American Tall Tales Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Text copyright © 1991 by Mary Pope Osborne. Illustrations copyright © 1991 by Michael McCurdy.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies. Distributed by Random House LLC, New York.

  Designed by Eileen Rosenthal

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Osborne, Mary Pope. American tall tales / by Mary Pope Osborne ; illustrated by Michael McCurdy. p. cm. Includes biographical references. Summary: A collection of tall tales about such American folk heroes as Paul Bunyan, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind, Pecos Bill, and John Henry.

  ISBN 978-0-679-80089-7 (trade)—ISBN 978-0-679-90089-4 (lib. bdg.)

  1. Tales—United States. 2. Tall Tales—United States. [1. Tall Tales. 2. Folklore—United States.] I. McCurdy, Michael, ill. II. Title. Pz8.1.0813Am 1991 398.22 0973—dc20 [E] 89–37235

  eISBN: 978-0-307-98259-9

  The wood engravings for this book were cut from single blocks of end-grain maple, and the color was added with watercolor to the final print.

  v3.1

  For Will,

  who is the whole steamboat,

  and with special thanks to my editor, Anne Schwartz

  M. P. O.

  Dedicated to the memory of Lynd Ward,

  whose tools helped to engrave these pictures

  M. M.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Introduction

  Davy Crockett

  Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind

  Johnny Appleseed

  Stormalong

  Mose

  Febold Feboldson

  Pecos Bill

  John Henry

  Paul Bunyan

  Bibliography

  About the Author and Illustrator

  — Davy Crockett

  Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind —

  — Johnny Appleseed

  Stormalong —

  — Mose

  Febold Feboldson —

  — Pecos Bill

  John Henry —

  — Paul Bunyan

  INTRODUCTION

  TALL TALK, OR EXAGGERATED storytelling, began in the 1800s as a way for Americans to come to terms with the vast and inhospitable lands they’d come to inhabit—thick, dark forests filled with bears and panthers; treeless, arid deserts and plains; towering mountains; and uncharted seacoasts. The heroes and heroines of the tales were like the land itself—gigantic, extravagant, restless, and flamboyant. Their exaggerated feats of courage and endurance helped the backwoodsman face the overwhelming task of developing such a land. “Every time Davy Crockett triumphed over ‘man, varmint, and the cogwheels of the universe,’ ” writes Kenneth S. Lynn, the author of Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor, “the ordinary backwoodsman felt an identification with his own efforts to tame his part of the American woods.”

  The tall-tale characters in this collection were born from various combinations of historical fact, the storytelling of ordinary people, and the imagination of professional writers. Davy Crockett and Johnny Appleseed, for instance, were actual people who lived in the first half of the 1800s. Over a period of time, as their stories were told around campfires, in barrooms, and on steamboats, the true details of their lives were exaggerated and revised until they became folk heroes as well as historical figures.

  Other tall-tale characters, such as Pecos Bill and Febold Feboldson, were not actual men of history. Nor were they authentic folk heroes, for their stories were not passed down orally from generation to generation. Instead, these figures were for the most part the literary inventions of professional newspaper and magazine writers. Still, their creators claimed that their yarns were inspired and shaped by the oral tall tales of the 1800s. And as Carolyn S. Brown in her book The Tall Tale explains, while there is a folk tall tale and a literary tall tale, we can never “completely disentangle the oral from the written.”

  A few years ago, while doing research on a biography of Abraham Lincoln, I came across a wonderful passage about Johnny Appleseed written by Carl Sandburg. I found the information so stimulating that I abandoned Lincoln and took my research in a new direction. Johnny led me to Davy Crockett, and Davy led me to Paul Bunyan. Gradually I began to see that a collection of retellings of stories about these characters would paint a rich and colorful map of nineteenth-century America. Not only would the tales reveal a wide range of geographic settings, they would also illustrate the different occupations that contributed to the development of the country. Pioneer settlers, backwoodsmen and -women, sea captains, volunteer firefighters, farmers, cowboys, cowgirls, railroad workers, loggers—all can be found in the American tall tale. I was also attracted by the opportunity the stories provide a writer to combine accurate period detail with larger-than-life characters, to mix reality with wild tall-tale fantasy.

  As I combed through old material to select which yarns to retell, I found it disheartening to come across stories that derided African Americans, Native Americans, women, and animals. And considering our environmental problems today, I was less than enthusiastic about the goal of conquering the wilderness at all costs. Therefore, I decided I would attempt to bring out the more vulnerable and compassionate side of the tall-tale characters in my retellings. I sought to revitalize the stories’ essential spirit of gargantuan physical courage and absurd humor, de-emphasizing incidents that would seem cruel or insensitive to today’s readers. I focused instead on incidents in which the men and women grapple with nature on her terms. I hope that in this collection, as they wrestle with panthers, lasso cyclones, and tramp across the North Woods, they also show an abiding respect and affection for the natural world.

  Focusing on the humane side of the tall-tale characters not only enabled me to avoid the elements of racial and cultural prejudice in the stories, it also led me to the discovery of a potential tall-tale heroine as well. Surprisingly, it was that backwoods “half varmint” Davy Crockett, who introduced her to me. “I saw a little woman streaking it along through the woods like all wrath,” says the fictional Davy about his wife, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, in one of the Davy Crockett Almanacks, written between 1835 and 1856.

