64 
“I wonder what this means?’’ thought the man; "Suppose I watch 
her,” he thought- 
So he pretended to go hunting. Then he gradually stole up to the 
lodge, to watch his wife and learn which way she would go. When he had 
seen her go off into the woods, he knew where she was going 
"Tomorrow I shall kill him!” he thought. 
So then in the evening he said, "Today I found a bear’s den,” said 
the man, when he came home. 
Then the woman spoke thus; for thus she had been told by her lover, 
the bear: “If I am slain, do you then take my hide,” he must have told 
her; “In this way, later, should you so desire, you may at any time kill 
many people,” he must have told that woman; so now she said to her 
husband, “Do not cut him up. Just as one skins a fur-bearing animal for 
sale, do you so prepare him,” she told her husband. 
“Very well,” said the man, in answer to his wife’s request. 
So he cut the creature out of its hide, when he went to kill that bear. 
The woman said, “We do not have to eat him, do we?” 
“ ” replied the husband. 
Then accordingly she prepared that bearskin. Then that woman gave 
birth. Even then and no later, she had two boys, twins 
And those boys were covered with fur all over half of their bodies. Then 
that man to some extent took pity on them ; he decided to bring them up 
as best he could, even though they were not his. And so those children 
grew up. 
Then, as they were growing up, at one time he told them, “Never 
give credence to it, my children, if ever you- are called ‘bears.’ Such, 
indeed, you are. If that is said to you, you will change your bodily form.” 
Accordingly, those boys never gave heed when they were called that 
way. 
Then at one time, “Let us turn into bears!” the younger one said to 
the elder. 
So they turned into bears. They came pursuing the children, and 
when they, reached them, tore them open at the belly. 
Then when, close to the lodge those bear-cubs were killed, at once 
that woman grew angry. She upbraided her husband; she sprang out of 
the lodge; she went and took that mystic dress she had made, that bear- 
skin robe. At once she thus changed her bodily form. She came bounding 
right into the lodge; she killed her husband. Then she killed off all the 
people. Although there were many of them, she killed them all. Only her 
mother she spared. Although she was shot at again and again, she could 
not be overcome ; it was impossible to kill her, so that at last she thus had 
exterminated those people. Then that young man went visiting, whose 
elder sister was the woman who had turned into a bear. And that woman 
had spared her father, only so as to torture him. Truly, she greatly tor- 
mented her mother and her little sister, having spared only them. When 
she had been going about here and there, when she came back, she would 
do nothing but scold them, and torment them in various ways, burning 
them pell-mell, so that those old people and that little girl were all covered 
with scars. She kept them in a grievous state. Presently, when that 
young man arrived, “What can be the matter?” he thought, since all the 
many people there had been killed. He saw only one tipi, standing off to 
one side. Then presently he saw his little sister going out to snare rabbits. 
