Twentieth Century “naturalist” writer Ernest Thompson-Seton's accounts portray a vindictive grizzly bear with human qualities. And those human-like qualities still are a part of the public's perception of bears, said Jeremy Johnston.

Johnston, a history instructor at Northwest College, examined renegade grizzly bears, like Seton's legendary Wahb, for April's installment of the Powell Centennial Speakers' Series.

After visiting Yellowstone National Park and Wyoming in 1897-98, Seton was inspired to write about Wahb, packaging fantasy and authenticity that he gleaned around campfires and from his observations in the field.

In a series of articles and later a book, Wahb suffers under the hands of man, and like man, exacts his revenge.

In the book, Wahb's mother and his three siblings were killed by Col. William Pickett. During the incident, Wahb is shot in the hind foot, but escapes.

Later, a Shoshone tried to kill Wahb, but the tables were turned.

“Jack” tried to shoot Wahb. In sad Jack's words: “It was Wahb done it. I seen him by the spring and wounded him. I tried to git on the shanty, but he ketched me. My God, how I suffer.”

A Seton illustration shows a gigantic grizzly and two cowering miners, one holding his hands up like the victim at a holdup.

Wahb suffered from bullets and steel traps, and to alleviate the agony, he supposedly relaxed in hot pots.

“As far as I know, no bear biologist has found a bear soaking in a hot springs,” Johnston said.

According to the story, Wahb, a bachelor and loner to the end, was hoodwinked by another grizzly arriving from the Bitterroot Range of western Montana. When Wahb left scratch marks in trees, the slick intruder would roll logs under the same trees like a stepladder so he could scratch higher.

Believing his days numbered, Wahb fled to Yellowstone's Cache Creek to die in Death Gulch, where actual bear remains were found.

“It was a great story,” Johnston said. “It was a great mix of fact and fiction.”

People believed Wahb's bogus biography.

Wahb was the product of Seton's imagination. Right?

A.A. Anderson claimed he killed the real Wahb in 1915. True or not, it added credibility to Seton's story.

Still, not everybody was buying the yarn of a fearsome bear with feelings.

John Burroughs called Seton's writing a natural-history sham.

From then on, Seton devoted his life to serious studies of wildlife.

“These books are still used today,” Johnston said.

Back around the turn of the last century, all the problem bears seemed to be missing a toe or two from some mishap or other.

Bears referred to as old “Two,” “Three” or “Four Toes” with easily detectable tracks always seemed to be at the center of mayhem or death.

“Old Three Toes was said to have killed three men,” Johnston said.

Felonious “Four Toes” premeditated murder in the Elk Fork area, leaving old clothes as bait to lure humans to ambush.

With increasing public use of Yellowstone, problem bears, like recalcitrant criminals or misbehaving children, were separated in people's minds from good bears.

One Yellowstone bear was hung from a tree and spanked.

When a troublesome Yellowstone bear was blown to bits by construction workers' dynamite, it was believed nefarious bears were nipped in the bud. The rest, it was believed, would play nice, Johnston said.

Until the 1960s, a problem bear was thought a deviant, an oddity.

Then in 1967, two women were killed by grizzlies in two separate locations in Glacier National Park.

Prior to that, bear attractants such as food were not considered a hazard. Following the women's deaths, national park dumps were closed.

Today, experts study bears through scientific eyes, but mass media still shapes the public's perception of bears, Johnston said.

“The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” the warm and fuzzy TV series of 1970s, featured a kindly owner with an equally-kindly black bear. The true Grizzly Adams contributed to the extinction of grizzlies in California and was known for his cruelty to bears he captured.

Other books and films portray grizzlies as savage beasts terrorizing towns or attacking shapely girls in scanty attire.

Timothy Treadwell, the “Grizzly Man,” had his illusions of bears shattered when the bears he was pestering in Alaska finally killed him in 2003.

Seton's stories may be better read around a campfire, where each bull or trout grows in size with each narrative.

“Frankly, it is a great story,” Johnston said. “It is a fun one to read.”