THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF GRIZZLY ADAMS
What comes to mind when you hear the name “Grizzly Adams”? If you’re like us, you probably think of the lead character in the 1970s TV show The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, not the real person on whom the TV character was based. Well, here’s the story of the original—John Adams (1812–1860), a larger-than-life character who had the rare ability to bond with one of the forest’s fiercest predators: the grizzly bear.
BACKGROUND
In the Old West, most men didn’t stand out—there were cowboys, miners, farmers, storekeepers, bartenders, and fancy business types. But John “Grizzly” Adams was one of a kind. Here he is described by his biographer:
Adams…was a man a little over medium size, muscular and wiry, with sharp features and penetrating eyes. He was apparently about fifty years of age; but his hair was very gray and his beard very white. He was dressed in coat and pantaloons of buckskin, fringed at the edges and along the seams of arms and legs. On his head he wore a cap of deerskin, ornamented with a fox-tail, and on his feet buckskin moccasins.
During the California gold rush of the 1850s, from Santa Fe to the Oregon Territory, stories were told of this wild man who dressed like an Indian, and rode around on the back of a 600-pound grizzly bear called Lady Washington, with two younger grizzlies and a host of other wild animals in tow. In Adams’s time, he was just as famous as other frontiersmen, like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. And he was tougher than either of those “greenhorns.” From the look of Adams, you’d think he was raised in the woods. Not quite.
THE ADAMS FAMILY
Born John Adams in 1812 in Medway, Massachusetts, to Eleazer and Sibel Adams, he was related to the famous New England Adamses—a family that had produced two presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, as well as Revolutionary War hero (and beer brewer) Samuel Adams. Not a kid who took to school, when Adams was 14 he got a job as a cobbler (shoemaker) at his father’s shop in Boston, where he learned how to tan hides and make leather. At 21, he headed for the wilds of Maine, where he learned how to hunt, trap, and survive in the wilderness. Before long, he landed a job as a wrangler for a traveling show of exotic animals. In what would become a recurring theme throughout his life, Adams’s natural ease with big predators led to overconfidence. He got the first of many hard lessons during a training session when a Bengal tiger turned on him and mauled him. Adams barely escaped with his life.
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GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
After spending the next few months in Boston recovering from severe spinal injuries, Adams went back to work with his father. Within a few years, he had his own family to take care of—his wife, Cylena, and their three children, Arabella, Arathusa, and Seymour. When the California gold rush began, Adams and his father hatched a plan to turn their combined life savings—about $6,500—into shoes and other garments to sell to miners and prospectors in St. Louis. Those plans went up in flames—literally—in the St. Louis Wharf Fire of 1849. The Adamses lost everything, and Eleazer committed suicide. Broke and destitute, John Adams decided to follow the thousands of other gold-seekers to California. He promised Cylena he would send money home when he could, and that he would return a rich man.
The journey west was rough. Adams nearly died from illness twice along the way, and he was still suffering from back pain. By the time he arrived in California in 1852, he was only in his late 30s, but he was already sporting wild hair and a gray beard.
INTO THE WOODS
Adams tried his hand at ranching and gold mining, both of which were disastrous. He was swindled out of his sluice-mining claim by an unscrupulous partner, and then bank creditors foreclosed on his 160-acre ranch outside Stockton. So, he later explained, “I abandoned all my schemes for the accumulation of wealth, turned my back upon the society of my fellows, and took the road toward the wildest and most unfrequented parts of the Sierra Nevada, resolved thenceforth to make the wilderness my home, and the wild beasts my companions.”
Adams drove his oxen cart into the mountains and settled not far from where Yosemite National Park is today. Back then, it was Indian country. While most white men of his time bragged about taking in the $5 bounty for every Indian they killed, Adams befriended the Miwok tribe. He shot deer for them, and in return they helped him build his cabin and stables. The Indians also provided Adams with the buckskin outfit he’d wear for the rest of his days.
It was around this time that he began referring to himself as James Capen Adams (possibly to avoid creditors). That was his brother’s name, but John Adams assumed it as his own. Most people just called him Adams, though, or “the wild Yankee.” He was known to take in any stranger at his cabin (when he was there), but he often said he preferred the company of Indians over white men, and animals over people in general.
