NO. 4 UPPliR YUKON NATlVli CUSTOMS — SClIMlTTl'R 23 



every man he saw. There was lots of high grass about there and the old man 

 crept up to the moose on hands and knees through the grass, keeping out of 

 sight of the moose. When the old man got near the moose he stopped and 

 wished for a mouse to come along, lie told the mouse to go to the moose 

 and chew the stifif hair off behind the left shoulder. The mouse went to the 

 moose and asked to chew the hair off behind the left shoulder, to use for his 

 nest to keep the young warm. The moose refused, but told him he could 

 chew the hair from his hind quarter. The mouse insisted that he wanted the 

 hair from behind the left shoulder because it was soft and warm. So the 

 moose allowed him to take it. As soon as the hair was oflt, the old man shot 

 the moose through this spot into the heart, killing him. Then the old man got 

 his sinew from the spinal ligaments of the moose. Then he returned to the 

 bear camp and finished making the arrows. The old man made the arrows 

 with birch-bark heads because the bear said the birch bark was the best. The 

 old man knew that this was false, but he did it to please the bear. The bear 

 said that upon the mountain where there is no timber a bear came every even- 

 ing, and that the old man could get it. The bear was accustomed to kill men 

 by this ruse. He set his daughter up there dressed in a bear skin, and when a 

 man came near she would hold him till her father bear killed him. The old 

 man concealed bone arrow-heads in the back lock of his hair before starting. 

 The old man and the bear started out to hunt bear. The bear said, "Walk slow" 

 but the old man ran away. As soon as the old man approached the hill he 

 saw the other bear and shot twice with his birch-bark pointed arrows, but 

 they didn't penetrate. The bear when hit, instead of running away, as ordin- 

 ary, came toward the old man, who pulled the bone arrow-head out of his 

 hair and shot the bear with it. He now saw it was the bear's daughter, for 

 she hollered, "Father, that man hurt me." The bear said to her, "Catch hold 

 of him," and as she tried to catch him she died. Then the old man ran away 

 and the bear chased him all day. Then the old man ran into Ford's Lake. 

 (Calico Bluff, six miles below Fort Egbert, on the Yukon, is called "Long Point" 

 Clavath, pronounced "Klay-vay," and Ford's Lake, near by, is called Clavath- 

 mon, meaning Long Point Lake.) 



The bear couldn't catch the old man, so he told the frog to drink all the 

 water in the lake, and the frog drank it all. As soon as the water was gone 

 the old man burrowed into the mud. The bear went all around digging in the 

 mud to find the old man. As soon as he got near the old man, the old man 

 wished for a snipe to come along and it came. He asked the snipe to go and 

 hit the frog twice in the belly. The frog asked the snipe, "Did some one ask 

 you, to come?" The snipe said, "No, I am hunting for something for my chil- 

 dren to eat." As soon as the snipe got near the frog he hit it twice in the 

 belly and flew away. Then the water all ran back into the lake. The bear 

 now was angry, and made a fish trap, which he put in the creek, from Ford's 

 Lake to the Yukon River, to catch the old man. The old man knew this and 

 made a mud man. which he pushed ahead of him, swimming down the creek. 

 The mud man went into the trap, the bear pulled it up, and the old man swam 

 down to the Yukon and down to the bear's house below Calico Bluff, where he 

 got his canoe and went down the Yukon, and the bear never saw him any 

 more. 



