Distinctly Montana Magazine

d i s t i n c t ly m o n ta n a • s u m m e r 2 0 1 5 94 W i l D W ES T W O r DS W i l D W ES T W O r DS with CHrySTi THE WOrDSmiTH A uniquely American institution, the BEE, grew up around the tradition of neighbors uniting in a common task. e Oxford English Dictionary's historical database dates the earliest citation of the word bee in this communal context at 1769, in the Boston Gazette. "Last ursday about twenty young Ladies met…on purpose for a Spinning Match (or what is called, in the Country, a Bee)." In the years to follow, written documents detail corn-husking bees, apple bees, raising bees for barn building, quilting, wood-chopping, road-building and candy-making bees. In 1850, the term "spelling bee" appeared for the first time in e Knickerbocker, a monthly magazine published in New York City. at it was encased in quotation marks indicates the term was relatively new in 1850. Since then, the spelling bee has become a thriving institution, and is one of the last American communal events to be called a bee. We haven't attached this notion to our 21st century collective activities; for example, there are no wine-tasting nor Scrab- ble nor basketball bees, and harvesting bees in a mechanized age seem quaint and old-fashioned. So before this term becomes obsolete, let's look at its origin. Some word watchers contend the term was inspired by the activities of organized and efficient bee societies. Other etymo- logical evidence points to an older dialectal English word been (pronounced BEE-in), meaning "voluntary help." Standing bipedally at eight feet and moving its 400-plus pounds across the landscape with the confidence of a fear- less marauder, the grizzly bear inspires respect, awe and fear in the humans with whom it shares a habitat. In addition, we have a fascination with the animal that is so like us. e grizzly eats the foods we like: meat, fruit, seeds, plants, fats, sugars. Anthropomorphically playful and curious, it is also fiercely protective of its young. Individual bears, like humans, can be perilously unpredictable. Meriwether Lewis was one of the first European- Americans to interact with the grizzly bear and live to tell his tales. Encamped at the Great Falls of the Missouri on July 15, 1805, Lewis wrote in his journal that the grizzly is "a most tremendous animal," and that only providence kept his men from falling "sacrifice to [its] ferocity." Such sentiments, typical of early accounts of the animal, inspired American naturalist and ornithologist George Ord, in 1815, to give the animal its scientific name Ursus horribilis, "horrible bear." Horribilis derives from the Latin verb horrere, to "tremble, quake, dread, loathe." e first mention of the bear's common name, grIzzly, has been traced to the journals of Patrick Gass, a sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who called the "grizly" a "bold and farocious" animal. Grizzly, meaning "grey- haired" must have seemed, to 19th century American English speakers, an appropriate moniker for a creature with the silver-tipped fur typical of many individuals BEE DEparTmENT HEriTagE HEriTagE HEriTagE grizzly

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