Term: Bunyan, Paul protagonist in folktales created in
northwoods logging camps; said to be 7 feet tall and with a 7
foot stride, Bunyan is credited with creating Lake Superior, the
St. Lawrence River, and the Black Hills of South Dakota. During
the 20th c., he became a ubiquitous symbol of American ingenuity
and power. The Bunyan stories spread throughout the woods of
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and points west betwen 1880 and
1920, until many states laid claim to his birth. Tales about his
exploits were passed orally in lumber camps to test the
credulity of new recruits and while away winter evenings,
starting about 1880. The first appearance of Bunyan in print
occured in 1904 in Duluth, Minn.; other stories followed in 1906
in Oscoda, Mich., and in 1910 in the Milwaukee nature magazine
Outer's Book (reprinted in the Washington Post and Wisconsin
State Journal the same year). In Minnesota, Red River Lumber Co.
advertising manager William Laughead drew caricatures and
rewrote stories he'd heard in lumber