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BEAR AND MAN
The concept of animal rights is a very recent one, and much of what Adams did may seem cruel when viewed through a modern lens—and illegal. He captured hundreds of wild animals and sold them to zoological societies and private collectors. He killed thousands more for meat and clothing. Adams and other trappers like him sold grizzlies to animal shows, where they were forced to fight each other or bulls. But in Adams’s defense, he never killed for sport, and he trapped more animals alive than probably anyone else in his time.
And he wouldn’t have become as famous as he did if it had been any other animal, but the California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus) was the most feared beast in the forest. Fiercer and nearly twice as large as comparatively docile black bears, they attacked (and ate) livestock, so when Europeans encountered grizzlies, they killed them on sight.
Adams, however, revered the grizzly: “There is a vastness in his strength, which makes him a fit companion for the monster trees and giant rocks of the Sierra and places him, if not the first, at least in the first rank of all quadrupeds.” But even in his reverence, he never thought to protect the species. Once numbering in the tens of thousands, the California grizzly bear survived alongside native peoples for millennia. Only 75 years after the gold rush began, the California grizzly was declared extinct in 1922. Montana and Washington are the only states in the contiguous United States that have a wild grizzly population today.
MAN AND BEAR
Adams learned how to trap grizzlies in 1854, when he spent two years (the best of his life, he said) leading numerous hunting and trapping expeditions throughout the West. He constructed large cages out of timber, and baited them with fresh meat. When the bear took the bait, a trapdoor fell and caged it. That’s how Adams brought in the largest grizzly ever captured alive. Weighing more than 1,500 pounds, he named the beast Samson and added it to his growing menagerie. Another method he used to capture grizzly cubs was to kill their mother. That’s how he got his favorite bear, Lady Washington, who became his closest companion. “From that day to this,” he later wrote, “she has always been with me and often shared the dangers and privations; born my burdens and partaken of my meals.” (Sorry, Cylena.)
Adams soon collected more grizzlies—including General Fremont, Happy Joe, and Benjamin Franklin. Tamed at only a year old, Ben was Adams’s most docile bear, but he was fiercely protective of his owner. One day in 1855, while Adams and Ben were in the Sierras, a mama grizzly charged at them. Adams couldn’t raise his shotgun in time, and the grizzly walloped him in the head, tearing off part of his scalp. Then she sunk her teeth into his neck and was about to finish him off when Ben bit the larger bear’s haunch. That distracted her long enough for Adams to scramble up a tree. He shot the grizzly dead, but not before she bit out one of Ben’s eyes and trampled him. Even though Adams and Ben both survived, neither would ever fully heal from their wounds.
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THE CITY BY THE BAY
In addition to the numerous grizzly attacks, Adams was mauled by a wolf (which took a chunk of his arm) and trampled by a buffalo (which nearly suffocated him). He needed to find a safer line of work. So in 1856, he and his wild animals (and his dog, Rambler) settled in San Francisco, where he opened the Mountaineering Museum in a basement on Park Street. For the next four years, Adams was a San Francisco fixture. He could often be seen walking through town with one of his grizzly bears; he’d leave it tied outside a restaurant while he dined inside.
Admission to see the animals in the museum was a quarter. With his whip always in his hand, Adams would bark commands at his bears, make them do tricks, wrestle them, and tell action-packed accounts of their captures. Most of the grizzlies were chained to the stone floor (except for Samson, who was so powerful that he had to be restrained in an iron cage). Adams’s overconfidence continued to be a problem; he was regularly swatted, bitten, and kicked—and on at least two occasions his head wound was reopened, revealing on his forehead a silver dollar–sized hole that exposed his brain.
One day in 1857, a young reporter named Theodore Hittell approached Adams and asked if he could interview him for the San Francisco Bulletin. That started a friendship that would lead to a widely read series of newspaper articles and a biography. And as Adams’s popularity grew, so did the show. He soon had to move his newly named Pacific Museum to a new building.
ADAMS’S ARK
By 1859 ticket sales weren’t bringing in enough money to feed six grizzly bears and dozens more hungry animals every day. Once again, creditors were closing in. So the “Barnum of the Pacific,” as the newspapers were calling him, decided to leave town and take his show back East, where he would work for the real P. T. Barnum, reconnect with his estranged family, and then take his show to Europe. That was the plan, anyway. Adams sold a half-interest in the museum to cover the cost to get all his animals home. Then he loaded them all onto a clipper ship (the transcontinental railroad hadn’t been completed yet) and sailed south around the tip of South America and then north to New York City.
