194 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. IV. 



SO widely known as Yihta, the Great Bear. We have already seen the 

 role it plays in the story of the Gambler ; I must be pardoned for 

 reproducing here another legend wherein it is to be recognized under a 

 different garb, but playing a no less important part. As will soon appear, 

 if fable it is, sociologically speaking, it is a fable with a moral. 



" There was a young man who was impatiently awating the return 

 of daylight to set out on a hunting expedition. Again and again he 

 would look up at Yihta, and in his impatience he exclaimed : ' That old 

 Yihta,* how slowly he walks ! ' Very soon after having uttered these 

 words, he left for the chase. 



" He had not gone far before he became aware by the barking of his 

 dogs that they had scented game. After what appeared to him as a run 

 of but a few moments, he overtook his dogs, and lo ! sitting on a log 

 was a man of beautiful countenance, carefully painted in red stripes over 

 the cheeks, and holding a walking stick in his hands. He had a malicious 

 smile on his face, so that the young man felt abashed in his presence 

 and afraid to approach him. ' Come on,' said the stranger who was no 

 other than Yihta, ' come on, young man. So you laugh at me and say 

 that I walk too slow ? Now learn that to reach me you have travelled 

 a very long distance, since to help you I have contracted the surface of 

 the earth. Go back then to your home, and take this staff to aid you on 

 your long journey. Whenever you want food, hold it perpendicularly 

 on the ground, then drop it and observe the direction in which it falls : 

 if it falls in the direction of the northern wind, do not go that way, for 

 there famine is awaiting you. If it falls towards the setting sun or 

 towards the rising sun, go either way and you will find bears to kill, both 

 male and female. Do likewise when you feel uncertain as to the direction 

 of your house ; and when you get home, hang the staff up in the 

 branches of a tree. Above all, beware lest a woman having her menses 

 catch sight of it.' 



" At these words, the young man took the walking stick without how- 

 ever giving much credence to the stranger, for he believed his home was 

 but a short distance from where he stood. Yet these words were literally 

 fulfilled, and during his long peregrinations, amidst incessant fatigues 

 and ever recurring privations, the young man owed his life to his careful 

 observance of the stranger's directions. Many were the years he 

 travelled, and he seemed to get a glimpse of his lodge several days 

 before he really reached it. When he finally got home, he was an old 

 man with hair white as snow, and his lodge was crumbling down through 

 age and decay." 



* Ntsn Yihta' q9l! Expressive of scorn. 



