He-e! Ani’-Tsa’guhi, Ani’-Tsa’guhi, akwandu’li e’lanti’ ginun’ti,

Ani’-Tsa’guhi, Ani’-Tsa’guhi, akwandu’li e’lanti’ ginun’ti–Yu! He-e! The Ani’-Tsa’guhi, the Ani’-Tsa’guhi, I want to lay them low on the ground,

The Ani’-Tsa’guhi, the Ani’-Tsa’guhi, I want to lay them low on the ground,–Yû!

The bear hunter starts out each morning fasting and does not eat until near evening. He sings this song as he leaves camp, and again the next morning, but never twice the same day.

Myths Of The Cherokee, By James Mooney, From Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98, Part I. [1900]

In the moon when the ponies shed their shaggy hair [May], we kids were all playing down by the Little Big Wind River, which ran by the big log building that was our community hall. Grandpa Iron had been born many years before in a tipi not too far from the community hall. Of course no one lived in tipis anymore. They were used only for Native American Church meetings or for powwows or the Sundance.

Uncle Kail came by, stopping his old beat-up car just off the road. His yell brought us running. He said that there would soon be a full moon rising and that Grandpa Iron was getting ready to tell us a story about bears. We all piled in the car and rode to the small log house.

Grandma was out by the clothesline, taking down some wash that had dried in the warm May sunshine. Magpies had stolen some of the clothespins, and she was complaining to Grandpa when we walked up. He just laughed. Grandma glared at him.

Inside the cabin, we helped Grandma fold the wash and stack it on a shelf near the beds. Then Grandma started a stew of boiled dry meat with onions and potatoes. Baking-powder biscuits with butter and coffee made the meal complete. It was more food than usual for one meal, but I guess Grandpa had sold some scrap iron in town that day. After supper we did the dishes and Grandpa Iron smudged us off with cedar smoke. Then we sat on the floor, and he began his full-moon story.

A long time ago, when our people still lived in caves and walked everywhere, there was a medicine man called Moves Walking. Moves Walking had bear medicine power.

At that time, food was getting hard to find, so our people split into smaller bands, each band going in a different direction. Moves Walking was the leader of one band. He went into the wilderness to meditate and seek wisdom so he could take his people in the right direction. While seeking his vision he saw a family of bears gather in a grove of trees below the hill he was on. Moves Walking watched them for days. He watched the cubs play with each other and with their mother and father. He saw the mother bear discipline her young by cuffing their ears, and the father bear ignore them when he was tired or had other things on his mind. Moves Walking saw the roots, plants, and insects that the bears ate, many of which his people had thought inedible. He learned the roots and plants they ate when they were ill. After the bears left. Moves Walking went down the hill into their camp and found the remains of their food and medicine.

When Moves Walking went back to his people, he had a vision for the direction they should go, and he had the wisdom that the bears had taught him.

From that time on, his name was Medicine Bear. Grandpa Iron said that the bear medicine is good for people, too. A bear society was formed whose members have a great knowledge of healing. They know not only about roots and herbs for physical healing but also about healing mental conditions.

Grandpa took his hat from the bed and hung it on the wall. Uncle Kail laughed and waved good-bye as he went out the door and headed for home. The roar from his old car faded away as Grandma passed water around to each of us and turned back the covers on the iron beds. Grandpa blew out the coal-oil lamp after we were all tucked in bed, and the moonlight streamed through the cracks in the logs.

We slept and dreamed of the bear cubs playing in the trees.

And the Earth stayed young.

