How Grizzly Adams Tamed Bears And Became America's Most Famous Mountain Man
Cast your mind back to 1970s TV shows, and you might recall a rough, tough frontiersman called Grizzly Adams. His special shtick was his unique way with wild bears — Adams rescued an infant grizzly bear and tamed the beast, who then acted as his sidekick. A bit like a bear version of Lassie! The creature then played a central part in the regular adventures that came its owner’s way. But John “Grizzly” Adams was not merely a fictional character. He was a real man that lived and breathed with bears in the 19th century.
An innocent fugitive
Adams’ depiction in the TV show — there were films, too — was entirely sympathetic. He was the good guy in his adventures. IMDb has described the television version of Adams as “an innocent fugitive from the law [who] lives in the wilderness with a grizzly bear companion and helps passers-by in the forest.”
Adams was depicted by the actor Dan Haggerty in the 37 episodes of the show, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. It ran for two seasons in 1977 and 1978.
Ben the bear
Haggerty also played Adams in the 1974 movie, also titled The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, that spawned the TV series as well as three more movies, the last of which was released in 1982. For those who need a little refresher, IMDb has summarized the 1974 plot.
“After fleeing into the mountains after he is wrongly accused of murder,” the description read, “woodsman ‘Grizzly Adams’ discovers an uncanny bond to the indigenous wildlife of the region after rescuing an orphaned grizzly bear cub whom he adopts and calls Ben.”
Heroic backwoodsman
So, Adams was portrayed as a rather heroic backwoodsman in the TV shows and movies. But the real character that the fictional Grizzly was based on was a rather more complex fellow. As we’ll see, the picture of Adams as a virtuous lover of the American wilds and an all-round good guy is far from the full story of the real man.
The true account of his life is a fascinating tale in its own right, and arguably a lot more interesting than the fictionalized Adams. The real Adams, in reality, had attitudes towards wildlife that might make you shudder.
Two presidents
So let’s take a look at the real-life character behind the mythology that was popularized nearly 50 years ago. John Capen Adams was born in 1812 in Medway, Massachusetts. He was the first of eight children that Eleazer and Sybil brought into the world.
His father Eleazer was a farmer and a shoemaker, which was a common combination at the time in Massachusetts. By some accounts, Adams had a distant kinship with the father-and-son U.S. presidents, John and John Quincy Adams.
Wolves, panthers and bears
Formal schooling didn’t play a part in the young Adams’ life. Instead, once he was a teenager, his father took him on as an apprentice shoemaker. Eventually, Adams apparently tired of making shoes and at the age of 21 started out on an entirely new career.
He took a job with a company that provided animals to circuses and also ran its own traveling animal show. In the backwoods of New Hampshire and Vermont, Adams stalked and trapped everything from wolves and panthers to bears.
Tiger attack
The outfit Adams worked for had a variety of exotic animals in its menagerie including a Bengal tiger. In a 2015 article, “The Shoemaker’s Circus: Grizzly Adams and Nineteenth-Century Animal Entertainment,” published in the Environmental History journal, Jon T. Coleman described the character of the big cat.
“The feline proved surly and uncooperative,” Cole told us. For some reason the unenviable task of bringing the tiger to heel fell to Adams. Perhaps displaying more bravado than sense, the young man confronted the animal. The tiger responded by savaging him.
Serious injuries
Although we don’t know the precise details of Adams’ injuries, we know they were serious — serious enough for him to leave his job. Presumably with his tail between his legs, the young man now returned for a time to his original calling of shoemaker. The tiger attack obviously wasn’t an incident that he enjoyed dwelling on.
Cole noted in Theodore H. Hittell’s biography, The Adventures of James Capen Adams: Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California, that “Adams skipped past the tiger episode quickly.” You’ll notice that, for some reason, John Adams became James Adams for the purposes of Hittell’s book.
Marriage
Adams needed a year of recovery before he was well enough to start making shoes again. The other major event in his life came in 1836, when he married Cylena Drury. The couple had three daughters and it appeared that Adams had settled down into family life in Brookfield, Massachusetts.
At least, it seemed that way until 1849, the year of the great Californian gold rush. That was when Adams deserted his family and headed west like so many Americans of the time.
A cunning plan
So, did our pal Grizzly hit the golden jackpot in California? The answer is a resounding “no.” To the contrary, Adams was met by a litany of disasters while out West. One scheme in particular went badly wrong.
