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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:12:25 GMT -5
Continued.... The Chumash, living near the "Valley of the Bears," a land of long grassy swales, studded with oaks, where grizzlies were unusually plentiful, evidently believed that all who died there became grizzlies. In the mythology of the California Indians there is a profusion of tales regarding animal spirits ( Gifford and Block, 1930 ), but, strangely enough, the grizzly is poorly represented. The Wintun spoke of thunder and lightning as being a pair of destructive twins born of Grizzly Bear Woman. Other tribes had tales that concern adventures of grizzlies; but in the main the bears seemingly did nor appeal to the imagination of the Indians as much as smaller beasts, such as the coyote. Anthropologists have speculated why the grizzly was not so favored a character for tales as the clever and mischievous coyote. The answer seems to be, in part, that the bear, the most impressive of all animals, came to have a far more important role than that of a mere mythological character from the past. It became instead a sinister and living force in the everyday native religion of the Indians and thereby exercised a profound and direct influence in the superstitions of almost every man, woman, and child in most tribes.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:13:05 GMT -5
Continued.... Long before any anthropologist had seen the natives of California or had begun systematic interpretation of their beliefs, General Bidwell ( 1897 ) recorded that "the grizzly bear was looked upon by the valley Indians with superstitious awe, also by the coast Indians. They were said to be people, but very bad people, and I have known Indians to claim that some of the old men could go into the night and talk with the bears.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:13:39 GMT -5
Continued.... The savageness of the bears gave rise to a specialized class of shamans who, in turn, implanted greater fear in the minds of the Indians by attributing additional evil qualities to the grizzlies. The variety of form and function manifested by the grizzly shamn in different tribes was so great that this character has been described by a number of terms in the anthropological literature. Besides "grizzly-bear shaman," other typical names were "bear shaman," "bear doctor," "human bear," "bear man," "man bear," "werebear," and "were-bear shaman." All referred to the grizzly and none to the relatively innocuous black bear.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:14:08 GMT -5
Continued.... The bear-men and bear-women of the Nisenan could not bekilled. They not only were friends of the grizzlies, but they were inherently vicious and did no good for the tribe.During the summer, they went about in groups, as real grizzlies do, and they attacked whomever they met ( Kroeber, 1929 ). The westside Mono believed the grizzlies that carried away women were really this kind of werebear, and that the children by such unions were half bear and half human ( Gifford, 1932 ).
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:14:43 GMT -5
Continued.... The Indian belief that certain men, for good or evil, could transform themselves into grizzlies obviously belongs to the realm of fancy. More difficult to disprove is the often defiant belief of some tribes, particularly those of central California, that bear-men encased themselves in the actual skins of grizzlies for the purpose of taking human life more easily. In this garb, they roamed the country, slaying and robbing whomever they encountered, whether friend or foe ( Curtis, 1924 ). They were greatly feared, and other Indians always tried to elude rather than to fight them; for by their malevolence, rapidity, fierceness, and resistance to wounds they were capable of inflicting greater injury than real bears ( Kroeber, 1907 ). This belief obviously was a variation of the widespread werewolf idea, a belief that even today has a powerful hold on the imagination of many civilized people in the Old World.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:15:22 GMT -5
Continued.... Whether the bearskin disguise existed outside the imagination of the Indian and was actually worn for the abetment of murderous deeds is a debatable question. Models of such suits have been prepared for museums, but no ethnologist has discovered an original. Kroeber ( 1925 ) concluded that some Indians probably possessed the disguises, but that "their feats of slaughter existed chiefly if not wholly in the imagination of themselves and their public." He argued that it would be impossible for a man to travel far on all fours and thenfight successfully while encumbered with heavy wrappings and armed only with a dagger.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:16:00 GMT -5
