The term “Big Bear of Arkansas” refers to a mythical bear of enormous size reported to be native to the Arkansas wilderness, and subsequently used as a nickname of the hunter who killed it, Jim Doggett. Described as being uncommonly crafty and nearly a foot taller than any other bear of the forest, the Big Bear continually defied the efforts of the best bear hunters and their dogs on a number of occasions. The legend of the Big Bear was first introduced in a humorous sketch of the same name by Thomas Bangs Thorpe, published on March 27, 1841, in the magazine Spirit of the Times.
Tales of bears and bear hunts in Arkansas were common during the 1830s and 1840s, when the state was largely unsettled and epitomized the vast southwestern wilderness in the American imagination. Reports from visitors to that area emphasized the rustic nature of the landscape. Such accounts included Wild Sports: Rambling and Hunting Trips through the United States of North America by the German traveler Friedrich Gerstäcker and in particular Charles F. M. Noland’s story “Pete Whetstone’s Bear Hunt,” which told of a fantastic bear hunt along the Devil’s Fork of Little Red River. Residents of Arkansas soon developed the reputation for being crude but also clever hillbillies. The state itself adopted the nickname of “The Bear State” to promote itself as natural and untamed throughout the nineteenth century.
As Thorpe’s story begins, the unnamed narrator is headed upstream on the Mississippi River steamboat Invincible. While he and his traveling companions lounge about in the cabin, a strange and energetic man pokes his head in and yells, “Hurra for the Big Bear of Arkansaw!” Taking command of the room, the man, introducing himself as Jim Doggett, propounds on the greatness of Arkansas, boasting of its forty-pound turkeys and enormous mosquitoes, and his exploits during tremendous bear hunts. At first his (mostly Northern) listeners are skeptical of these stories, but as Doggett continues their doubts are dispelled and they are eventually perfectly satisfied by his accounts. The extent to which Doggett’s tales are trustworthy is a central question of the legendary account, which utilizes the American humor tradition of the exaggerated yarn or tall tale.
As the night winds down, the narrator asks the self-proclaimed “Big Bear of Arkansaw” whether he might regale his audience with the tale of a particular bear hunt, which, as established, was a common expectation of travelers returning from Arkansas. Doggett readily agrees, and pauses a moment to consider which particular story he should tell. He begins this way:
“There was the old she devil I shot at the Hurricane last fall, then there was the old hog thief I popped over at the Bloody Crossing, and then Yes, I have it! I will give you an idea of a hunt, in which the greatest bear was killed that ever lived, none excepted; about an old fellow that I hunted, more or less, for two or three years; and if that ain’t a particular bear hunt, I ain’t got one to tell” (Thorpe 1854).
With this fanfare, he launches into his tale. According to Doggett, he was walking through the woods one day when he noticed fresh claw marks on the sassafras trees that were nearly eight inches higher than other marks he’d previously seen. These new marks were so high off the ground, in fact, that he knew they were either a hoax or belonging to the biggest bear that had ever existed. We later learn that the bear is so massive as to require six men to lift its corpse; when skinned, the bear’s hide is enough to cover a large mattress with several feet left to spare.
According to the legend, the Big Bear of Arkansas was not only enormous, but swift and tireless as well. As the story goes, even after an eighteen-mile chase that wore out the hunter’s dogs and horse, the bear still ran on. Doggett was confounded by the animal’s stamina: “That a bear runs at all, is puzzling; but how this one could tire down and bust up a pack of hounds and a horse, that were used to overhauling everything they started after in no time, was past my understanding” (Thorpe 1854). The bear later amazes the hunter again by swimming across a lake to a wooded island, beating a pack of dogs with yards to spare. Even at his size the Big Bear is a nimble creature, able to climb a tree and walk down from it as gently as a lady would from a carriage. On the aforementioned chase across the lake, he mounts and paddles a log, just as Doggett earlier had done, though his massive bulk causes the bear to tumble underneath. When surrounded he gracefully leaps over a circle of hunting dogs and speeds away, the dogs in hot pursuit. Suffice it to say that the Big Bear of Arkansas has astonishing size, speed, and strength.
