bear (with its often more common, brown or cinnamon phase of coat-color) is the kind now so familiarly known to visitors to our National Parks, notably Yosemite and Sequoia. The grizzly, about which my present article concerns itself, though small numbers yet exist in the northern Rocky Mountains regions, is believed now extinct in California as also in all other Pacific Coast states. For this reason what I have to say concerning the modes of occurrence and the mannerisms of grizzly bears in California is, with intent, all put in the past tense.*
*Many of the facts used here are to be found, with others concerning bears, blacks as well as grizzlies, along with descriptions of each, in the book, "Fur-bearing Mammals of California," by Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale, University of California Press, 1937.
In reviewing the multitudinous writings about bears in California, from the merest allusion in the narrative of an early traveler to an entire volume devoted to the subject, one thing soon becomes clear; The concept of "bear" in this State refers predominantly to the species grizzly, hence in the main exclusively of the blackbear species. Reasons for this may be adduced as follows. The two types of bears originally occupied for the most part separate portions of the state: The grizzly was a lowland and foothill-dwelling animal, occupying such territory west of the deserts south to the Mexican boundary; the black bear was essentially montane and a dweller in, or in the vicinity of, coniferous forests; and furthermore the black bear did not occur at all south of the extreme southern Sierra Nevada, in Kern County.
Thus it was the separate domain of the grizzly that was invaded by the early white settlers; and to them this was therefore the bear of California. Hence the Bear Flag, and also innumerable place-names on modern maps, which record the one-time presence of this beast - some adventure in which a grizzly was the focal point; for example, Bear River, Bear Creek, Bear Gulch, Bear
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Canyon, Bear Valley, Bear Lake, Bear Flat, Bear Mountain, Grizzly Creek, Grizzly Flat, Grizzly Bluff, Grizzly Peak, Grizzly Island, Oso ["Bear"] Mountain, Canada de los Osos.
Opinion frequently expressed by old-timers to the effect that grizzlies would not tolerate the presence of black bears within their home territories is borne out by the history of the respective geographic ranges of the two species: As that of the grizzly in certain parts of the State shrank, that of the black bear expanded - at least in those directions where factors of climate, food, and shelter were favorable to the latter species. Thus, at the south, in the Tehachapi-to-Santa Barbara tangle of chaparral-clothed mountains, up even to the 1890's the metropolis of grizzlies, as these beasts vanished, blacks (or browns) came in from the southern Sierra, to the eastward, spread and multiplied, until according to Forest Service reports they are now relatively numerous in Los Padres National Forest.
As to size, universal report indicates that the grizzly reached huge proportions, at least the male did relatively to the black or cinnamon bear. There was great disparity as between the sexes, much more so than in the case of the black bear. A mature female grizzly might weigh less than an old male black bear which, when fat, weigh about 400 pounds.
But tortuous and largely resultless has been my search for unquestionable figures as to weights of full-grown male grizzlies. "Round numbers" abound in the literature. Thus, Theodore Hittell reports James Capen ("Grizzly") Adams as stating that the "California grizzly sometimes weights as much as two thousand pounds." Samson, one of Adam's tamed bears, weighted "over fifteen hundred pounds." John Xantus declared that one "gray bear" shot near Fort Tejon weighed 2000 pounds and that several weighted 1000 pounds. From the same vicinity, W.S. Tevis told me of one killed weighing 1600 pounds. A "huge" male killed in the Santa Ana Mountains was "estimated" to weigh 1400 pounds, so C. Hart Merriam was informed.
It is reported by James Hobbs that P. T. Barnum, the showman, in the 60's posted a standing offer of $800 for any live grizzly bear weighing as much as 1000 pounds. For somee time there were no takers, until a man by the name of Cobb heard of a bear near San Jose reportedly of extraodinary size. Cobb, so
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the story goes, finally got the bear by using a lure of molasses mxed with brandy and, by boat via Panama, it was safely delivered to Barnum in New York. It was exhibited for some years - until destroyed in a disasterous fire. That "record" bear is stated to have weighed 1100 pounds.