Continued.... Barrett ( 1917 ) pointed out that belief in those creatures was deeply rooted in the native mind; even as late as the 1890's, when the white men had suppressed most aboriginal practices, the Pomo were convinced that the gauk buraghal still lived. In the same line of thought, Curtis ( 1924 ) contended that since the Indian imagination is not particularly inventive, firmly held traditions can be credited with at least a modicum of fact. He concluded that "it is highly probable, though not susceptible of proof, that certain men... actually on occasion wore bear-skin suits for the sake of the bear-like qualities to be gained thereby." Beals ( 1933 ) pointed out that because the bear-man had a tremendous psychological advantage over a lone Indian, to whom even a real grizzly was an object of dread, he was in a better position to commit a murder, if he so desired, than was an ordinary person. Beals concluded that "there seems good evidence that bear shamans... actually dressed as bears and in this disguise actually killed people."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:16:52 GMT -5
Continued.... Bell ( 1930 ) mentioned a fight staged in Mexico between a grizzly and a lion that had been imported from Africa: "When a few years ago, a Los Angeles County grizzly was sent to Monterrey, Mexico, to be pitted against the man-killing African lion 'Parnel" the great Californian handled the African king as a cat would a rat. He killed him so quickly that the big audience hardly knew how it was done." ( in my own words )... I feel that I must again state that this post, quoted from "California Grizzly" by Tracy I. Storer and Lloyde P. Tevis Jr. which was copyrighted in 1955 came long before the "home-computer" era. There are other versions of this fight, between Parnell the lion and Ramadam the grizzly with "other outcomes" but they were all created for the popular wild animal face-off blogs by big cat enthusiasts. A copy from the original newspaper is to this day hanging on the wall of the California state capital in Sacramento.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:17:24 GMT -5
The Grizzly Book by Jack Samson ... Henry Kelsey, at age 14, of the Hudson's Bay Company in what is now the province of Alberta in 1690 wrote in his journal the first English language account of a grizzly: "And then you have a beast of severall kind The one is black a Buffalo great Another is an outgrown Bear which is good meat His skin is gett I have used all the ways I can He is man's food & he makes food of man His hide they would not me to preserve But said it was a god & they should Starve This plain affords nothing but Beast & grass..."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:17:46 GMT -5
Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock.
Our official wilderness, the National Parks, are being civilized. They stress scenery and standardized recreation. The Blackfeet used these mountains for vision quests; their medicine people sought their patron animal, Real Bear, as a spirit guide, because the grizzly was more than the animal wearing the fur coat, he was the Medicine Grizzly.
The Grizzly Almanac by Robert H. Busch.
The Blackfeet called it "The Unmentionable One" or "The Real Bear" ( nitakyaio ). They called the black bear merely "Bear" ( kyaio ), denoting its lesser status.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:18:14 GMT -5
Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock.
There is a whole chapter in Doug Peacock's book titled: THE SACRED BEAR OF THE BLACKFEET. There is far more than I have the energy or the necessary patience to copy one letter at a time by hand. But here is a small potion... American thinker and scholar Paul Shepard, writing with his colleague Barry Sanders, has said the Blackfeet myth of the bear has roots in some of the oldest of Asian religious traditions, customs which, like the American Indians', had a common origin in the prehistoric world and which live on in the language and ceremonies of the native peoples of the circumpolar north.
To the ancient Blackfeet the grizzly, whom they called Real Bear, was the most esteemed of all animals. Many surviving tales evolved from elements of the much older traditions of the Spirit Bear, the most common of which are variations in the story of the Medicine Grizzly.
The great bear was a healer and the source of power of the medicine pipe. The Blackfeet, following the way of the grizzly, held the pipe in both hands. Real Bear was killed only as a sacred enemy, and during such hunts the name of the bear was never spoken. Instead - and this indirect reference to bears occurred throughout the tribal cultures of circumpolar Europe, Asia, and North America - he was called Old Grandfather, Old Man, Old Honey Paws, or Crooked Tail.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:18:45 GMT -5
The Grizzly by Enos A. Mills.