Beyond his prodigious physical characteristics, the Big Bear is imbued with various personal characteristics typical of the legendary creatures of Western tall tales. In temperament the bear is brazen and malignant—Doggett calls him “sassy”—routinely poaching hogs from the yards of Arkansas pioneers. When cornered, he is unafraid of the snapping jaws of hunting dogs, “eyeing them as quiet as a pond in low water … as little afraid of the dogs as if they had been sucking pigs” (Thorpe 1854). At the same time he is wrathful, with fiery flashing eyes, brushing aside attacking dogs with a swipe of his paw.
More than a dull animal, the Big Bear of Arkansas is himself quite crafty and cunning. From the beginning he enters into a cat-and-mouse game with the hunter, allowing himself to be sighted and chased, but never caught. When Doggett lines up to fire upon the bear, his ammunition snaps and breaks; it is implied that the bear’s presence summarily causes the hunter’s caps to become lost within the lining of his jacket. Even when the bear is trapped on an island with no escape, he somehow maneuvers so that a smaller she-bear is killed in his place, an episode that Doggett believes is “unaccountably curious … thinking of it made me more than ever convinced that I was hunting the devil himself” (Thorpe 1854). Though Doggett does eventually kill the bear, he is forced to admit that it was not due to his prowess as a hunter but instead due to the bear’s decision to surrender to death. Ultimately, he believes that the bear was unhuntable and died only when his time had come. Indeed, the Big Bear of Arkansas was a beast of extraordinary longevity, “a creation bear” as Doggett proclaimed, the contemporary of and equal to the legendary strongman Samson of biblical fame.
When Doggett finishes his story, he leaves his audience in a grave silence, filled with some superstitious awe connected with the affair. Before going to bed, he asks everyone present to “liquor,” leaving the reader to question whether he had “liquored” earlier, for the reliability of the hunter is dubious throughout the narrative. In the course of his story, even Doggett’s neighbors are in disbelief, accusing him of wearing a telescope—exaggerating, that is—“when he turned a she-bear, of ordinary size, into an old he one, a little larger than a horse?” (Thorpe 1854). In killing the Big Bear of Arkansas, Doggett has by transference taken the animal’s spirit and its nickname, as is only fitting for a figure similarly outlandish and outsized, cunning and brave.
After its initial publication, the story was subsequently anthologized in William T. Porter’s The Big Bear of Arkansas and Other Sketches (1845) and later appears in Thorpe’s collection The Hive of the Beehunter (1854). Though the Big Bear was slain by Doggett, its legend lived on in the Old Southwest and has inspired a number of fictional accounts of bear hunts, including William Faulkner’s lengthy story “The Bear,” during which the narrator describes a fateful hunt in pursuit of the massive bruin “Old Ben.”
Adam Nicholas Nemmers
See also Mountain Men; Tall Tales; Yarns, Yarn-spinning
Further Reading
Faulkner, William. 1990. “The Bear.” Go Down, Moses. New York: Vintage International, 181–316.
Gerstäcker, Friedrich. 2004. Wild Sports: Rambling and Hunting Trips through the United States of North America. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books
Lemay, J. A. Leo. 1975. “The Text, Tradition, and Themes of ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas.’” American Literature 47 (3): 321–342.
Noland, Charles F. M. 1994. “Pete Whetstone’s Bear Hunt.” In Humor of the Old Southwest, edited by Hennig Cohen and William B. Dillingham, 119–120. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Thorpe, Thomas Bangs. 1845. “The Big Bear of Arkansas.” In William T. Porter, The Big Bear of Arkansas, and Other Sketches: Illustrative of Characters and Incidents in the South and Southwest. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart.
Thorpe, Thomas Bangs. 1854. The Hive of “The Bee Hunter:” A Repository of Sketches, Including Peculiar American Character, Scenery, and Rural Sports. New York: D. Appleton.