However, the old chief understood,
and was disposed to kill him in revenge; but his wife found means to
avert her father's anger. The winter season now coming on, Muckwa
prepared to accompany his wife into winter quarters; they selected a
large tamarack tree, which was hollow, and lived there comfortably until
a party of hunters discovered their retreat. The she-bear told Muckwa to
remain quietly in the tree, and that she would decoy off the hunters.
She came out of the hollow, jumped from a bough of the tree, and escaped
unharmed, although the hunters shot after her. Some time after, she
returned to the tree, and told Muckwa that he had better go back to his
own people. "Since you have lived among us," said she, "we have nothing
but ill-fortune; you have killed my sister; and now your friends have
followed your footsteps to our retreats to kill us. The Indian and the
bear cannot live in the same lodge, for the Master of Life has appointed
for them different habitations." So Muckwa returned with his son to his
own people; but he never after would shoot a she-bear, for fear that he
should kill his wife."
I admire this story for the _savoir faire_, the nonchalance, the Vivian
Greyism of Indian life. It is also a poetical expression of the sorrows
of unequal relations; those in which the Master of Life was not
consulted. Is it not pathetic; the picture of the mother carrying off
the child that was like herself into the deep, cool caves, while the
other, shivering with cold, cried after her in vain? The moral, too, of
Muckwa's return to the bear lodges, thinking to hide his sin by silence,
while it was at once discerned by those connected with him, is fine.
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