The famous grizzly "Monarch," captured in Los Angeles County in 1889, was originally reported in the newspapers as "the largest captive bear in the world." When it reached its cage in Golden Gate Park, worn out from its efforts to escape, its weight was "estimated by the best of judges at from 1200 to 1600 pounds" (fide Allen Kelly). When "Monarch" died, in 1911, Vernond Shephard, the taxidermist who mounted its pelt, found the weight of the animal to be 1127 pounds, and it was fat. Some indication here may be had of a fair discount to apply to first estimates!
It seems to me evident to me that rarely, perhaps never, in the instances cited above (save the last) were actual steelyards or scales resorted to. My own feeling is that 1200 pounds was likely close to the maximum for the weight of a male grizzly bear - decidedly less than "2000 pounds." But this is no disparagement, when we recall that it is a fair-sized, open-range steer or horse that weighs much more than 1200 pounds "on the hoof." Verily, a wounded, charging bear of even 1200-weight would look "huge" to the chargee - and that impression would last a lifetime and might well grow!
However, it was the much smaller, mother bear which was involved in most of the encounters wherein the man was worsted - injured or killed. The weight of an old female shot in 1886 near Ben Lomend, Santa Cruz County, on authority of Walter R. Welch weighted "just 642 pounds dressed." The last bear taken in southern California, in 1916, near Sunland, Los Angeles County, was a mature female, as shown by its skull now preserved in the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. It was weighed entire on butcher's scales which it tipped at only 254 pounds. The two figures for females here given probably represent somewhere near the extremes of weight for full-grown animals of that sex.
As a possible further check on the weight question, I weighed, air-dry, the skull, without lower jaw, of the Sunland female. Then, through the kind office of Alexader Wetmore, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I was supplied with the weight, similarly taken, of the largest Xantus-taken grizzly skull, as
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now preserved in the United States National Museum. Purpose -- to get a ratio, from a bear of known total weight, from which to figure the approximate weight of a big male grizzly. The figures are, in grams, Sunland female skull, 777; Tejon skull, 1406. Therefore 254 (pounds) is to x (pounds) as 777 (grams) is to 1406 (grams); x equals 474 pounds. Not conclusive, but with some significance surely!
The grizzly bear was an omniverous feeder. Meat, fresh or putrid, was sought. Certain individual grizzlies became killers - latterly of cattle and sheep. Before man's stock animals became available, the native ungulates - elk, deer, antelope - doubtless were killed on occasion, thoug these fleet-footed animals probably easily eluded the tactics of the bears save on the part of such weakened or decrepit individuals as straggled behind the drifting herds and were destined for early death anyway. "Kills," more or less completely buried and tainted, left by mountain lions or jaguars were easily located through the bears' acute sense of smell. Small fry, rodents, even insects, were obtained by digging and logrolling. Honey, wild, and later from apiaries, was a delicacy eagerly sought for.
Foods of directly vegetable source included roots and bulbs, for which, according to John Xantus, the soil would be dug up skillfully and to remarkablee depths. In the vicinity of Fort Tejon, on a single moonlight night, one or more bears would "dig up many acres of land" as pigs would do, so that hardly a grass blade remained undisturbed. The grizzly, with its broad "hands," and "fingers" terminated with long, strong claws, was preeminently a digger. As a result, the claws of the bears shot at Fort Tejon were usually much worn. The same equipment enabled the bears to bring to mouth, berries, fruits and acorns as these grew in place on the branches. The vertical reach of a mature grizzly standing erect might well have been ten feet - which meant access to foraging depth of chaparral of that extent.
I might speculate here that the "huge" grizzly of southern and coastal California owed its size, in part, to an adaptive trend toward a specialized and successful mode of food-getting in the great chaparral belt. The grizzly, even young ones, never climbed trees; it was a digger and especially a reacher. In season, acorns were eaten avidly; more accounts mention this food than any other
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except flesh food. Next comes berries of manzanita, coffee-berry (cascara) and, especially in the upper Sacramento Valley, wild grape. Doubtless no fruit, nut or berry was passed by, and we may add toyon, wild cherry, gooseberry, elderberry, ceanothus. We may surmise that leafage of some plants was also eaten, especially when new and tender.
