Is Paul Bunyan Based on a Real Person?

Tall tales about the logger Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Babe, are American classics. Learn about the real people they're based on and how they got so popular in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/real-paul-bunyan.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Bogebaum here. The story of Paul Bunyan,
the Giant Lumberjack is one of the most enduring tall
tales in North America. The folk tale is a favorite
in children's classrooms and is immortalized in cartoons and tourist
attractions all over the United States. But was this based

(00:25):
on a real person? According to legend, Paul Bunyan was
so huge at birth it took five exhausted storks to
deliver him to his parents. When Bunyan was a mere
week old, he already fit into his father's clothes. Junior
Bunyan downed forty bowls of porridge a day, they say,
and received a big blue ox named Babe for his

(00:47):
first birthday. This Bunyon of legend grew up to become
a skilled lumberjack, with Babe as outsized an ox as
Bunyan was a man always at his side. As a
logging team, the two were on beatable, able to clear
forests with amazing speed. At one point, Bunyan headed south
and created the Grand Canyon simply by dragging his axe

(01:09):
behind him, and Babe well, she tromped all around Minnesota's
logging country. As she did so, her footsteps filled with
water behind her, forming the states famed ten thousand Lakes.
Of course, these are all literally and figuratively tall tales.
But are they based in any fact. Well maybe. Some

(01:31):
historians believe that the legendary Paul Bunyan was based on
a real person, a French Canadian logger named Fabian Fourgnye,
or perhaps it would have been pronounced Fournier. I couldn't
find a solid answer either way. He was born in
Quebec around eight then moved to Michigan after the Civil
War to take advantage of the high paying logging jobs

(01:52):
that were readily available there. His brawn and six foot height,
which is just shy of two meters, were noteworthy for
the time him and made him quite intimidating, as did
his drinking and brawling. He died in eighteen seventy five
during a fight in Bay City, Michigan, a wild town
where lumberjacks went to party after every pay day. His

(02:14):
alleged killer, who struck him in the back of the
head with a mallet, was acquitted in a subsequent trial
that drew a lot of attention, helping spread the legend
of Paul Bunyan to lumberjacking hotspots in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
and beyond. At some point, bunyan story became intertwined with
that of another French Canadian, a war hero by the

(02:35):
name of bon Jean. The tales of bon Jean and
Fabian combined to create one ferocious, athletic, intelligent lumberjack by
the name of Paul Bunyan, with Bunyan believed to be
a melding of bon Jean of bon Jan. Anyway, as
the nineteenth century drew to a close, Paul Bunyan Tales

(02:57):
spread across logging camps throughout North America, and with every
retelling of the tales, the lumberjacks greatly embellished them. Yet,
despite the popularity of Paul Bunyan among the lumberjack in community,
the general public knew nothing of him. The first written
mention of Paul Bunyan two people outside of the lumberjacking
world came in nineteen ten, when one James mcgillifray penned

(03:20):
the first of the Logging Tall Tales series that would
become popular across the nation. The piece ran in the
Detroit News Tribune. Then in nineteen fourteen, the Red River
Lumber Company stepped in the business, which sold its wood
to local lumber yards through a national distribution network, developed
an advertising campaign for its new mill in California. As

(03:44):
part of the campaign, the business created a series of
pamphlets featuring Bunyan, but which were largely ignored, but the
company published a revised version of them via a nineteen
twenty two bucklet titled The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Buny
In As before, the booklet was intended for lumber industry workers,

(04:05):
but the Kansas City Star happened to publish a lengthy
review of the booklet, introducing Bunyan to the masses, and
the rest, as they say, is history. The American public
quickly became enamored with the massive lumberjack and his colorful
bovine companion, especially kids. Soon, Bunyan was the subject of comics,

(04:25):
books and operetta, and even poems by the likes of
Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg, and numerous towns began claiming
him as their own, from Minnesota to Bangor, Maine, which
boasts to have possession of his birth certificate. Today, many
towns hold festivals in his honor. You can catch up
Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Show in states like Wisconsin and Florida,

(04:47):
where lumberjacks and jills compete in activities such as axe
throwing and log rolling, and June is now known as
National Paul Bunyan Day, making Bunyan one of America's official
folklore hero. Today's episode is based on the article was

(05:07):
There a Real Paul Bunyan on how Stuffworks dot Com?
Written by Deborah Ronka and Melanie rad Zeki McManus. Brain
Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how
Stuffworks dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four
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