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Species-wise, she was petite.
They called her the Little Black Bear.
Mated to Old White Face
by necessity: they were
the last bears in the Santa Ana Mountains.
They roamed the brushy ridges, ambling down
at night to feast on bee-hives in the orchards,
fat sheep and cattle, whose necks snapped like twigs
with one swipe of fore-paw
tipped with rapier claws—few were
the creatures who could withstand a grizzly.
Back in the days of ranchos y fiestas,
a cow gone dry would be driven by vaqueros
to the clearing at the mouth of Limestone Canyon.
When daylight came, they’d gallop down the hill,
shake out and swing reatas—a mad race
to see what brave caballero
would be the first to land his lariat
around the feasting bear. With many ropes
pulled tight, a grizzly could be led along
for miles to the Sepulveda ranch house
(also known as El Refugio).
There he would be penned
with a toro mal for entertainment.
By the mid-1890’s so few bear
remained the mountain ranchers gave them names.
Moccasin John had left the claws
off a rear paw in a trap;
his track looked enough like a giant foot
to earn a nick-name from Jess Adkinson.
One night Moccasin John fed his sweet tooth
on twelve stands of bees. He paid the next
day up in Holy Jim Canyon. With tracks
fourteen inches long, and eight across,
he hadn’t been that difficult to find.
Six men joined Ed Adkinson (son of Jess)
in hauling sacks of bear meat down the mountain.
Moccasin John’s departure left just two
grizzlies to rule Old Saddleback:
the Little Black Bear and her white-faced mate.
Surprised by deer hunters while sunning
himself in a clearing in the chaparral,
Old White Face took a bullet at 400 yards
and left a blood-trail through the manzanita—
only one more round was needed the next morning.
For seven years the Little Black stayed hidden,
wary of man, with all the wilderness
to hide in: from the San Mateo to the south
all the way to Fremont Canyon’s caves . . .
a honey raid a couple times a year,
a hunter’s campfire story of a sighting.
Her range diminished. At the end
of 1907, Trabuco Canyon—
named for a Spanish soldier’s lost blunderbuss—
became the scraggy bear’s last larder.
Ed Adkinson ranched here, and Andrew Joplin.
Like all the canyon families (and their dogs)
they kept a lookout for the Little Black Bear.
Her taste for sweets proved her undoing as
she got regular in her raids and made a trail.
Adkinson and Joplin rigged a bear trap
chained to a two-foot piece of railroad iron.
The next morning the whole thing had disappeared.
Five miles over rocks and through thick brush
the Little Black Bear dragged the trap and weight.
When the hounds caught up with her at last
she was standing up and swinging away
with her long claws.
Barking, howling, they backed her to the edge
of the short bluff—
when she went over all the dogs did too.
Into the bloody melee, Ed aimed his 30-30.
Three shots later it was over.
They slung her on a pole and brought her down
the mountain.
In Santa Ana, a shoe store
put her hide out on display in the front window.
It drew old-timers like . . . honey draws a bear.
They hungrily gazed
and re-hashed their hunting glory days.
“That ain’t nothin’ but a common black bear,”
one gentleman declared, and so began
yet another grizzly skirmish:
Adkinson and Joplin were not pleased
to have aspersions cast their way;
with pride they pointed to the three-inch claws—
no California black bear sported daggers
of such wicked length.
It took the highest
of government authorities to settle
the dispute: the USDA’s chief biologist
in Washington D.C. received the pelt
and skull with many thanks and sent them back
a letter: “Indeed it was an old
female grizzly. We are very glad
to have this specimen for our Museum
where it will remain forever labeled
with your names.”
Adapted from the information in Shadows of Old Saddleback by Terry Stephenson, The Fine Arts Press, 1948.
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Trabuco Canyon, former grizzly haunt. March 2008.
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