116 FISHERY AND FUE INDUSTRIES OF ALASKA IN 1912. 



BEAR (TENA INDIAN NAME FOR BLACK BEAR, ''SES"; FOR BROWN 



BEAR, "TLARUZA"). 



Bears of various species are supposed by the uninformed to be 

 extremely numerous and very dangerous throughout the interior of 

 Alaska. Both suppositions are without any foundation in fact. 

 There is no species of bear that is really numerous in that country, 

 the black and the cinnamon are more common than any other, and 

 only rarely is one of them met with, and then only in remote places. 



The black bear ranges throughout the whole interior of Alaska, 

 from the sources of the Yukon and Tanana to Holy Cross, below 

 which it is not often seen. 



The ferocity of these bears is largely a matter of imagination. 

 A black bear will almost invariably "hike for the tall timber" when 

 discovered, unless it be a female with cubs. A mother animal of 

 almost any species will make some defense of her young, and in so 

 domg acts strictly on the defensive. In this respect the black bear 

 is not peculiar. 



Perhaps the worst charge that can be made against the black bear 

 is that it is quite disposed and ready to appropriate to its own use 

 the provisions it chances to find in the prospector's or trapper's cache. 

 If the brute would stop when he has eaten all he can, it would not be 

 so bad; but he destroys everything he can not eat, which is a very 

 reprehensible practice, of no apparent benefit to the bear and very 

 hard on the owner of the cache. For this reason it is easy to have 

 sympathy for the prospector and hard to feel any for the bear. 



The summer and fall food of the black bear is salmon wherever they 

 can be obtained. In the fall blueberries constitute the principal food. 

 Bears, however, are omnivorous at times and will eat almost any- 

 thing they find. They are said to be destructive to young caribou 

 and moose. 



The time when they go into retirement and begin their hibernation 

 depends somewhat on the food supply; so long as food is easily ob- 

 tainable they are apt to remain active. If a cache of caribou meat or 

 other provisions is found late in the fall the bear wUl remain with it 

 until all is eaten. 



As is weU known to naturalists and other careful observers, it is a 

 common thing to find both cinnamon and black cubs in the same 

 litter. As bears of cinnamon-color phase are in Alaska usually, if 

 not always, called brown bears, and as the Alaska game law protects 

 the brown bear, a great deal of confusion has resulted. The situation 

 is briefly this: The brown bear of the Alaska game law means the 

 big brown bear of Kodiak Island and the several closely related 

 species of big brown bears on the adjacent mainland. These, and 

 only these, are covered by the game law. A cmnamon or brown- 

 colored individual of the black-bear species does not come under the 

 Alaska game law, but under the Alaska fur law. 



