Paul Bunyan and the weight of myth

Paul Bunyan felled the tall pines of Minnesota with the help of his blue ox, Babe. After he cut down all the trees, Paul was sad. He trudged away, dragging his ax behind him. Every footstep filled with his tears, each becoming one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. The trench dug by his ax became the Mighty Mississippi River that filled the land with water to grow crops. 

There are many versions of this tall tale. This is the one I remember from my first grade teacher sometime around 1986. My Iron Range classmates and I — mostly fourth-generation European immigrants — learned about Paul Bunyan before we heard of the Indigenous people who lived near us.

In high school, I learned about the Ojibwe people in a Minnesota history class. By then, we understood that Native Americans existed, if only because our sports teams played schools with Native Americans either on the roster or in the logo. 

It wasn’t until I was a senior that I set foot on the Bois Forte reservation for a class trip and understood the place as an actual community. In college, I learned meaningful details about the genocide against Native American people and the impact of boarding schools in the late 19th and 20th centuries. But that was only because a Native American history class fit better in my schedule.

Later, Native friends told me their truth. Paul Bunyan didn’t do squat. All he did was erase them from the land of their birth.

The problem with history is that everybody gets the myth while few get the whole story. Myths are validating and fun. Truth often isn’t. Then, when facts challenge myth, defensiveness kicks in. Are we really canceling Paul Bunyan? Stories create an emotional truth that few are willing to surrender. 

Politics and religion are just stories by another name.

The plaid truth

Like most folklore, the origins of Paul Bunyan are not fully known. Most agree the stories were crafted in the lumber camps near the Great Lakes, but might be based on older French Canadian lore. Minnesota laid claim to the Paul Bunyan myth when the Duluth News Tribune became the first to publish these stories.

These early folk tales centered on a really strong man named Paul Bunyan who was an exceptionally skilled lumberjack, and he may have been a real person. 

Then, about 100 years ago, marketers began building on the stories to make Paul superhuman. This new myth played to a mostly white audience of recent immigrants and settlers who occupied land that had been clear-cut and mined in living memory. 

Paul Bunyan gave Minnesotans a simple story that masked the plight of Indigenous people and early labor unions, glossing over the rampant environmental destruction and capitalist machinations that girded the state’s history. And tourists loved Paul. Still do.

There are 11 Paul Bunyan statues in Minnesota, with many others in Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine. Artistic renderings of Paul’s faithful companion, Babe the Blue Ox, may be found alongside several of them. In Hackensack, you can find a statue of “Paul Bunyan’s Sweetheart” Lucette. In Fosston, you meet Paul’s younger brother, Cordwood Pete, a 4-foot-9 misanthrope.  

Arguably, the most famous statues are the ones of Paul and Babe in Bemidji and two different ones in Brainerd. These two towns still playfully debate which is the “real” hometown of Paul. But the largest statue by far is the one in Akeley, where tourists can get their pictures taken while sitting in Paul’s outstretched palm.  

These statues are a source of local pride and cultural identity. Would Gov. Tim Walz have such an affinity for buffalo plaid in his campaign wardrobe if it weren’t for Paul Bunyan? Would anyone?

I gained valuable new perspective on Bunyan several years ago when I produced a radio variety show that toured small Minnesota towns. When we went to Bemidji, I wanted to include a mix of topics, ranging from Bunyan to cultural elements from the three Ojibwe reservations located near Bemidji.

I honestly thought that by making fun of Bunyan, I’d defang the problematic elements of his folklore. But when I consulted with Elaine Fleming, an instructor at Leech Lake Tribal College and tribal elder, she told me that including Bunyan at all would perpetuate the problem. It was a sticking point that I didn’t fully understand at the time. 

We did our Bunyan gags, and the iconic statues of Paul and Babe still highlight the shores of Lake Bemidji, but something about my exchange with Fleming stuck with me. An advance copy of a new novel about Bunyan brought this conversation back to mind.

Reimagining the myth

A new novel, Bunyan and Henry: or, The Beautiful Destiny, by Mark Cecil, was recently published, building a new narrative from the Paul Bunyan myth, pairing the plaid axman with another American folk hero, the “steel driving” railroad builder John Henry. 

Cecil is a literary podcaster and former journalist who attended summer camp in Minnesota as a kid. He developed his version of these folk tales in the oral tradition, telling them to his kids at bedtime. Eventually, he wrote them into “a fairy tale for adults,” set in a dreamy world anchored by “The Windy City,” a mining village called “Lumptown,” and a great expanse of forests and prairies.

When we meet Bunyan in Cecil’s novel, he isn’t a logger. He’s a big farm kid who ran away to be a miner. In fact, Cecil’s “Lumptown” reminded me of the Mesabi Iron Range. Instead of iron, workers mine an all-purpose mythical ore called “lump.” Bunyan is a skilled miner who just can’t get ahead. A childhood foot injury reminds him of the cattle stampede that killed his father and broke his mother’s spirit.

Meantime, John Henry escaped a fictional version of the reconstruction South, where he was arrested without cause, separated from his family and sentenced to forced labor on the railroad. Bunyan and Henry unite when their predicaments become intertwined. 

Cecil pairs the historical traumas of inequality and labor manipulation, Black and white, in a new American folktale. Both characters seek to save their families, but must first fight a self-aggrandizing steampunk billionaire named El Boffo.

The true myth, according to Cecil, is buried in American history.

“It’s all about land and power,” he said in a January interview after I read an advance copy of the book. “It’s an ongoing story. Not just how, but why the West was won.”

A pivotal scene in Bunyan and Henry puts a critical decision in the hands of a Native American doctor who discovers a way to use the mineral “lump” to save lives, instead of as a highly polluting energy source. She knows the importance of her decision, but resents that her community is asked to sacrifice to save others when no one did the same for them.

“That’s what power looks like,” Cecil said. “It looks like people saying no to you. Real power is defined by the repercussions of that power.”

That reminded me why the myth of Paul Bunyan remains a sore point for those whose truth is excluded from the story.

Folklore is best used to pass knowledge and values through generations. When folklore becomes marketing, however, it can no longer carry such important messages. 

So let us consider the true story.

Glaciers carved the lakes of Minnesota, filling them with cold, clear water. They left behind a wondrous world of lakes, rivers, forests and food. People followed the glaciers, populating the land, but they could not keep all of it. Wars spilled blood on the soil. Empires prevailed, raking progress and profits from the overburdened. Iron and agriculture sprung from the ground to feed America a costly feast. Suffering shaped the souls of the people, a pain that many grew fortunate enough to forget but that some never can. Like young aspen sprouts growing from our mother stump, we reach for the light.

It would do us well to learn the lessons of our land’s true history. It’s a great story, no myths required.