Using his life savings, Adams had bought $6,000 worth of shoes and had them deposited at a warehouse in St. Louis. The idea was that he would make a handsome return selling them to the hordes stopping off in the city as they headed for the Californian gold fields.
Shoe disaster
On the face of it, this enterprise had made good enough business sense. But disaster ruined Adams’ investment. A fire destroyed the warehouse and everything in it. Not long after, Adams’ father Eleazer took his own life, perhaps because he’d been a partner investor in the get-rich-quick shoe scheme.
Now Adams took to cattle farming, squatting on 160 acres of land near Stockton, California. But all the cattle were stolen and it turned out that someone else had a prior claim to the land.
Annoying neighbors
Adams seems to have had an uncanny talent for embarking on money-making schemes that ended in fiasco. He also seemed to be good at annoying his neighbors. He’d bought some mining claims in Sonora, but neighboring miners dragged him to court for allegedly denying them access to a water supply.
Adams owned some property which he mortgaged to pay an attorney. But, when he attempted to buy more property using already mortgaged assets, his whole real estate portfolio collapsed spectacularly.
Doomed dam project
Adams also invested in a plan to build a dam on the Tuolumne River. The idea was to expose the riverbed so that it could be mined. But a heavy storm brought a deluge of rainwater which destroyed the dam and brought an end to all mining operations.
According to Cole, Adams was to claim later that he’d “made three fortunes and lost them all ‘through the villainy of others.’” Eventually in 1852, “broke and disgusted, he turned his back on ‘schemes for the accumulation of wealth.’”
Retreat to the forest
By 1853 Adams had little to show for all his efforts in California. His worldly possessions amounted to a couple of oxen and a wagon, a few pots and pans, a Colt pistol, and some rifles. Adams’ response to all his trials and tribulations was to retreat into the forests and the mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
Where better to escape his woes, including his legal problems? And so began the process of the man’s taking on the persona of Grizzly Adams.
A luxurious beard
As Cole put it, “Adams grew a luxurious beard, ‘hardened his frame’ through vigorous exercise and temperate habits, and covered his body in the skins of animals.” At last it seemed he’d found his natural milieu. “Bristling with whiskers and weapons,” Cole continued, “he communed with nature.”
As Adams told his biographer Hittell, “I seemed to be a part of the vast landscape, a kind of demigod in the glorious and magnificent creation.” We can see that John Adams was transforming himself into Grizzly.
The first rank of all quadrupeds
Adams set up camp to the east the Californian city of Sonora, not far from the Stanislaus River. With the help of local Native Americans, he built himself a shelter and began to exploit the natural resources of the wilderness.
He hunted the wildlife of the forest and sold skins and meat, while keeping some animals alive and caged at his camp. One creature that especially caught his imagination was the grizzly bear, which he judged was “in the first rank of all quadrupeds.”
A new persona
“Failures forgotten, a new Adams sprouted from the alpine turf,” Cole wrote. He was later to regard his time in self-imposed exile in the Sierra Nevada Mountains as one of the happiest periods of his life. Apparently, “eating nuts and berries in a solitary camp with only squirrels and mice to witness his makeover” brought him great contentment.
But, much as he savored this life in the wilds, it wasn’t enough. What Grizzly wanted was for people to appreciate his new persona.
A hunting expedition
In 1853 Adams decided it was time to leave his solitary camp. His brother William provided funds for a hunting expedition into eastern Washington Territory, now Montana, and northern California. Adams was to trap animals, which would then be shipped to Boston, from where they would be sold to menageries and circuses.
Adams now formed a small team consisting of a young man called William Sykesey and two Native Americans, whom he named Stanislaus and Tuolumne. The crew now headed north.
Shoot, skin, eat, or incarcerate
Adams and his companions made camp and set traps built from logs for the unsuspecting wildlife. Cole explained that the hunters “proceeded to shoot, skin, eat, or incarcerate every animal they could find.” Adams pursued the local wildlife ruthlessly and had high expectations of his subordinates.
On one occasion, he ordered Sykesey to follow a wounded bear into thick undergrowth. Sikesy refused, as perhaps any sensible person would. But that wasn’t good enough for Adams.
Killing a bear
Adams actually knew that the bear was so severely wounded as to be harmless, but he didn’t share that information with Sykesey. He roundly rebuked his assistant, telling him that he should “never commence a thing and then back out.” To teach the lad a lesson, he forced him to enter the bear’s den where Adams shot the bear at close quarters.
