1946 map charts America’s folk heroes; Maine doesn’t get Paul Bunyan

Recalling Bangor's heyday as a lumber port, the Paul Bunyan statue stands near the Southeast Entry of the new Cross Insurance Center.  (BDN photo by Brian Swartz)

Recalling Bangor’s heyday as a lumber port, the Paul Bunyan statue stands near the Southeast Entry of the new Cross Insurance Center. (BDN photo by Brian Swartz)

Maine and Minnesota have been locked in an ongoing tug-of-war over which state gets to claim the folk hero lumberjack Paul Bunyan. When the sculptor behind the 31-foot-tall landmark Bangor statue announced earlier this year he wants to add a giant statue of Babe, Bunyan’s companion blue ox, the mayor of the Minnesota city of Bemidji maligned the proposed Babe statue as being too “menacing-looking.”

The Bemidji Babe statue, in comparison, reflects the legendary Ox’s more friendly demeanor, the Minnesota mayor said at the time.

Well, this month, the news analysis website Vox posted a new examination of a 1946 painting of America, by the late and influential artist William Gropper, mapping out the country’s regional folk heroes

William Gropper (Library of Congress)

William Gropper (Library of Congress)

Gropper was apparently doing those theme maps before they were cool. If only Facebook existed back in 1946.

Anyway, in Gropper’s version of America’s folk history, Maine has no claim to Bunyan. The colorful painting places the big lumberjack and his faithful ox in both Minnesota and the Pacific Northwest — over what appears to be Oregon and Idaho — but not the Pine Tree State.

Elsewhere across the country appear the likes of Johnny Appleseed, Rip Van Winkle, John Henry, Hiawatha and somebody by the name of Deadwood Dick, among many others.

So who is Maine’s resident folk hero?

As Vox explains it, Maine gets a lonely woman named “Evangeline.”

“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem immortalized the tale of this Acadian girl searching for her lost love,” reports Vox.

Longfellow’s epic poem, “Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie,” was published in 1847, and follows the fictional titular character as she scours the land for her fiance Gabriel, from whom she was separated when the British forcefully deported the Acadians from the Canadian Maritime provinces in the mid-1700s.

At the end of the poem, the heartbroken Evangeline joins the Sisters of Mercy in Philadelphia, where, while working with the poor during an epidemic, she discovers her beloved Gabriel among the downtrodden and sick. And after a lifetime of searching for her love, he dies in her arms.

It’s a beautiful, however tragic, story. What do you think? Is Evangeline Maine’s top folk hero? Or should Gropper have painted Paul Bunyan and Babe over our state?

A statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's tragic heroine Evangeline stands outside the Acadian Village in Van Buren. (Paul Cyr Photography)

A statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s tragic heroine Evangeline stands outside the Acadian Village in Van Buren. (Paul Cyr Photography)