as Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for GenerationsDuring Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through theNorth Woods From Maine to California Collected from Various Sourcesand Embellished for Publication
The Red River Lumber Company takes its name from the Red River of theNorth, down which the Walkers drove their logs to Winnipeg before therailroads had reached their forest holdings in northern Minnesota. Lateron they built a sawmill on the Red River at East Grand Forks, which wasfollowed by the mills at Crookston and Akeley, Minnesota. Their lastMinnesota log was cut at Akeley in 1915.
The first edition of Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox appeared in 1922,with ten thousand copies, followed in the same year with a printing offive thousand. Subsequent editions were printed in 1924, 1927 and 1931.Since the first edition, copies have been sent out only on request.
With this printing, January, 1934, the size of the book has been changedand the supplementary text has been revised. The stories are the same asin the preceding editions, and include material used in small bookletsissued by The Red River Lumber Company in 1914 and 1916. So far as weknow, this was the first appearance of the Paul Bunyan stories in print.
The student of folklore will easily distinguish the material derivedfrom original sources from that written for the purposes of this book.It should be stated that the names of the supporting characters,including the animals, are inventions by the writer of this version. Theoral chroniclers did not, in his hearing, which goes back to 1900, callany of the characters by name except Paul Bunyan himself.
Investigators have failed to establish the source or age of the firstPaul Bunyan stories. One of our correspondents, a man of advanced years,wrote us in 1922 that he had heard some of the stories when a boy in hisgrandfather's logging camps in New York, and that they were supposed tobe old at that time. A distinct Paul Bunyan legend has grown up in theoil fields, evidently originating with lumberjacks from the northern andeastern white pine camps who came to work with the drillers.
Scholars Say He is the Only American Myth.
Paul Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have been handeddown for generations. These stories, never heard outside the haunts ofthe lumberjack until recent years, are now being collected by learnededucators and literary authorities who declare that Paul Bunyan is "theonly American myth."
The best authorities never recounted Paul Bunyan's exploits in narrativeform. They made their statements more impressive by dropping themcasually, in an off hand way, as if in reference to actual events ofcommon knowledge. To overawe the greenhorn in the bunkshanty, or thepaper-co