California’s “Greatest Mountain Man”
The Legacy of Grizzly Adams
Copyright © The Grizzly Adams® Company, 2018
By Tod Swindell
Among the greatest American west frontier stories ever documented is that of the real Grizzly Adams.
A western mountain-man legend, Grizzly Adams (birth name John Capen [J. C.] Adams), was born in Medway, Massachusetts in 1812. He was the second oldest of seven siblings who grew up in a rural farm household run by his father and mother, Eleazer and Sibel Adams. His impressive family tree included the two Adams United States presidents and Revolutionary War patriot, Samuel Adams.
As he grew to manhood, J. C. Adams recognized a unique ability he had when it came to understanding the behavior of wild animals. This talent came in handy when he was hired to help manage a traveling show of wild animals that had been shipped over from Africa. The twenty-one year old Adams was employed by the troupe — until fate played its hand when he was nearly killed by a Royal Bengal Tiger. Bedridden for months while enduring a year-long recovery process, he switched to a safer trade as shoe and boot maker, something his father had him apprentice at during his teen years.
In time, while still a young man, Adams started his own shoe-making business in Boston, just as former President John Adams’ father had done. He also married Cylena Drury and began raising a family. In 1849, however, he and his father, Eleazer, lost their combined savings in a major venture that went up in flames and caused financial ruin to both of them. Subsequently, Eleazer Adams ended his own life. After those combined tragedies, Adams was a broken man, and it seemed his only reprieve was the lure of the Great California Gold Rush. His decision to join the western migration left Cylena no choice but to move their brood in with her own family, thus enabling Adams to head west with the multitude of other gold rush hopefuls — and his vow to send money home to Cylena as soon as he was able.
Grizzly Adams in San Francisco, late 1850s
Grizzly Adams in
New York, 1860
In California, after “numerous hardships and privations” that Adams described he had endured during the six-months it took him to get there, the transplanted New Englander settled near Stockton where he began mining for gold. He proved himself industrious and soon became a land owner and an employer of several men who helped run his own sluice operation and cattle business. His trusting nature, however, enabled low-end business sharks to repeatedly con him out of his gold claims, to a point where by late 1852, after losing nearly everything he had in what he determined was a ‘rigged’ law suit, he’d had enough and decided to turn his back on civilization.
Once again disheartened by misfortune, J. C. Adams decided to head for the wild. After loading the last of his meager provisions onto a creaky ox-cart that he “needed to soak for a week” in order for it to stay together, he pointed himself toward the highland wilderness of central California, and after trekking a difficult 130 miles, he came to a clearing about 20 miles northwest of the great Yosemite Valley. He managed to build a cabin there amid giant sequoias, a vast array of wildlife, and some neighboring Miwok tribes—just in time for winter to set in. He would later recall his initial period of solitude there the ‘most satisfying’ of his entire life.
“In the fall of 1852, 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.”
While adapting to his new environment, John C. Adams learned to commune with nature. He also become an expert hunter and tracker, and a provider for himself and his Miwok neighbors. As well, beyond engaging in his newfound hobby of collecting a wide variety of living wild animals, he also took to raising and training some young grizzly bears he came across, lending to his soon earned nickname of “Grizzly Adams.”
Using some of his grown, trained bears as pack animals, Grizzly Adams led several tracking expeditions through the western frontier, always disembarking from his central California encampment. He not only managed to traverse the bulk of California, but he trekked as far north as the Canadian border, as far south as the Mojave Desert, and as far east as Montana and Salt Lake City. He hired a part native American scout named ‘Sykesy’, and he bartered for additional Awani scouts to help him on his journeys as well, further solidifying his relationships with different tribal leaders as his legend grew. So much marked a key difference between Grizzly Adams and other mountain men of his era, who often boasted themselves to be ‘Indian hunters’. (Struggling, morally corrupt gold miners making under a dollar a day could get “$5 each” for Native American scalps.)
Adams commended the integrity of the Native Americans he befriended, worked with, and traded with. He described them as “fair and honest people” in their lives, dealings, and doings, and he greatly valued the symbiotic relationship he had with them.
