John Adams lived for 5 years with his brain exposed after this bear attack

Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountain in Central California. The Sierra Nevada’s are one of the highest and most prestigious mountain ranges in the world and serve as the spine of California running from the Mexican border all the way to around the Oregon border. The giant granite peaks seem to touch the sky and host hundreds of miles of largely uninterrupted fur and pine forests. At the time of our incident there were no highways crossing the high mountain passes and assistance was often too far away to help.

John Adams was born in 1812 in Medway, Massachusetts and made his way to California when he was 37 years old after his shoe business failed due to fire. He left his family and made his way to the wilds of California to become a trapper, miner and hunter. Having nearly died from 2 illnesses during his trek he arrived in California in mid December.

He utilized his knowledge gained as an animal trainer and hunter in New England to make his own buckskins, moccasins, harness, saddles and snowshoes and with help from the Miwok Indians built a cabin and stable to winter over.

In 1853 he navigated around 1200 miles on one of his hunting and trapping expeditions clear up to the eastern portion of the Washington Territory. While out on an excursion he discovered a female yearling cub and quickly caught her. He moonlighted as an animal trainer and would sometimes catch animals and sell them to circuses or other menageries. He named her Lady Washington. Incredibly he eventually tamed Lady Washington and she became his constant sidekick. He even rode on her back and she cuddled him in freezing conditions keeping him warm. Later on, Lady Washington would have a tryst in the Rocky Mountains and have a cub Adams would name General Freemont.

A year later Grizzly, as he came to be known, pulled two 2 week old cubs from a grizzly sows den while she hibernated in the Yosemite Valley. He raised the cubs himself and one of them stuck around long enough to be named Ben, after Benjamin Franklin. Adams and Ben were quickly inseparable and Ben would follow Adamas anywhere he went.

The odd couple were once traveling through the Sierra Nevadas and came across a sow with three cubs. This sow was first of all offended that there was a man nearby, and compounding her offense, a boar bear to boot. The sow rushed Adams and quickly swatted his rifle out of his hands, with her left paw, before he had a chance to fire. Then with her right paw knocked him flailing landing face down. She then dug her huge canines into the flesh on his back and tore flesh, buckskin and flannel shirt from his body. Just in the nick of time, the yearling Ben, joined the fight and chomped onto her haunches. She spun around and dug her teeth into Ben's skull, blinding him in one of his eyes. Then she used her paws to crush him into the ground, while she brutally bit into his shoulder to lift him off the ground and shake him violently back and forth. The wounded Adams had the luxury of watching the two bears square off but the heartbreak of watching his best friend Ben be wounded and beaten. By then the man had gathered himself enough to lift his rifle and drive a bullet home through the sow's heart, stopping the brutality for once and for all. Ben healled eventually and the two continued on with their life in the woods. The record does not indicate what became of her three cubs but I assume Adams merged them into his menagere.