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district or has sent their souls back to their home below. On such occa- 
sions the animals (i.e., their souls) have sometimes carried off a boy or 
a man to protect him from danger, or to bestow on him some blessing; 
but they have returned him to his people again after the lapse of several 
months or years. 
“ One winter a moose, in the form of a big old man, carried two boys away to 
a land where there was no snow. It was bitokomegog, the underground world in 
which the moose have their village. Some time afterwards he brought the boys 
back to earth and restored them to their people” (Jonas King). 
Animals, then, are very much like human beings, though they differ 
among themselves, and from man, in outward appearance and in their 
individual powers. The bear is the most nearly human of them all; it 
is like a man, the Indians say, but has the form of a bear. Sometimes it 
carries an Indian to its den and keeps him there all winter; to its visitor 
it appears to be a human being and its den a wigwam. If it needs food 
during this time it licks its paws, stoops down, and draws up a handful 
of fruit. When the Indian visitor goes out hunting, as he does occasion- 
ally during the winter, he sees smoke issuing from a little hole in the top 
of a wigwam where uninitiated eyes w'ould see only steam from a bear’s 
warm body rising through the top of its den. 
Since the bear is so nearly human the Indian must treat it with 
exceptional respect. He must awaken it and invite it to come out if he 
finds it sleeping in a snow-bank, or, in a mild winter, under the roots 
of a cedar tree. He may safely club it on the head and carry the carcass 
home upon his back; but he must never insult it by dragging it along 
the ground . 1 If the basswood cord with which he has tied it should 
break, and the carcass fall to the ground, he should apologize to the bear, 
saying “ Well, we are both in the same land,” i.e., “ when you fall, I fall, 
when you suffer, I suffer; we are both in the same boat.” For the bear 
is really still alive; its soul is ready to depart to its underworld home, 
and its shadow accompanies the carcass to become a guest in the hunter’s 
wigwam. Before cooking the meat the hunter should release the soul by 
removing the eyes from the carcass, rubbing them with charcoal and 
burying them in the ground with a tiny offering of tobacco; then it will 
go to its home contented, and refrain from annoying the souls and shadows 
of the hunter’s family. When the meat has all been eaten he should hang 
the skull in a tree , 2 and place the other bones in a creek or somewhere 
beyond the reach of dogs. 
This custom of protecting the bones of the bear and beaver (for 
both animals are treated alike in this respect) was the subject of an 
interesting controversy between two Parry Island Indians, Jonas King 
and Pegahmagabow. Both men were conversant with the custom, which 
they had often practised themselves. Both agreed that the shadow of 
the bear or beaver lingered in the vicinity of its death-place while its soul 
travelled to its home in the underworld. Both agreed, further, that the 
shadow and the soul were reborn again after a brief interval. Pegahmaga- 
bow thought that they might acquire bones that had belonged to some 
1 A difficult thing to do in any case, for the fur sticks to the snow. 
* The Parry Island Indians do not consider it necessary to attach any decorations to the skull. 