For about four years, J. C. ‘Grizzly’ Adams lived a mountain man’s life hunting and collecting live wild animal specimens during his self-exiled mountain-man life, until he grew tired of it, at which point he opted to relocate to San Francisco when he was offered a chance to make money by putting on shows with his live bears and other animals.
[Note: Grizzly Adams was erroneously described in some later accounts as one who had ‘hunted relentlessly in the mountains for ten years.’ This was far from the truth. The total time he spent in California mountain ranges was about two and a half years, during which time he scouted, hunted, and traded with Native Americans who much appreciated the supplement of his meats and furs he gave them. Not to leave out, hunting was a way of life back then and and many a frontiersmen, such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Jeremiah Johnson were also renowned for their great skills there. However, a number of the common hunting methods that were used in the 1800’s would be unthinkable today, with many having been outlawed in the 21st century.]
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In 1856, Grizzly Adams entered San Francisco in grand fashion with a parade on Market Street featuring his menagerie of bears and other animals. He began running his own enterprise there while readapting to city life, and in due time he and his ‘Mountaineer Museum’ became popular enough that news reporters started to take notice. One young reporter in particular, Theodore Hittell, wrote an impressive series of articles about ‘the wild Yankee’ and his animals, that it led the new city-dweller J. C. Adams to soon attain celebrity status. [Hittell would eventually go on to become a recognized California historian.]
Adams was initially billed as “The Wild Yankee” at Thomas Maguire’s opulent Opera House and his Theater Americana in San Francisco, but the name was soon replaced by his more recognizable moniker, “Grizzly Adams.”
For years, Grizzly Adams regularly performed with his bears and other animals in his cavernous Mountaineer Museum located in the basement of the former Stock Exchange building and in San Francisco’s most notable theater venues. With his favorite grizzly bear companions, Benjamin Franklin, Lady Washington, Funny Joe and General Fremont, he embraced his newfound notoriety that left him recognized by the likes of future Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman, Levi Strauss, Domingo Ghirardelli, and the indomitable Lola Montez, AKA “the Countess of Landsfeld” as she had been known during her European days. Miss Montez had her own pet grizzly bear and was famous for performing her infamous ‘Spider Dance’ to throngs of wage-spending miners. (She was also known for her dalliances with some of San Francisco’s upper-crust male denizens.)
Within the sordid political scene of San Francisco then, Grizzly Adams also witnessed Governor Neely Johnson’s controversial vigilante’s movement of the mid-1850’s that he had assembled to curtail the city’s reputed lawlessness.
Famous goldrush era artist, Charles Nahl’s 1856 woodblock etching of Grizzly Adams along stride of his favorite pet grizzly bear, Benjamin Franklin
Notwithstanding the city’s many other entrapments, Grizzly Adams ended up enjoying his new life there more than he thought he would. Always wearing his buckskins, he could often be seen strolling with his favorite bear, Ben, on Kearny Street to one of its several different restaurants he would choose to dine at—while the docile bear remained tethered outside in his sight. His extensive overhead required significant funding, though, as the bulk of his animals, especially his bears had special boarding needs that required much tending from hired help, and so much food that it proved difficult for the mountain man turned ‘showman’ to get ahead financially.
No matter, Theodore Hittell, the aforementioned reporter who wrote for the San Francisco Bulletin, was so taken by Grizzly Adams that he ended up compiling enough journals about the mountain man that it enabled him to assemble a vast chronological account of Grizzly Adams’ fascinating adventures. For whatever reason, though, J. C. Adams, who often used aliases while out west, used the name of his brother, ‘James’ to identify himself to Hittell, leaving him to be mistakenly attributed in Hittell’s later published work about him as, ‘James Capen Adams.’
Daguerreotype of Grizzly Adams by famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper 1861
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As the novelty of his animal shows began to fade, fate again stepped in to play its hand with Grizzly Adams. He sustained a head wound during a wrestling exhibition with one of his bears that proved difficult to heal. Not too long after that, in late 1858, an unknown illness caused the death of his star bear, Benjamin Franklin, that left Adams heartbroken. Realizing his health was in jeopardy due to his head wound, and still grieving over the loss of Ben (the bear received a celebrity-worthy eulogy in the paper), Grizzly Adams began longing for home and decided to leave San Francisco to head back to the east coast—specifically to New York. He managed to do so with as many of his animals as he could load onto a ship scheduled to sail him around Cape Horn on an epic ‘Noah’s Ark like’ adventure.
