oil fields, evidently originating with lumberjacks from the northern and
eastern white pine camps who came to work with the drillers.




Paul Bunyan



Scholars Say He is the Only American Myth.

Paul Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have been handed
down for generations. These stories, never heard outside the haunts of
the lumberjack until recent years, are now being collected by learned
educators and literary authorities who declare that Paul Bunyan is "the
only American myth."

The best authorities never recounted Paul Bunyan's exploits in narrative
form. They made their statements more impressive by dropping them
casually, in an off hand way, as if in reference. to actual events of
common knowledge. To overawe the greenhorn in the bunkshanty, or the
paper-collar stiffs and home guards in the saloons, a group of
lumberjacks would remember meeting each other in the camps of Paul
Bunyan. With painful accuracy they established the exact time and place,
"on the Big Onion the winter of the blue snow" or "at Shot Gunderson's
camp on the Tadpole the year of the sourdough drive." They elaborated on
the old themes and new stories were born in lying contests where the
heights of extemporaneous invention were reached.