The grizzly is easily the most popular animal in the National Parks. He really is the greatest animal on the continent. The grizzly walks: there is a dignity, a lordliness of carriage, and an indifference to all the world that impress themselves on the attention. Although known to the white race only a little more than a century, the grizzly has been a part of the life and legends of the Indians for countless generations. Often feared, frequently admired, his brain and brawn are featured again and again; he is always the acknowledged chief and master of the wilderness.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:19:07 GMT -5
The Beast that walks like Man by Harold McCracken. The Indian was a keen observer of nature. He recognized the traits and peculiarities of all the creatures of the wilderness around him, as well as the many differences in species among the mammals and birds - far more clearly than the average white man of today who has not had zoological training. He recognized the close physical affinity between the animals and his own race. He realized the fundamental similarity between the long claws of the bear, and other wild creatures, and his own fingernails; that they had fingers and toes and ribs and a backbone, just as the Indian had. He knew they had a brain, heart and blood system and genital organs, and all the rest - of the same constitution and physical function as his own and his wife's. In conception and birth, throughout the sustaining of life, and the passing into the limbo of death, there was very little difference between them. When the bear stood erect, he walked like a man. But he was always the mightier of the two. And the bear was smart. "A bear is wiser than a man," an old Abnaki Indian sage once philosophized, "because a man does not know how to live all winter without eating anything."
The red man considered all living creatures as "other people," rather than the "dumb animals" by which we moderns degrade them. Many of the tribes believed that the animals had tribes just as the Indians had, with head chiefs and councils, and that some of them were supernaturally endowed with powers by which they could help human individuals in their daily pursuits, problems, and physical ailments. The Indians had a healthy religious belief in a Greater Power. "He is in the birds and wild animals, lakes and streams, prairies and mountains. He brings the leaves in the spring. He makes the grass and the berries grow; and upon them the birds and the animals depend for life ... The Thunder is a great bird. It flies with the clouds and brings the rain. From its eyes the lightnings flash. And the Blizzard is a person, who runs before the storm and shoots his arrows." This is taken from the Blackfoot philosophy of "the power of the sun," although it represents the general belief of the Great Plains tribes.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:19:34 GMT -5
The Beast that walks like Man by Harold McCracken. The Great Spirit made Mount Shasta first of all. That was thousands of summers ago, when there was no life of any kind upon the earth. There were no animals, for there was nothing for them to eat; and no birds, for there were no trees or flowers in which they might build their nests; and no fish, for the streams and rivers had not yet been made. But one day, as the Great Spirit looked down from his home up among the stars, he decided to come down to have a closer look at the earth. So he pushed down snow and ice through a hole in the blue sky, until he had made a mountain so great that it was easy to step down upon it from a big white cloud.
As he stood on top of the great mountain and looked around, the Great Spirit saw that the earth was entirely barren and lifeless. He decided to make the earth beautiful and create living things to enjoy it. Walking down out of the snow, he put his fingers into the bare ground, and green trees, grass, and flowers instantly sprang up and began spreading into forests that quickly covered the valleys and low hills. Then he told the sun to shine a little more brightly, to melt some of the snow on the great mountains, just enough so that the water would run down to nurture the forests and the flowers. With the end of his walking stick he marked out a place for the streams and rivers, which began carrying water out to fill the sea. Then he broke off the small end of his walking stick, which he crushed into small bits in his hand, and, casting these into the streams, they became the fish which swam away to spawn. Picking some leaves from the trees, he held them in the palm of his hand and, blowing them into the air, they became birds of many kinds which flew away singing, to build their nests. After this, very pleased with what he had done, the Great Spirit broke off some more of his walking stick and, casting larger bits of it about, they became animals of many kinds. He made them of many sizes, some weak and some swift of foot, and each one a little stronger or a little swifter than others, so they would each have a good chance of survival. And when he came to the large end of his walking stick, the heavy part that he always held in his right hand, he held it thoughtfully for some time, deciding just what sort of creature he should make out of this last sturdy piece; and then he made an animal that was to be mightier than any of the others and was to rule over all the rest. This was the grizzly bear. But, when this animal took form and life, it was so strong and aggressive that the Great Spirit had to climb hurriedly back to the mountain-top, to find a safe place to rest after performing all his labors of creating life on the earth.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:20:15 GMT -5
