The First Bear:
The First Bear
A long, long time ago there lived a man
and a woman. They had two children. The man was a great hunter,
and he was so good with a bow, others called him Pitegcurli.
Everytime he went hunting he would always come back with
sufficient game.
One day he didn't come home when he went
hunting. But he came home the next day without any game. He
started telling his wife that he would die someday soon. He told
his wife if he died to put him in his kayak with all his hunting
tools and just let him float away.
One day he did die and his wife put him in his
kayak, like he wished, and set it in the water by the beach. When
she woke up each morning she would look at him. But on the fourth
morning her husband was gone in the kayak with his tools. She
figured that he must've gone to the land of the dead. One day
while she was gathering wood she heard a robin saying, "pitegcurl
pitegcurli", and she asked him where he heard that from? The robin
told her that there was a man named Pitegcurli living on the other
side of the the mountain with two wives.She was very curious about
this man and decided to find out who he was. So she went to her
cache and looked over all the different skins she had. There was a
caribou, a seal and a bear skin. She got the bear skin ready, went
into her house and told her children to wait for her. When she
went out she put on the bear skin. It was too loose, so she put
boards on the side of the skin.
When she went over the mountain, she saw smoke
coming out of a house. She went down and hid in the tall grass,
and watched for her husband. Not long afterwards she saw her
husband come out and get into his kayak to go hunting. While his
two wives were saying good bye to him she became so jealous that
she went down to the house and killed them both. She then put the
women up on the posts with their arms stretched out, and hid again
in the tall grass.
When her husband came to shore, he called his
wives to help him, but they didn't move. He was curious about this
and came up to take a look. Then the woman, filled with rage,
attacked her husband and tore him apart. Then she went home. But
when she got home she forgot that she was wearing the bear skin,
and went inside the house. The children got so scared that they
became little birds and flew away. The woman was so upset she
started wandering around with the bear skin on. She did this for
the rest of her life, and so she became a bear.
Told by,
Nick Isaac
Interviewed by,
Palassa Sergie
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