Vegetable food of one kind or another was thus available, by digging or reaching, the entire year. I am inclined to think that the grizzly, despite its reputation as a stock killer, was far more vegetarian in its normal diet than carnivorous. As to population numbers prior to the period of rapid settlement of California by white men, we can only judge rather vaguely from such general statements of pioneers as are available. The words "common" and "abundant" appear frequently; but just what these meant in terms of bears per square mile, there is frankly nothing to fix upon.
From Humboldt County we have a statement to the effect that "40 bears" were "counted" in one morning in sight from a high point in the Mattole region; that was in the 1850's, by a pioneer hunter, Seth Kinman. Around Fort Tejon, Kern County, John Xantus, writing under date June 5, 1857, said [verbatim]: "We have here grizzlies in great abundance, they are really a nuisance, you cannot walk out half a mile without meeting some of them, and as they just now have their cubs, they are extremely ferocious so i was already twice driven on [up] a tree, and close by the Fort!" Concerning the San Bernardino Mountains, I have record of a statement that one man counted 14 bears at one time in the 60's out in the part of the meadow in sight from his camp on the edge of Big Bear Valley.
There are many statements of generally similar purport. But taking them at face value, they could well be explained as pertaining to extraordinary congregations of the animals from adjacent territory of considerable extent; for example, on moist meadowlands where maturing roots of preferred kinds were being sought, or in valley-bottom tracts of oaks producing heavy crops of acorns. Also we must take into account mere impressions of numbers gained from real abundance of "sign" (diggings, foot-prints) - made by one or a few animals on several successive nights, or as formed from the devastating activities of one or a family of grizzlies in an apiary or a pigpen on a series of occasions.
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Now putting together all my "impressions," derived from my own knowledge of conditions in southern California beginning in the late 80's, from all the accounts I have read and the interviews I have had with older men, and from scrutiny of maps, I venture an estimate of a mean population, before marked reduction of numbers set in, of one adult grizzly to 20 square miles of suitable territory. That would be, for example, in Monterey County (3330 square miles) a population at one time, of 166 adult grizzlies. Furthermore, assuming that one-third of the State's area (155,652 square miles) was occupied by grizzlies in the same density, then there would have been a total population in California, at any on time prior to, say, 1830, of 2595 adult grizzlies. I am inclined to think this is a conservative estimate.
The rate of reproduction in the grizzly is indicated by fair agreement of testimony from various sources to have been as follows: Females bred first when they were two years old and bred thereafter every year. Each female bore on or two cubs, rarely three. My friend, Vital Reche, now of Mono, but long resident of northwestern San Diego, Orange, and San Bernardino counties, is of the opinion that where one mother was seen with three cubs, one of these had been "picked up" - one that had belonged to another bear, lost from her or whose own mother had been killed. Cubs left their mother, to fend for themselves, when about eleven months old, females being then about two-thirds grown, males not more than one-fourth old-age size. [But these statements, be it emphasized again, are based on no weights or measurements acutally taken from bears of known age!]
It would thus appear that the reproductive rate of grizzlies was remarkably high, indeed quite like that of cattle. If a single pair of mature bears produced only one cub each year to reach the age of two years, we could figure from the above data that at the end of ten years, all the offspring also breeding as they reached breeding age, there would be twenty-eight bears. At this compound rate, the country would have soon been overrun with grizzlies, to their own detriment; so there msut have been effective checks to unlimited reproduction, long before the white-man and his gun appeared on the biotic scene. We can only suggest some factors that may have operated to stabilize the population: (1) Antagonism, to mortal degree, of mature males toward young bears, first out in
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the world, venturing into their individually established "territories"; (2) limits of food-supply, in seasons or years of minimum availability, effective in rendering young, senile, or weakly individuals fatally susceptible to disease, harsh weather, or attacks of other carnivores; (3) limits of areas affording subsistence, with factors just named operating marginally to stop spatial escape of surplus numbers; (4) decrepitude, from accident, such as breakage of teeth (shown in some skulls preserved in musuems), or as concomitant with old age, with ultimately inevitable results also just suggested. Adjustments for these natural, adverse factors down through time had doubtless led to the inherent reproductive ratio (possibly 50 per cent per annum, granting a 50-50 sex ration in the general population which we suspect to have obtained), and with a "factor of safety" besides. But this factor of safety in multiplication rate did not of course suffice to meet the heavy draft imposed by man, with gun, trap and poison.
