Animal Legends and Lore

[brotherbear]

The Beast that walks like Man by Harold McCracken.
The Indian was a keen observer of nature. He recognized the traits and peculiarities of all the creatures of the wilderness around him, as well as the many differences in species among the mammals and birds - far more clearly than the average white man of today who has not had zoological training. He recognized the close physical affinity between the animals and his own race. He realized the fundamental similarity between the long claws of the bear, and other wild creatures, and his own fingernails; that they had fingers and toes and ribs and a backbone, just as the Indian had. He knew they had a brain, heart and blood system and genital organs, and all the rest - of the same constitution and physical function as his own and his wife's. In conception and birth, throughout the sustaining of life, and the passing into the limbo of death, there was very little difference between them. When the bear stood erect, he walked like a man. But the was always the mightier of the two. And the bear was smart. "A bear is wiser than a man," an old Abnaki Indian sage once philosophized, "because a man does not know how to live all winter without eating anything."

The red man considered all living creatures as "other people," rather than the "dumb animals" by which we moderns degrade them. Many of the tribes believed that the animals had tribes just as the Indians had, with head chiefs and councils, and that some of them were supernaturally endowed with powers by which they could help human individuals in their daily pursuits, problems, and physical ailments. The Indians had a healthy religious belief in a Greater Power. "He is in the birds and wild animals, lakes and streams, prairies and mountains. He brings the leaves in the spring. He makes the grass and the berries grow; and upon them the birds and the animals depend for life ... The Thunder is a great bird. It flies with the clouds and brings the rain. From its eyes the lightnings flash. And the Blizzard is a person, who runs before the storm and shoots his arrows." This is taken from the Blackfoot philosophy of "the power of the sun," although it represents the general belief of the Great Plains tribes. Reply