I well
remember being with a couple of hunters closely following up a bear, and
just before they fired they kept saying, 'Excuse us for shooting you,
Brother Bear, but we must do it. We want your warm fur robe, our families
want your meat, our girls want your grease to put on their heads, so you
must excuse us, Brother Bear. Please do, Brother Bear; please do.' Thus
they went on at a great rate until he was killed.
"But many forget it, and the spirit of their chief knows it and is angry,
and he strikes those hunters, or their relatives, down with rheumatism or
some other painful disease.
"Next the fishes and snakes and other reptiles held their council, and they
decided that as the human race had now become such enemies to them they
would trouble them with 'fearful dreams' of snakes twining about them, and
blowing their poisonous breath in their faces, by which they would lose
their appetites and die, while others of them would seek opportunity to
make the water they drank, or even the air they breathed, unwholesome. The
poisonous ones were also directed to use every opportunity to kill with
their deadly bites whenever possible.
"The birds also held a council, over which the crow was appointed chairman.
The eagle objected, and wanted the place, but he was voted down because
there were so few of his kind, and these were only hunted for their
feathers to adorn the war bonnets of the great chiefs and warriors. The
crow was appointed because he was always with the human race and knew the
various schemes and tricks they were inventing to injure the birds and
animals of various kinds.
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