page_title: Bear-baiting
section_title: North America
hierarchical_section_title: Bear-baiting / History / North America
caption_attribution_description: English: Bull and Bear fight at Algiers, New Orleans, 1853. Illustration.
context_page_description: Bear-baiting is a blood sport involving the worrying or tormenting of bears with dogs. It may also involve pitting a bear against another animal.
context_section_description: As recently as 2010, illegal bear-baiting was practiced publicly in South Carolina. All such public exhibitions have been shut down as of 2013.
  In the 19th century and during Mexican and earlier Spanish colonial rule, fights had been organized in California, which had a subspecies of brown bear of its own. In a case of the bear winning, the bear would use its teeth to catch a bull between its horns, on its nose, which would allow the bear to move its head enough to twist its neck, or bite a part of the bull's body, like the tongue, or use its paws to catch or harm the bull, like in squeezing its neck, or catching its tongue:
  According to Cahuilla people, who claimed to be able to communicate with bears, one of their men attended a fight at a pueblo in Los Angeles. During the first part of the fight, the bull kept knocking down the bear, before the man whispered to the bear that it had to defend itself, or else it would be killed. Upon that, the bear fought back, and broke the bull's neck.
caption: A bear and bull fight in New Orleans, 1853
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