The Beast That Walks Like a Man by Harold McCracken. Probably the first white man to ever witness the Bear Dance of the Utes, and one of the few to be privileged to learn some of its tenets, was Verner Z. Reed. In March of 1893 he was permitted to attend the sacred ceremony held in the valley of the Rio de los Pinos, a beautiful little tributary of the great San Juan, in the southwest corner of Colorado. Incidentally, this is not far from one of the last rugged strongholds where both the grizzly and the Utes are today struggling against complete extinction as species in that state. The Utes believe that their primal ancestors were bears ( grizzlies )," reported Reed after learning what he was permitted to know about the significance of the ceremony and its traditional background. "After these ( the bears ) came a race of Indians, who, on dying, were changed back into bears, and as bears they roamed in the forests and mountains until they died, when they went to the Future Land and lived with the shades ( spirits ), preserving the forms of bears, but having human wisdom and participating in the pleasures of immortality. It is believed that this transmigration ceased a long time ago, but the bears of the present ( 1893 ) are believed to be descendants of the Ute bears of old, and are therefore related to the Indians. Bear worship, in one form or another, tinges many of their ceremonies.
The Utes believed that the grizzlies possessed great magic powers and wisdom, which they were capable of transmitting over long distances, and they also believed that the bears were fully aware of the ancestral relationship between themselves and the Utes. The ceremony of the Bear Dance was therefore an aid to continuing and strengthening this friendship and also of charming the dancers as a means of protecting them from death by these mighty bears. There were also other motives involved in the affair. Important among these was the sending of messages to their dead relatives and friends who dwelt in the land of immortality; also to assist the bears to recover from winter hibernation, to find food, and to choose mates; and it was on occasion for springtime courting and love-making among Indians themselves.
That the bear was accorded human relationship, and semi-divinity, with a spirit of a higher order than others, even above man in some instances, is borne out in the lore and legends of a great many primitive racial groups in North America and other continents as well.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:21:02 GMT -5
The Beast that Walks Like Man by Harold McCracken. The Pawnees, who called themselves the Chahiksichshiks or "men of men" and who lived in the great valley of the Platte River, had a legend very similar but much more elaborate than the one previously cited. It was "The Story of Ku ruks la war' uks ti" ( "Medicine Bear" ). The hero of this interesting saga of Indian Americana was a certain poor boy of the Pawnee tribe. He was so poor that he is not even given a name at the beginning of the long story, and it is related that his whole family was so destitute that everyone looked down upon them. However, the lad decided to find honor or death; and he went to a fabled place among the hills, where there were many cedar trees and there were many skeletons of his people who had been killed in a mysterious manner. In the center of this strange graveyard he found the cave of a family of grizzlies. The father was not at home, but the friendly old she-bear said: "I am sorry that you have come here. My husband is the one who kills persons and brings them here for the children and me to eat. You had better go back to your people quickly, or he will eat you up ... He is one of those bad bears - a grizzly - medicine!" The poor boy, however, insisted on waiting to face this terrible man-eating bear. When the monster returned and saw the bold young intruder, he pounded the earth with his great paws, snorted like thunder, and blew red dust from his nostrils. He shouted that he was chief of all the grizzlies and head of all the animal lodges, and there was no living creature on earth as strong or who had as much supernatural power. The poor boy was very frightened, but he bravely faced the demon, defying all his wrath and power. Greatly admiring this unusual courage, the grizzly finally promised to adopt the boy as his own and bestow all his powers upon him. In this imaginative story there is a mingling of primitive drama, poetic justice, and mystic animal worship. To tell it briefly is only to spoil it; and even in all its translated detail it unquestionably loses a vast amount of its original conception, as it once was related in all its orthodox sincerity of complete