The origin follows a familiar psychological pattern:the older generation telling the young ones how good they have it. In the1880s, veteran lumberjacks in the upper Midwest began telling novices about atough camp foreman called Paul Bunyan, a big man of boundless strength andurgency who solved problems that would have flummoxed any greenhorn and put theconcerns of the present day to shame.
From there, Edmonds has an easy time followingthe spread (and increasing scale) of the Bunyan legend. Stories about the giantlumberman were first published in Duluth in 1904, even as they traveled by wordof mouth through lumber camps from Michigan to Oregon. Oil workers in Texasadopted the gritty character as their own, and the World War I draftwhichthrew together men from across the countrycirculated the tale even further.
By then, Bunyan became a folk hero of theindomitable, can-do spirit of the American people. Capitalists painted him as aself-reliant worker with no need for unions and Communists “held him up as asymbol of the noble proletariat.”
Trawling the archives, Edmonds determined that“the earliest reliably documented Bunyan stories” originated north of Tomahawkin the winter of 1885-86. He also includes an illuminating short history oflumbering’s early days in Wisconsin and an assessment of how folklore traveledin the modern age.