In addition to Samson, Lady Washington, and General Fremont, Adams brought seven other grizzlies and, according to the Daily Evening Bulletin, “black and brown and cinnamon bears…elk, deer, buffalo, coyote, and many birds, including the California condor, various eagles, pelicans, and other species of the feathered tribe.” The arduous 100-day journey took a further toll on Adams’s health. Not surprisingly, he reopened his head wound during one of his “demonstrations” on the ship’s deck.
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ON BROADWAY
Adams has the distinction of being the first national celebrity to come from the recently founded state of California. He arrived in New York City in early 1860 and went straight to Barnum’s office to sign a contract. Concerned about his star attraction’s health, Barnum sent Adams to his personal physician, who basically told him two things: 1) it was a miracle Adams was alive, and 2) his head wound would never heal. Adams’s wife Cylena traveled down from Massachusetts to help care for him while he prepared for the new show, and they hired a doctor to dress the head wound daily.
On opening day in the spring of 1860, Adams and three of his grizzlies paraded down Broadway behind a marching band to the big tent where his “California Menagerie” was housed. Over the next few months, thousands of people, most of whom had only heard stories about grizzly bears, showed up to see Adams make them do tricks and wrestle with them. During one performance, General Fremont took a chunk out of Adams’s arm to the horror of the audience. (His dog Rambler saved his life.) At another show, a black bear bit Adams’s leg and flung him several feet across the floor. At another show, a monkey jumped onto Adams’s shoulder and bit his head wound.
Though it was obvious he should have quit immediately, Adams made a deal with Barnum that if he could do the show for ten more weeks, Barnum would pay him $500. And Adams did last those ten weeks…barely. By the time the engagement was over, he couldn’t even walk. With his contract completed, Adams sold his animals to Barnum and moved back home with his wife. Two days later, he turned 48; three days after that, he died in his bed. Adams was buried in the family plot in Charlton, Massachusetts. His gravestone was paid for by Barnum.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Most of what you just read is true. It’s tough to know for sure, because the primary sources for historians are Hittell’s 1860 biography, The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California (which didn’t even get his name right), and the writings of known embellisher P. T. Barnum. But when it comes to Adams, any of these stories could be true, which is why he became as famous he did. It’s also why Barnum wasn’t ready to let his star attraction go. Barnum took the California Menagerie around the world, hiring actors to portray Adams for the next 30 years.
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After that, Adams’s popularity waned, and wouldn’t rebound until the late 20th century, when he was portrayed on the big screen by famed director John Huston in the 1972 film The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. He appeared on the small screen five years later, in the TV show The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, portrayed by a California animal wrangler named Dan Haggerty.
A TIP FROM UNCLE JOHN
A bear can and will attack if it feels threatened or thinks you’re food. If you hike on marked trails, you’ll probably never encounter one, but if you do, stand still, and wave your arms slowly. That will let the bear know that you’re people, not lunch. (It also makes you look bigger and, thus, more imposing.) Remain calm, and do not make any sudden movements or sounds that could agitate the bear. Then back away slowly.
A WILD LEGACY
As for the dozens of wild animals that Adams “tamed,” many of them ended up in zoos on both coasts, with a few of their descendants living well into the 20th century. And despite some embellishing, Adams’s observations of the now-extinct California grizzly—an animal he knew more about than anyone else—have been invaluable for naturalists who study bears. In 1953 lawmakers in Sacramento gave the California grizzly the posthumous honor of being designated the official state land animal (as evidenced by all the high school teams and landmarks called the Grizzlies). There was a petition in 2014 to reintroduce the grizzly to California, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected it. Reason: it would be nearly impossible for a predator that requires such a large ecosystem to live in a state populated by 40 million people.
One final legacy: Thedore Hittell’s biography about Grizzly Adams was illustrated with wood carvings by one of California’s first celebrated artists, Charles Nahl. Unlike most wildlife illustrators of the time, who used taxidermied animals for reference (such as John James Audubon, who killed thousands of birds in order to draw them), Nahl preferred live subjects. His 1855 portrait of Adams’s largest grizzly, Samson, was later used for the California state flag. Here’s Samson:
What happened when Grizzly Adams returned to American pop culture in the form of Dan Haggerty? To find out, turn to page 485.
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