  Davy does not say a great deal more about that intriguing “little woman,” but there are quite a few sketches of other extraordinary females in the almanacs. And I thought I owed it to all of them to gather them into one woman and bring her out into the sunlight, where she now stands as tall and proud as her masculine counterparts.

  Despite the appearance of Sally Ann and the humanizing of the tall-tale characters, an ineradicable taint of violence still clings to some of these stories. As we prepare to enter the twenty-first century, the survival of this planet is no longer compatible with the nineteenth century’s approach of lassoing and taming the environment. But to eliminate that period of our past from our literature is to do children a disservice, I think. I hope these tall-tale stories will provide opportunities for discussion: for contrasting the way it was then with the way it is now—and how it must be in the future; and perhaps for exploring the idea of heroes and heroines in general.

  But most of all, I hope that the stories in this collection will provide humor and entertainment, and that both children and adults will have as much fun reading them as I did writing them. While retelling the tall tales, I heard a “distant roarin’.” Not only were these exhilarating and rather loony characte
rs laughing and pushing one another around in my imagination, but they introduced others to me as well—“big bears that growled all sorts of low thunder and wolves that howled all sorts o’ northeast hurricanes,” not to mention all the storytellers and writers that have shared their company in the past. It’s been a wild and crowded party, and now we all invite the reader to join us.

  I understand the large hearts of heroes,

  The courage of present times and all times . . .

  —Walt Whitman

  NOTES ON THE STORY

  THE REAL DAVY CROCKETT was a backwoodsman born in the mountains of Tennessee in 1786. At that time the settlers in the backwoods of Tennessee and Kentucky lived rugged lives devoted to hunting, trapping, clearing the land, and building homesteads. When Davy ran for Congress in 1827, he became famous for satirizing the difficult lives of these frontier men and women. He gained further legendary status after he died at the Alamo in 1836, fighting for Texas in its struggle for independence from Mexico.

  Following Davy Crockett’s death, a series of small paperbound books were published that contained comically exaggerated tales and woodcuts about his early life. Called the Davy Crockett Almanacks, these books included stories and sayings of the time, and although no one knows who wrote these first American “tall tales,” they are still celebrated for their wit and storytelling. Newspapers, songs, plays, television shows, and films have further expanded the Crockett legend, but the following story is derived mostly from these original almanacs.

  An extraordinary event once occurred in the land of Tennessee. A comet shot out of the sky like a ball of fox fire. But when the comet hit the top of a Tennessee mountain, a baby boy tumbled off and landed upright on his feet. His name was Davy Crockett.

  That’s the same Davy who could carry thunder in his fist and fling lightning from his fingers. That’s the same Davy who liked to holler, “I can slide down the slippery ends of rainbows! I’m half horse, half alligator, and a bit of snapping turtle! I can outrun, outlick, and outholler any ring-tailed roarer east of the Mississippi!”

  The truth is, Davy Crockett did seem to be half varmint—just as every varmint seemed to be half Crockett. Anyone could see that he walked like an ox, ran like a fox, and swam like an eel. And he liked to tell folks, “When I was a baby, my cradle was the shell of a six-hundred-pound turtle! When I was a boy, I ate so much bear meat and drank so much buffalo milk, I could whip my weight in wildcats!” Which was less amazing than you might think, because by the time Davy Crockett was eight years old, he weighed two hundred pounds with his shoes off, his feet clean, and his stomach empty!

  Davy Crockett loved to brag about the things he could lick—from wildcats to grizzly bears. Sometimes, though, his bragging got him into big trouble. Take the time he got caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of the forest, carrying nothing but a stick. After hiking some ten miles in the rain, he was so hungry he could have wolfed down a hickory stump, roots and all. He began to search through a black thicket for something good to eat. Just as he parted some trees with his stick, he saw two big eyes staring at him, lit up like a pair of red-hot coals.

  Thinking he’d come across a fun fight and a tasty feast combined, Davy neighed like a horse, then hollered like a screech owl. “Hello there! I’m Davy Crockett, and I’m real hungry! Which means bad news to any little warm-blooded, four-legged, squinty-eyed, yellow-bellied creature!”

  Lightning suddenly lit the woods, and Davy got a good look at his dinner. “By thunder,” he breathed. The hair went up on the back of his neck, and his eyes got as big as dogwood blossoms.

  Staring back at him was the Big Eater of the Forest—the biggest panther this side of the Mississippi. He was just sitting there with a pile of bones and skulls all around him like pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.

  Before Davy could beg the varmint’s pardon, the panther spit a sea of froth at him, and his teeth began to grind like a sixty-horsepower sawmill.

  “Ohh, I didn’t mean what I just said,” Davy apologized, backing away slowly.

  But the panther shot white fire from his eyes and gave three or four sweeps of his tail as he advanced.

  “You think you can forgive me for making a little joke?” Davy begged.

  But the panther let out a growl about as loud as five hundred boulders crashing down a mountainside.

