Bloodstoppers & Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
Richard Dorson, U of W Press, 2008

Bloodstoppers & Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Richard Dorson, U of W Press, 2008

Folklore is more than just stories. Folklore tells us a lot about what we (or the people of a culture whose stories we observe) think about the world, what we value, what we fear. You can learn a lot just by listening to stories, even ridiculous folkloric ones. The interesting thing about a collection of folklore like Bloodstoppers & Bearwalkers, one gathered more than half a century ago by a folklorist who was not afraid to insert himself into the narrative, is that you can learn not only about the traditional stories of the hodgepodge of cultures in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the 1940s but about the broader American culture of the 1940s and its reaction to the immigrants (and natives) in its midst. 

In the 1940s Richard Dorson, a folklorist who would go on to become one of the most respected in the field, took a job at a university in Lansing, Michigan. In pursuing his research he longed to find an untapped source of folklore, a culture or region that had not already been mined for stories. He soon discovered what he was looking for only a couple hundred miles from his campus: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a remote wilderness populated by the remnants of the native culture (what was called, back then, the Chippewa) as well as a mix of European ethnicities who had come to the UP to build its lumber and mining industries. Dorson headed north, crossing the Straits of Mackinac on a ferry – this was long before the great suspension bridge connected the UP to the Lower Peninsula – and set about finding talkative old-timers who could remember old stories. 

Dorson’s search for storytellers is often more entertaining than the stories themselves. Venturing into the deep, dark forests to find odd characters in hidden shacks, he finds nearly forgotten people along with the nearly forgotten stories. He writes about them with affection and humor, and his contextualizing of the folklore is probably the best part of the book. 

Not that the folklore isn’t worth the trouble. Dorson finds stories that span almost the entire range of human traditions. The Native Americans contribute tales of their pantheon of gods and spirits, explaining their conception of the world and its origins. French Canadians show off the superstitions that they brought with them as they descended from Quebec. The Cornish miners display their prodigious senses of humor. Tales abound of superhuman Finns and spooky Canadians. Stories of supernatural creatures are popular, too, from the bewitching “bearwalks” of the natives to the terrifying loup garou of the French. The UP is an isolated, forbidding place, and each culture’s stories of ill-intentioned creatures are at home there. 

Dorson gives us a picture of 1940s America, as well, through his own words. He comments on the prejudices against most of the ethnic groups he visits, doing what he can to dispel the negative stereotypes, but their very existence says a lot about the bigger culture that surrounded the residents of the UP back then. When Dorson tells of a Native American who tried to get Dorson to buy him whiskey – because Indians were forbidden by law to buy whiskey in those days – our eyes are opened to a dark part of American history that was even more in evidence in those days than it is today. These marginal people in the UP were outsiders, something that our own folklore reveals to be the thing we’re most afraid of. 

This new third edition of Dorson’s classic book features an introduction and appendix by James P. Leary. These additions are fairly academic and might be too dry for the general reader to plow through, but they contribute much to the book. The introduction provides essential background about Dorson’s reputation, his method and the context in which he gathered his Michigan stories. The appendix further fleshes out Dorson’s foray into the UP and includes a pile of stories left out of previous editions. This bonus material no doubt makes this edition even more valuable and interesting than previous incarnations. 

The cultures and stories that Dorson recorded six decades ago are no doubt largely vanished even from the far reaches of the UP, making this book an even more valuable document than it was in the middle of the 20th century. Yet, one of the most fascinating aspects of a book like this is the way that it links ancient folklore with contemporary culture. Just visit repositories of modern folklore to see how we still use tales and ridiculous stories to grapple with our deepest fears. Looking at it that way, we can see a book like Dorson’s as a snapshot of a particular time and place, an intermediate step in a human tradition that started at the very beginning and will not end until we do.

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