Stewart — Watt—Legends of Paul Bunyan. 
641 
It is quite apparent that the lumberjacks in their slow mi¬ 
gration westward have carried the tales freely from camp 
to camp into all of the lumbering states of the North and 
into the forests of Canada. 
The antiquity of the tales is more difficult to determine 
than the extent of their distribution. It seems certain, how¬ 
ever, from the circumstances that they have been passed 
down from one generation of lumbermen to another for a 
long period of time, that these stories of Paul Bunyan date 
well back into the early days of lumbering in Michigan and 
were carried from Michigan to Wisconsin about the middle 
of the last century. It seems certain, too, that many of the 
tales now included in the Bunyan cycle were narrated long 
before Bunyan became the lumberman hero. Similar tales, 
lacking, of course, the local color of the Bunyan yarns, are 
to be found in the extravagant stories of Baron Munchausen 
and of Rabelais as well as in folk-tales from more settled 
parts of the United States of America. An extremely inter¬ 
esting study, so complex, however, that we have not yet 
completed it, is the tracing of the old world originals of the 
Bunyan stories to determine just to what extent the Ameri¬ 
can tales are new and to what extent they were brought from 
France and England by early pioneers. 
Whether Paul Bunyan ever lived or is as mythical as 
Sairey Gamp’s Mrs. Harris we have not yet succeeded in 
definitely finding out. All lumberjacks, of course, believe, 
or pretend to believe, that he really lived and was the great 
pioneer in the lumber country; some of the older men even 
claim to have known him or members of his crew, and in 
northern Minnesota the supposed location of his grave is 
actually pointed out. A half-breed lumberman whom Miss 
Stewart interviewed asserted positively that there was a 
Paul Bunyan and that the place where he cut his hundred 
million feet from a single forty is actually on the map. We 
have found in several localities characters still living about 
whose prowess as lumbermen exaggerated stories are al¬ 
ready being told; it is probable that the tales will continue 
to be told, with additions, after these local heroes have died. 
In a similar manner, we believe, did Paul Bunyan come into 
existence. He was probably some swamper or shacker or 
lumberjack more skilful and more clever than average, 