Grizzlies in California never hibernated, as far as we know, as do the black bears in our higher country - this being a scheme of Nature to tide populations over a seasoonal period of food scarcity. We have no clue to maximum age reached by grizzlies in-the-wild, save as afforded by the history of "Monarch." This bear, fully mature when captured in 1889, died in Golden Gate Park in 1911, when it must have been at least 26 years old.
As a boy, living in Pasadena from 1885 to 1898, I heard much about bears. My father was a physician and he was wont to visit various people living along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in that vicinity. Most of these people kept bees, and the usual story related to the raiding of the hives by a bear. Honey must have been exceedingly attractive to the beasts, for they would come down repeatedly at night out of the safety of the heavy mountain-side chaparral to within five miles of the center of town. Occasionally a bear was killed. I remember seeing fresh bear tracks in the summer of 1891 in the dust of the road below old man Brunk's cabin in the lower Arroyo Seco Canyon, and another time in Eaton Canyon.
On summer camping trips in 1895 and 1897, I saw bear sign plentifully back in the San Gabriels, in the neighborhood of Waterman Mountain and Mount Islip. In the mornings, tracks would be seen in the trails close to our campsites, and one night
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our burros were stampeded, necessitating a hike after them clear back to Chileo. Again and again of mornings I would try following the fresh bear tracks, but these, if not lost, would soon lead down into the heavy chaparral of manzanita and deer-brush clothing the steep heads of canyons tributary to the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. I would follow the route a bear had taken, through or under the otherwise practically impenetrable tangle, often on my hands and knees, poking my rifle ahead of me. Sometimes I would see wisps of hair on broken branch ends. Insofar as I can recall, it did not occur to me that a bear could hear me coming from afar and would inevitably remove himself from the vicinity even if he had bedded himself down for the day. Neither can I recall any feeling of fear on my own part; I was obsessed only with the spirit of adventure, the yearning to "kill a bear," as two or three other Pasadena boys had done. But I never caught sight of any bear; nor have I ever seen a live Californian grizzly, save for "Monarch," behind the bars in Golden Gate Park, prior to his demise in 1911.
One of the Pasadena boys who had become a hero in my young eyes was Walter L. Richardson, now of Porterville. On May 16, 1894, he shot a nearly full-grown male grizzly in Big Tujunga Canyon. What is more, unlike very many hunters, he took pains to save the skull and pelt of this animals in first-class shape, in later years preserving them against damage from insects and sunlight. Through gift from Mr. Richardson, these now comprise the most perfect specimen of California-taken grizzly contained in the California Musuem of Vertebrate Zoology, hence a possession of the State. Important descriptive comment based on this specimen has been printed in scientific literature.
Grizzlies persisted in the fastnesses of the San Gabriel Mountain region more than twenty years longer. Rumors of bears killed, now and then reached me, but to my knowledge no further scientific specimen was saved or formal record made from there until 1916 when, on October 28, Cornelius B. Johnson trapped and killed a veritable grizzly bear his ranch in the lower Tujunga Canyon only two miles or so from Sunland. This bear, a mature female, yet weighing only 254 pounds, had come down from the brushy mountainside near-by on several preceding nights to feed on grapes in Johnson's vineyard. As far as I know, this
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was the last grizzly south of Tehachapi. Its skull and some of the body bones are now preserved in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
The last authenticated or reasonably reliable records of living grizzly bears in different sections of the State known to me at this writing are as follows: Humboldt County, 1868; Mendocino County, 1875; Colusa County, 1862; San Mateo County, 1879; Santa Cruz County, 1886; Monterey County, 1885; Mariposa County, 1887, Tulare County, 1922; vicinity of Fort Tejon, Kern County, 1898; Santa Barbara County, 1912; Los Angeles County, 1916; Riverside County, about 1895; Orange County, 1908; San Diego County (extreme northwestern), 1900 or 1901; San Diego County (south-central), 1871 or a bit later.
