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The same informant, quite casually talking about fishing, said that his 
brother had caught the largest trout on Great Bear lake; it was longer 
than a toboggan and correspondingly gigantic in all details. Then, 
almost as a last effort, he depicted the trout as having horns on its head. 
Some months later the story had definitely established itself. 
Great Bear lake is said to have taken its name from a fabulous bear 
which lived near the shore of Bear mountain. The Satudene state that 
once upon a time an Indian near that place shot a bear cub and, putting 
it into his canoe, started to paddle away. While he did so a Great Bear 
appeared and said, “Give me back my child”. This the Indian refused 
to do, so the Great Bear warned him, “Then never camp alone”. The 
Indian always remembered and obeyed this injunction until one night 
long afterwards when he was forced to camp by himself, having become 
separated from his party. He camped on an island, but it had no sooner 
become dark than the Great Bear appeared and stood over the sleeping 
man. “Now I am going to kill you”, he said. The Indian awakened, 
and answered him shrewdly, “Then do so without making me suffer. Take 
my head in your mouth and crush it with your jaws.” This the Great 
Bear agreed to do, but no sooner had it taken the Indian’s head in its 
mouth than the native’s medicine, which was the Northern Lights, began 
to work in such a fashion that the man’s head swelled, and the Great 
Bear was unable to crush it. Further, the Northern Lights, radiating 
from the native’s head through that of the Bear, paralysed the memory 
and demented the great animal, whereupon the Indian extricated himself 
from his predicament and made a hurried departure in his canoe, only 
hesitating to make the sarcastic remark, “I thought you were going to 
kill me?” 
The myths of the First Brother form what would appear to be a 
definite cycle. They seem to be of Alaskan origin, having spread east- 
ward, and being now known with variations among the Hare. The 
following are excerpts taken in camp-fire conversations and put together 
in some semblance of order. 
Long before the time of the Two Brothers, the people were living 
in a land far west of the mountains, and they were starving. The father 
killed a bear. The mother told the children, and the father cut off the 
mother’s head, which went flying around in a circle. The father gave 
the children two pieces of stone and told the children to flee, dropping 
pieces of the stone as they went, and to tell the mother’s head to go into 
the mountains. Then they were safe. 
Long ago, two young brothers came on the back of a seagull from 
an unknown land. One of the brothers founded the whole race of northern 
Indians; the other was killed by wild beasts. At first all the northern 
Indians were one people. 
When the two brothers first came to this country, the younger one 
was afraid and began to cry. The older made a ball out of skins for the 
younger brother to play with. The ball went into the water and an old 
man in a canoe picked it up and told the younger brother to come and 
get it. He did this and the old man carried him away. The last words 
of the younger brother were, “I shall return in the form of a wolf”. 
The First Brother married the Morning Woman and the Night Woman. 
They travelled a good deal. One of his wives was killed by wild beasts 
