MONARCH: the Big Bear of Tallac, by Ernest Thompson Seton

Ernest Thompson Seton’s book, “Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac.” Published in 1919, it tells the story of a tiny Grizzly cub who grew to be the Monarch of the Plains — and the Prisoner of humanity’s arrogance. “Kind memory calls the picture up before me now, clear, living clear: I see them as they sat, the one small and slight, the other tall and brawny, leader and led, rough men of the hills. They told me this tale–in broken bits they gave it, a sentence at a time. … They told of the river at our feet: of its rise, a thread-like rill, afar on Tallac’s side, and its growth–a brook, a stream, a little river, a river, a mighty flood that rolled and ran from hills to plain to meet a final doom so strange that only the wise believe. … reverencing the indomitable spirit of the mountaineer, worshiping the mighty Beast that nature built a monument of power, and loving and worshiping the clash, the awful strife heroic, at the close, when these two met.” – Ernest Thompson Seton