Adams departed from San Francisco’s Bay harbor in early January of 1860, aboard the clipper ship, ‘Golden Fleece’ with over sixty animals. His menagerie included his remaining bears, some foxes, wolves, antelope, a bald eagle, a few reptiles, and a giant sea lion.
The arduous journey took three months, and Grizzly Adams, with his head already injured from his bear wrestling, re-injured it during the ocean voyage doing the same thing, this time enough to where it left him coming to terms with the sharp reality of knowing he might never recover.
J. C. ‘Grizzly’ Adams was as tough as they came though, and after he arrived in New York City he proudly paraded his troupe of bears and other animals on Broadway while heading for the office of P.T. Barnum—where the famous showman, who had already purchased an interest in Adams’ impressive menagerie, quickly signed him to a performance contract. As Barnum’s ‘Old Grizzly Adams’ act became popular in New York City, Adams was also reunited with his wife, Cylena, who he had managed to send some money to via post by ships that dropped mail off in Panama’s western port to head overland to an awaiting ship on the other side. This happened a few times during Adams’ long absence from his wife and three children. The couple’s reunion was bitter-sweet, though, as Adams’ health began failing to a point where Cylena found herself serving as a nurse for her decade-long estranged husband in between his performances.
By the fall of 1860, John Capen ‘Grizzly’ Adams could no longer perform, and Cylena felt it was best that he return to Boston so he could spend his last days with his family. Grizzly Adams soon after died on October 25, 1860, three days after his forty-eighth birthday, and a few weeks before the election of Abraham Lincoln as President.
P. T. Barnum paid for Adams’ funeral and burial in Charlton, Massachusetts, in the same cemetery Adams’ father, Eleazer was buried, who had hung himself in 1849. The famous mountain man’s headstone is still there today; his wife, Cylena and one of their daughters are buried near him.
There is no measuring the influence Grizzly Adams had on P.T. Barnum, especially when it came the way the famous show promoter viewed the profitable future of circus animals. The legendary Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that lasted well into the Twenty First century gave testament to that. Certainly Adams was one of the original American animal pageant leaders to parade a large troupe of exotic wild beasts into major cities, a tradition that stuck with most all major circus acts later on, mostly for practical reasons, especially with elephants. Some of Adams’ animals also contributed to the start-ups of both the San Francisco and the New York City Zoos. It was even remarked how into the Twentieth Century, descendants of a few animals once owned and raised by Grizzly Adams were still attractions in both places.
Epilogue
The incredible gold rush era story of Grizzly Adams is an epic saga that left an indelible stamp on the American west culture. His 1960’s biographer, Richard Dillon, even described Grizzly Adams as, “perhaps the greatest individualist California ever produced.”
Other written accounts of Grizzly Adams’ life along with the 1970’s motion picture and popular TV series that were inspired by his mountain man existence, left Grizzly Adams to be recognized with international iconic status. It can also be said, the countless miles of north-to-south western frontier trails he blazed amounted to one man’s ‘settling of the west’ on his own terms.
Charles Nahl drawing of Mountain
Man Grizzly Adams, 1856
Due to the numerous mis-projections about the life he led, the ‘famous American’ credit due to Grizzly Adams seems to be lacking today. After all, few people participated-in and endured the California Gold Rush with the end result leaving them famous on both the west coast and east coast at the same time. It is true that over a five year time period, from 1856 through 1860, Grizzly Adams became famous in both places leaving him to be placed among the first United States ‘bi-coastal celebrities’ — until the Civil War all-but erased peoples’ memory of him.
No doubt though, that the most surprising part of Grizzly Adams’ historic legacy appears on a famous flag. Few are aware that the same bear image seen for over a hundred years on California’s state flag was modeled after a grizzly bear named ‘Samson’, painted by famous western artist Charles Nahl in 1855, and even fewer realize that Samson was a huge, live bear that was originally captured and owned by California’s greatest mountain man ever – the one and only, Grizzly Adams.
“In the fall of 1852, 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.”
– Grizzly Adams
The term GRIZZLY ADAMS is a registered trademark of The Grizzly Adams® Company.
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