This was merely to make his point, since the bear was already good and dead. Here’s an example of how far the real Adams was from the sanitized version of the 1970s fictional character of good old Grizzly.
Bear cubs
In fact, there’s no shortage of examples of the lengths that Adams would go to kill or capture animals. In November 1853 Adams agreed to guide a Sonora businessman on a hunting trip to the little-explored Yosemite Valley. Adams had his own particular goal in mind for the expedition.
He wanted to obtain some grizzly bear cubs to train up. Spotting a bear den, he staked out the site for three days. Eventually, a female grizzly appeared from the mouth of the den.
Bear-milk substitute
As the grizzly came out into the open, Adams could hear the calls of cubs in the den. He now shot the mother in the chest, and then emptied his pistol into her before delivering the death blow with his knife.
He retrieved the cubs from the den and discovered that they were so young their eyes were not yet open. He now had to find a way of feeding them. His recipes for bear-milk substitute were rejected, risking the lives of his precious captives.
Benjamin Franklin and General Jackson
Fortunately, Adams’ hunting greyhound, Solon, had just given birth to a litter of pups. So he now killed all of the new-borns, bar one, and allowed his bear cubs to suckle the dog. What Solon thought of all this is not recorded.
She must at the very least have been sorely puzzled by the disappearance of her pups and the appearance instead of two bear cubs. The bears were christened Benjamin Franklin and General Jackson. Such were the brutal methods that Adams employed to build his stock of animals.
Lady Washington
Another bear seized from the wild by Adams was dubbed Lady Washington. She’d been captured as a yearling and seems to have been rather more difficult to master than some of the other animals. At one point she bit Adams.
His response was to give her a terrible beating with a “good stout cudgel,” continuing until the bear was exhausted and docile. Eventually, he trained Lady Washington to carry loads on her back as if she were a pack animal. Nowadays, he’d be charged with animal cruelty.
A handsome return
It was time to make some money from these bears and other animals that Adams had trapped. In 1854 Adams took his captive wildlife to Hooperville, a Californian mining town. There was an enclosed area there already which had been used for cruel bear and bull fighting.
Adams continued with a similar “sport.” One grizzly was pitted against six dogs and another against three bears. These shows are said to have been a popular attraction, no doubt making Adams a handsome return.
A bear fights back
There were times when the wildlife that Adams persecuted fought back. The Historynet website relates a tale that Adams himself told to the San Francisco Bulletin. It begins when he was on the trail of a mother bear and her three young.
Somehow the bear managed to swipe Adams’ rifle from his grasp, knocked him to the ground, and started biting his back. Adams was accompanied by his grizzly Ben Franklin, which now distracted the attacking bear then became involved in a ferocious battle with it.
A terrible battle
As the two bears tore into each other, Adams took the opportunity to scale a tree. According to the newspaper report, “[Adams] saw the savage beast, after biting into Ben’s head and destroying one of his eyes, drop her hold, crush him against the ground, [and] put her foot upon him.”
The account continued, “[The bear took] a new hold with her fangs in [Ben’s] shoulder and rising with him in her mouth, shook the poor fellow almost to pieces.” Adams retrieved his rifle and ended the fight by shooting the female bear dead.
A San Francisco menagerie
In 1856 Adams moved his menagerie to San Francisco where he opened what he called the Mountaineer Museum. This was located in the basement of a building on the city’s Clay Street and the animals were confined with leather collars attached to lengths of chain bolted to the floors.
Dressed in his best buckskin Adams would lead visitors through the exhibited creatures and demonstrate his control of the bears. Later he moved to more salubrious premises in San Francisco’s California Exchange building.
A most amusing sight
His new premises went under the title Pacific Museum and Historynet quotes a report on Adams’ show from an 1857 edition of the Daily Evening Bulletin. “One of the most amusing sights to be seen,” the journalist wrote, “is the feeding of the three grizzly bear cubs at the Pacific Museum.
“A bowl of cornmeal and milk is placed before them, and to see the voracious little savages ‘pitch in’ is wonderful,” the report continued. The fact that Adams had very likely killed the cubs’ mother was not mentioned.
Menagerie chaos
When he wasn’t conducting visitors around his San Francisco exhibition, Adams still went on hunting and trapping expeditions. He also took his animals on tour for shows in other Californian cities.
It’s worth mentioning that these types of animal shows were commonplace in the America of the 19th century — and were highly popular forms of entertainment. Quite often, the menagerie performances descended into chaos when animals escaped or started to fight each other.