belief by the tribal patriarchs of the proud Pawnees. The grizzly invested the poor boy with invulnerability to being injured in any way by the weapons of his enemies, and he taught him the magic of literally wiping away the wounds inflicted upon others and of restoring life to those who had been killed. When the lad finally returned to the lodge of his own father, the people quickly learned about what had happened. He had such great supernatural powers that he was able to go right into the midst of enemy warriors, without any fear of personal injury, and slay the tribal enemies with reckless abandon. And so it came to pass that "old men were calling his name, young women were singing his praise, and old women came to dance before him. People no longer made fun of his father or mother. Now they looked upon him as a great and powerful person." He was given the distinguished name of Ku ruks la war' uks ti or Medicine Bear, and sometimes they called him Ku ruks ti carish, which means Angry Bear. He brought great honor to his tribe, finally married the chief's beautiful daughter, and became a great chief in his own right - all because of the grizzly bear. These are but a few of the Indian's legends in which the grizzly was accorded a worshipful distinction and homage and which show the influence of these animals upon the red man's culture.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:21:49 GMT -5
Vance Hoyt - The Passing of the King - Westways, July, 1934. "With the invention of the repeating rifle, Old Ephraim's nobility, power and courage swiftly melted before the searing flame of gunpowder and lead. No being of flesh and blood could withstand the slaughter that followed. His kind fell by the thousands. Almost overnight the grizzly was forced to change his character and habits of living. The fearless one suddenly became the great timid beast, who slept by day and stalked by night, and eluded conflict except when forced to fight for his very life. At long last the king had been subjugated by the butcher hand of civilization... The once ruler of the wild fastness of California became extinct because his only sins were greatness in size and fearlessness of mien."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:22:10 GMT -5
The Grizzly Bear... James Capen Adams says: "I frequently saw him ( the grizzly ); he was to be found, I knew, in the bushy gorges in all directions, and sometimes, in my hunts, I would send a distant shot after him; but, as a general rule, during this first winter, I paid him the respect to keep out of his way; and he seemed somewhat ceremonious in return. Not by any means that he feared me; but he did not invite the combat, and I did not venture it." Later on he "considered it a point of honor to give battle in every case." The grizzly, he says, is "the monarch of American beasts, and, in many respects, the most formidable animal in the world to be encountered. In comparison with the lion of Africa and the tiger of Asia, though these may exhibit more activity and bloodthirstiness, the grizzly is not second in courage, and excels them in power. Like the regions which he inhabits, there is a vastness to his strength which makes him a fit companion for the monster trees and rocks of the Sierras, and places him, if not the first, at least in the first rank of all quadrupeds.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:22:37 GMT -5
Man Meets Grizzly by Young and Beyers.
Man feels both fear and admiration for the grizzly. He has respected and even, in some instances, as was the case with the Indians, venerated the grizzly bear's prowess and courage. The white man has on the whole been more grudging in his admiration, especially when he has felt his person or livestock to be threatened. The Indian alone has given his homage gladly. For the Indians, it was a signal honor to kill a bear in combat, when only spears, bows and arrows, or the limited rifle they had acquired from white traders were used. Chiefs sometimes wore necklaces of grizzly claws as indisputable tokens of their bravery.
By common consent, the grizzly is known as an aristocrat among animals, as much the monarch of North America as the lion is to Africa and the tiger is of Asia. He is not only the most powerful of our wild animals but also the most intelligent....
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 7:22:57 GMT -5
It is not surprising that early natives both feared and revered the great grizzly. Some saw a grizzly kill as a badge of courage; historian George Bird Grinnell wrote, "the death of a bear gives the warrior greater reknown than the scalp of a human enemy." Others held the bear in such awe that it was taboo to even mention his name. The Blackfeet called it "The Unmentionable One" or "The Real Bear" ( nitakyaio ). They called the black bear merely "Bear" ( kyaio ), denoting its lesser status. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and John Clark wrote an entry in their expedition journal for April 29, 1805, reporting that "Indians who go in quest of him ( the grizzly ) paint themselves and perform all the superstitious rites customary when they make war on a neighboring nation."
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