The parts of the State in which grizzlies were able to persist longest were those where heavy and continuous chaparral, therefore lacked any grassland, kept out the sheep-herder. These were not, however, necessarily the parts of the State in which the bears were originally most numerous. In general, their last stronghold wre in the Santa Ana Mountains, Orange County, the San Gabriel Mountains of northern Los Angeles County, the mountains of Santa Barbara County, and the western flank of the southern Sierra Nevada in Tulare County, the latter witnessing the very last stand of any Californian grizzly.
We have abundant record of what men thought about grizzly bears but little to judge from as to what the bears thought about men. The responses of the bears to the presence of man and his works are only to be inferred from an accumulation of incidents recited by human narrators.
My friend, Vital Cayton Reche (interviewed June 19, 1937), whose father founded Fallbrook, San Diego County, in 1869, tells me the following pertinent facts from his memory of his early days in that region, in the 1870s and 80s. Grizzlies were met with often by him, when riding on the cattle ranges. It was in mornings and evening that he would see them, especially in damp places at the margins of meadows, digging for roots. Their eyesight was relatively pooer, but sense of smell keen. A movement might catch a bear's eye when the animal's head was up. Then it would rear on its haunches, after the fashion of a picket-pin ground-squirrel, and look intently at the intruder. If the observer stood still, the
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bear, if a male, "after watching you a while would shake its head from side to side, then drop to all fours, turn, and start running away." Reche never knew a male to attack voluntarily, that is if not "bothered" (wounded). It was the mother bear that was prone spontaneously to attack a person coming suddenly upon her and her cubs at the edge of the brush. Especially it was when a hunter had seen a cub first, and witlessly shot at and wounded it so that it "cried," that the mother grizzly would come forth and charge, with no uncertain objective. It would appear from all accounts that this was a most ferocious creature: the mother defended her young!
From Reche's and all other accounts, I thus gather that it was the female of the species, much the smaller in size of the two sexes, that exhibited the "ferocity" so traditional of the grizzly. Probably three-fourths of the recorded killings and woundings of human beings by bears was done by the mother bears. Reche knew personally of six men thus killed in the Temecula Mountain region in one ten-year period. He told me that when the repeating rifle (Winchester) came in, there was much more careless, therefore dangerous shooting of bears than in the previous era of single-shot rifle, when a man knew that he had just one chance. "A wounded bear charged right after the hunter, if it could not see him."
The attitude of the whiteman toward grizzly bears has varied greatly, according to era, his vocation, and his individual temperament. No general definition seems possible, save as involving the ultimate aim to kill or capture the bears. An early direct value in the killed bear was its us for food, inasmuch as many of th frontiersmn had to "live on the country."
On March 7, 1828, Jedediah Smith, leading a band of fur-trappers up the Sacramento Valley, entered in his diary the comment concerning a bear just killed in the neighborhood where Marysville was later founded, that his men were "feasting, for the hunter of Buenaventura [Sacramento] Valley at the distanc of 2000 miles from his hom may enjoy and be thankful for such Blessings as heaven may throw in his way." Note that a grizzly under those circumstances was a blessing!
Another purpose in bear killing is in evidence in the reminiscences of George Nidever. In the year 1837 he shot 45 grizzlies in the neighborhood of San Luis Obispo; and altogether during
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his wanderings up and down the California coast he thought he had killed "upwards of 200 grizzlies. Judging from the tone of his narrative, Nidever's chief motive in killing these bears was to demonstrate thereby his accurate markmanship and his cool-headedness. His superiority in these respects over his fellow frontiersmen was a matter of great pride with him. "At this time," he says, "there was no sale for bear skins, so that we never took the trouble to skin them unless for our own use or to make a present to some friend or acquaintance."
