bear grease

"You look like a wild man, Charles," Ma said. "You're standing your hair all on end."
"It stands on end anyway, Caroline," Pa answered. "When I was courting you, it never would lie down, no matter how much I slicked it with bear grease." --Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 9, "A Fire on the Hearth"

Not only was bear fat used in cooking or as a substitute for butter, it was rendered and used as a hair dressing or leather conditioning for boots, belts, and the like. In H.W. Harper's Universal Recipe Book: Containing Recipes Valuable to Every Tradesman, Artist, Merchant, and Lady (published in 1869), there is the following recipe:

POMADE FOR BEAUTIFYING THE HAIR: GREEN BEAR'S GREASE.
Bear's grease digested with fresh walnut leaves and strained. This is repeated with more leaves till the pomade is sufficiently colored; it is then scented with oil of rosemary, thyme, and bergamot.

Commercial preparations of bear grease were sold in pots or tins. Most preparations were scented. The lids to these containers are highly collectable today; they can cost hundreds of dollars for unusual ones. The lid shown above often fetches over a hundred dollars on ebay. If you don't want to spend that kind of money and only want the name, look for Finland's Bear Brand leather dressing. It doesn't contain actual bear grease, but comes in a pretty cute tin all the same.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:56 AM