  “Wanna sing a duet?” Davy asked.

  But the panther just growled again and took another step closer.

  “Guess I’m going to have to get serious,” Davy said, trying to bluff his way out.

  The panther stepped forward.

  Davy crouched down. “I’m gettin’ serious now!” he warned.

  But the panther just put his head real low like he was about to leap.

  With disaster staring him in the face, Davy suddenly concentrated on grinding his own teeth—until he sounded like a hundred-horsepower sawmill. Then he concentrated on growling his own growl—until he sounded like five thousand boulders tumbling down a mountainside.

  As he stepped toward the panther, they were both a-grinding and a-growling, until a final growl and a final grate brought the two together. And there in the rainy forest, they began wrestling each other for death or dinner.

  Just as the panther was about to make chopped meat out of Davy’s head, Davy gave him an upward blow under the jaw. He swung him around like a monkey and throttled him by the neck. And he threw him over one shoulder and twirled him around by his tail.

  As Davy was turning the panther into bread dough, the Big Eater yowled for mercy.

  “Okay, fine, fine,” said Davy, panting. “I’m not about to skin such an amazing feller as yourself. But I’m not about to leave you here to collect any more of them bones and skulls, neither. I guess you better come home with me and learn some manners.”

  So Davy Crockett led the Big Eater of the Forest back to his cabin, and there he taught him all sorts of civilization. Davy taught him how to fold his paws and sing the tenor of a church song and how to rake the leaves with his claws. Best of all, he taught him how to light the hearth fire at night with his burning eyes, then lead Davy to bed in the dark. From then on, you could say that the two were the best of companions.

  But Davy’s boasting got him into trouble with more than just wild critters. It also nearly ended his political career. It seems that one year he figured the Tennessee legislature was in sore need of a feller with natural sense instead of book learning. “And that feller is nobody but me!” he bragged as he went about the state, making campaign speeches. “I can sleep under a blanket of snow, outsqueeze a boa constrictor, and outwit the slyest fox in the woods! I’m your man!”

  In one of his speeches, Davy got so carried away that he boasted he’d once grinned an old raccoon right out of a tree. “And, folks, I can grin any dang raccoon out of any dang tree in the whole dang world! If I can’t, you can call me a liar and feed me to a bunch of hungry bears in the winter!” he said.

  Well, Davy’s opponent recognized that this was his big chance to prove once and for all that Davy Crockett was nothing but a blowhard and a boaster. So one moony night in August, the feller got a crowd together, and as they all stood outside Davy’s cabin, the varmint hollered, “Crockett, come out here! These folks wanna see your raccoon trick!”

  “Sure!” Davy said. “Be glad to show ’em!”

  Feeling pretty confident because he believed all his own boasts, Davy led the crowd through the woods, until he spied a raccoon grinning high up in a hickory tree.

  “Jimminy crimminy, here I go! Now watch me, folks!” he said, and he set to grinning at the fellow, and he grinned and grinned. And grinned. But after he’d been grinning like a fool for a spell, that raccoon just kept sitting up in the tree, grinning back down at him, not tumbling down or nothing.

  After a while folks began to get restless, and Davy began to get mad. His whole reputation was on the line. He didn’t relish being fed to a bunch of bears, neither. He got so mad that he finally stompe
d home and got an ax. Then he returned to the woods and commenced to cutting down the tree.

  Well, when the tree fell and Davy grabbed for the critter, he discovered the grinning raccoon was nothing but an old knothole that looked just like a raccoon!

  “But look at this!” Davy said, beaming to the crowd. “The fact is, I done grinned the bark right off of this tree!” He was telling the truth—around the knothole, the tree was perfectly smooth.

  “Go figure it,” grumbled his opponent as the crowd cheered.

  Another tale about Davy’s bragging concerned one hot day on the banks of the Mississippi River. As old Davy was straggling along, feeling restless because he hadn’t had a fight in ten days, he came across a keelboat being pushed upriver. The fellow pushing it had hair as black as a crow’s wing and wore a red flannel shirt. There wasn’t a man on the river that wouldn’t have recognized Mike Fink, king of the Mississippi Boatmen.

  “Hello there!” Davy shouted from the shore. “If you don’t watch out, that boat’s going to run back down the river! I’m about the only ring-tailed roarer in the world who can tame the Mississippi!”

  Mike Fink gave Davy a mean look. “Oh, you don’t know beans from buckshot, you old cock-a-doodle-doo,” he said.

  “Oh! Well, I don’t care a johnnycake for you, either!” said Davy. “Come ashore and let me whip you! I’ve been trying to get a fight going all morning!” Then he flapped his hands near his hips and crowed like a rooster.

  Mike Fink, feeling chock-full of fight himself, curved his neck and neighed like a horse.

  Davy Crockett thumped his chest and roared like a gorilla.

  Mike Fink threw back his head and howled like a wolf.

  Davy Crockett arched his back and screamed like a panther.

  The two of them kept carrying on—flapping, shaking, thumping, howling, screaming—until they both got too tired to carry on. Then Davy waved his hand. “Farewell, stranger. I’m satisfied now.”