An angry rhino
In one reported incident in New York at Raymond and Waring’s Menagerie, an elephant broke the chains securing a rhinoceros. The two fought and then the rhino escaped to a nearby marsh where it took refuge. A mob of 500 was then marshaled to try and capture the animal.
The unfortunate beast was peppered with musket shots before it was eventually recovered. Presumably, the citizens pursuing the rhinoceros would seldom have had the opportunity to hunt such an exotic animal. Reportedly, it was unlikely to survive its wounds.
Escape to New York
By 1859 Adams’ business was ailing with soaring costs and a fall-off in attendances. Perhaps the good people of San Francisco had, by then, seen as much of the bears as they could stomach. The next year Adams decided it was time for a complete change.
He packed up his menagerie aboard a clipper, the Golden Fleece, and embarked on the sea journey to New York. A report in The Sun claimed, “Adams had also skipped out on a $1,400 suit against him in San Francisco.”
P.T. Barnum
As well as three grizzlies, not including Benjamin Franklin who had fallen ill and died, Adams took with him a motley collection of animals. These included everything from buffalo and pelicans to condors and coyotes.
Before he’d set out with his Noah’s Ark, Adams had raised some cash by selling a share in his business to P.T. Barnum. On his arrival in New York he met up with America’s greatest showman. It would be that start of a new chapter in Adams’ life.
Not the man he had been
Soon after his arrival in New York, Adams made his way to Barnum’s office. When the showman laid eyes on the buckskinned Adams, he realized that this man was as important to the menagerie’s attractions as the animals and promptly hired him.
But impressive as Adams might have seemed to Barnum, he was not the man he had been before he set sail from San Francisco. That was because of a near-fatal incident aboard the Golden Fleece during the long passage around Cape Horn.
A severe injury
In his 1873 autobiography Struggles and Triumphs, Barnum wrote, “Adams was dressed in his hunter’s suit of buckskin, trimmed with skins and bordered with the hanging tails of small Rocky Mountain animals; Old Adams was quite as much of a show as his beasts.”
Barnum also noted that “a sea voyage of three and a half months had probably not added much to the beauty or neat appearance of the old bear-hunter.” But Adams’ disheveled appearance may have owed as much to the fact that he was carrying a severe injury as anything else.
His brain was plainly visible
During the sea journey, one of the grizzlies, General Fremont, had attacked his keeper even though he’d been with Adams since he was a cub. During the fracas, the bear had mauled Adams’ head, giving him a wound to the skull so deep that his brain was plainly visible!
Adams visited a doctor at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. The prognosis was not good. Gruesomely, the doctor reported, “When the heart beats if the head is uncovered, the pulsations can be seen in the boneless portion of his cranium.”
Publicity blitz
His grim wound showed no sign of healing and there was little doubt that Adams’s days were numbered. Even so, the show must go on. Barnum’s unrivaled publicity machine roared into action in New York, issuing a blizzard of leaflets and newspaper advertisements.
In fact, according to Cole, it was Barnum who made the nickname Grizzly popular. As part of the publicity blitz, Adams led a parade through the city atop a stage mounted on a wagon and accompanied by one of his bears.
Crowds flocked to see the backwoodsman and his bears
Barnum put up a huge tent in downtown Manhattan to house the Grizzly Adams show, and crowds flocked to see the backwoodsman and his bears. The shows were not without incident. On one occasion, General Fremont, the very bear who’d inflicted that horrible head wound, grabbed Adams’ arm in its jaws.
Audience members screamed while some panicked and ran to escape the great tent. It was only the distracting intervention of Adams’ dog Rambler that allowed him to escape the clutches of the grizzly.
$500 for ten weeks
Having deserted his wife years earlier, faced now by his own mortality, Adams decided it was time to try and at least secure his family’s financial position. Despite being on his last legs he made a proposition to Barnum. He would work on for ten weeks if Barnum would pay his wife $500 on top of his normal $60 weekly wage.
Barnum, astonished that the fatally weakened Adams would make such a proposal, agreed. As good as his word Adams staggered on for the ten weeks, despite yet another ferocious bear attack.
Death
Adams finally threw in the towel once his ten-week term was completed. It had included performances in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, as well as New York. He now retreated to his wife Cylena’s home in the village of Neponset near Boston where he lived out his few remaining days with her and one of his daughters.
Adams died in October 1860 having turned 48 just a few days before. He could little have imagined that he’d become famous again more than a century later thanks to a TV show!