Most of the time the grizzly is silent. When he does say anything it is
in a queer, but expressive, language. He utters a choppy champ of a
cough; he says "Woof," "Woof," with various accents; he growls
eloquently; he grunts and he sniffs. The youngsters say something like
"Eu-wow-wow," and when forlorn give an appealing cry I cannot translate
into words.
Little is known concerning the mating-habits of wild grizzly bears. The
majority of authorities maintain that mating takes place in June and
July, while a few believe that it occurs late in the autumn. The few
times that I have seen males and females together were in late June and
July.
Although known to the white race only a little more than a century, the
grizzly has been a part of the life and legends of the Indians for
countless generations. Often feared, frequently admired, his brain and
brawn are featured again and again; he is always the acknowledged chief
and master of the wilderness.
Many are the names that he carries: grizzly bear, silver-tip, white
bear, bald-face, cinnamon bear, roach-back, range bear, and others.
The first printed mention of the grizzly that I know of is one by Edward
Umfreville, who, in writing concerning Hudson's Bay in 1790, mentions
the "Grizzle Bear." In 1795 Sir Alexander MacKenzie writes of the
"Grisly Bear." But the grizzly was given a definite place in history
when Lewis and Clark mentioned him in their Journal, in April, 1805, as
the "white bear." Much that they wrote was made public, and the bear's
career started, by Governor DeWitt Clinton in an address before the
Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, May 4, 1814.
As is shown by Guthrie's Geography, George Ord, the naturalist,
described and first classified the grizzly as _Ursus horribilis_, in
1815. This was from information which Brackenridge had gathered, chiefly
from the Journal of Lewis and Clark, and was based on the "white bear"
of the type locality of the Missouri River a little above the mouth of
Poplar River, northeastern Montana.
Dr. C. Hart Merriam is the supreme authority concerning bears. Following
I give his classification of the grizzly and big brown bears, together
with quotations from his introduction to "North American Fauna, No. 41"
(1918):--
"REVIEW OF THE GRIZZLY AND BIG BROWN BEARS OF NORTH AMERICA (_Genus
Ursus_)
"WITH DESCRIPTION OF A NEW GENUS VETULARCTOS
"When Audubon and Bachman published their great work on the Mammals
of North America (1846-1854), and in fact up to the year 1857, it
was commonly believed by naturalists as well as by hunters and the
public generally that there was only a single species of grizzly
bear--the one described by Lewis and Clark in 1804-5, and named
_Ursus horribilis_ by Ord in 1815. Baird, in 1857, described another
species, from Coppermines, New Mexico, which he named _Ursus
horriæus_.