As has been described many times, grizzlies were caught alive by vaqueros to use in bull-and-bear fights - a form of sport cruel but popular at one period around some of the missions and continuing until the 1850's, at San Fernando, according to John Xantus. Later, a few of the bears were captured and kept alive for exhibition or "zoo" purposes. In one instance, that of "Grizzly" Adams, if we accept Hittell's appraisal of the man, a sort of esthtic appreciation of th character of individual grizzlies was manifest. At least in his later years, Adams had developed a personal attachment for his ursin captives amounting almost or quite to affection.
In the 1850's and 60's there developed a demand for both the meat and hides of all sorts of large mammals, not alone deer and elk, but also, definitely, of bear. James Hobbs, who did this sort of market-hunting for a time in San Diego County, shipped meat fresh by boat in winter from San Diego to San Francisco. He soon found , however, that the meat, dried, meant more profit, since it was wanted by the miners; and he says that dried bear meat brought twice the price that deer meat did. Thus there had begun an industry known as "jerkey hunting," and this continued until the late '80s, and surreptitiously, after the passage of laws agains market-hunting of deer, until much later. No doubt the reduction of grizzlies locally was hastened by this market-hunting, with the commercial motive as the main one.
Then there had already begun to crystallize the natural antagonism of the stock man toward any wild animal that caused loss to his flocks and herds and hence reduced his profits. Not, however, until the great cattle and sheep ranges of the lowlands were all taken up, and cultivation of valley lands for grain and other crops set in, did the pressure begin to develop in extreme measure
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toward the use of summer-time grazing ground back in the mountains. A plan of "economics" evolved whereby more stock could be raised by driving the herds out of the lowlands in the dry season there.
The late Henry W. Henshaw, naturalist attached to the Wheeler Surveys, recording his field experiences in 1875, wrote of the grizzly as follows: "Perhaps few animals have suffered more from persistent and relentless warfare waged by man than this formidable Bear. To the sheep owners especially, whose immense flocks [each] under the care of one or two men are driven far into the heart of the mountain wilderness to pass the summer months, are these animals special objects of dread. Accordingly, every means in their power are used for their extermination. A supply of struchnine is part of the outfit of every shepherd, and by means of this the number of Bears is each year diminished, till in many sections where formerly they were very abundant they have entirely disappeared."
It would appear that, according to the prevalent opinion of that era (and this opinion holds right down to the present day as demonstrated in the governmental policy of predatory animal "control"), the remotes patch of grass or browse simply had to be made safely accessible to cattle and sheep!
One indication of the rapid exhaustion of the natural resources of our country is the disappearnce one after another of the native species of animals. The first to go have been those kinds which are vulnerable by reason of relatively large size, slow rate of reproduction or specialized food requirements - at the same time kinds which have impinged more or less upon the white man's material interests. And there is scarcely a wild animal in the State, from mole to elk, that doesn't do some damage, in some place, to some man's "property."
A few of the scientific names which man has bestowed upon grizzly bears are Ursus ferox, Ursus horriaeus, and Ursus horribilis, with meanings which are apparent. Man has not named himself, Homo sapiens, --"profoundly wise." I wonder!
University of California,
MUSEUM of VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY,
August 14, 1937.
It was a pleasure and a delight, as well as an educational and learning experience, to be a scribe as I copied his essay into this web page. I became so much more aware and in awe of the California Grizzly or Brown Bear as I typed each word and sentence that Joseph Grinnell did over 65 years ago. I would recommend to every citizen of California, biologist or naturalist, to type this essay or another essay of Joseph Grinnell, if one really wants to get into the heart and soul of this great thinker of California natural history and wild nature. Indeed, Joseph Grinnell was a great scientist and naturalist!