Full Moon Written by Eagle Walking Turtle, 1997 – Arapahoe

["When I was a boy I lived with my grandparents on the Northern Arapahoe Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Grandpa Iron was always happy and full of life's joy. Grandma Iron was much more serious. They both taught me, along with my brothers and sisters, that all of nature should be listened to, loved, and respected. Each time a full moon came, Grandpa Iron would tell us a story. First he'd burn cedar needles, and we would fan the sweet-smelling smoke over our heads to purify our bodies before Grandpa's story. He always took his hat from the wall and placed it on the bed before he began his telling. I suppose this goes back to the time when warriors hung their medicine bags on the tipi pole behind them before speaking. The following stories are among those that Grandpa told us about the love and respect our people have for our animal brothers and sisters - the four-leggeds, the ones that fly, the ones that slither in the grasses, and the ones that swim in the waters." -- Eagle Walking Turtle]

Whenever Wankandon went hunting on the mountain, he took care to think as little as possible of the Spirit of the Bear. For it is well known that whoever can see Bear without being seen by him will become the mightiest hunter of his generation, but he can never be seen by anybody who is thinking about him.

On the other hand, if a tribesman should himself be seen by the Spirit of the Bear Walking, there is no knowing what might happen. Hunters who have gone up on the mountain and never come back are supposed to have met with him. So between hope of seeing and fear of being seen, it is nearly impossible to hunt on the mountain without thinking of Bear.

Wankandon alone hoped to accomplish the impossible. He might have managed it at the time his thoughts were all taken up with wondering whether the daughter of the Medicine Man could be persuaded to marry him, but at that time he did not hunt at all. He spent his time waiting at the spring where the maidens came with their mothers to fill their water bottles, making a little flute of four notes and playing on it. After he was married, however, he tried again to dispossess his mind of the thought of Bear. “For”, he said, “when my son is born he will have pride in me, and keep a soft place in the hut for the man who was the mightiest hunter of his generation.” Thus it was that he never went out to hunt on the mountain without thinking both of his son and the Bear Walking.

In due time the son was born and thought Wankandon had not yet become the mightiest hunter, he was very happy. Always when he went on the mountain he remembered his wish and so missed it.

In the course of year the tribe fell into war with the people of the north and the son of Wankandon went out to his first battle. But, as it turned out, the battle went against the tribe and the son of Wakandon was brought home shot full of arrows. Then the heart of Wankandan broke when he buried him. He said, “Let me go, I will build a fire on the mountain to light the feet of my son’s spirit and then I will lament him.”

Clad in all his war gear he went up on the mountain and all the way he thought only of his son and how he should miss him. So, when he had lighted the spirit fire, he said “Oh, my son, what profit shall I have of my life now you are departed.” And as he wept he saw something moving on the slope before him. He looked, for his eyes were by no means as keen as they had been, and behold, it was the Spirit of the Bear Walking.

In the long ago time, there was a Cherokee Clan call the Ani-Tsa-gu-hi (Ahnee-Jah-goo-hee), and in one family of this clan was a boy who used to leave home and be gone all day in the mountains. After a while he went oftener and stayed longer, until at last he would not eat in the house at all, but started off at daybreak and did not come back until night. His parents scolded, but that did no good, and the boy still went every day until they noticed that long brown hair was beginning to grow out all over his body. Then they wondered and asked him why it was that he wanted to be so much in the woods that he would not even eat at home.

Said the boy, “I find plenty to eat there, and it is better than the corn and beans we have in the settlements, and pretty soon I am going into the woods to say all the time.” His parents were worried and begged him not leave them, but he said, “It is better there than here, and you see I am beginning to be different already, so that I can not live here any longer. If you will come with me, there is plenty for all of us and you will never have to work for it; but if you want to come, you must first fast seven days.”

The father and mother talked it over and then told the headmen of the clan. They held a council about the matter and after everything had been said they decided: “Here we must work hard and have not always enough. There he says is always plenty without work. We will go with him.” So they fasted seven days, and on the seventh morning al the Ani-Tsa-gu-hi left the settlement and started for the mountains as the boy led the way.

When the people of the other towns heard of it they were very sorry and sent their headmen to persuade the Ani Tsaguhi to stay at home and not go into the woods to live. The messengers found them already on the way, and were surprised to notice that their bodies were beginning to be covered with hair like that of animals, because for seven days they had not taken human food and their nature was changing. The Ani Tsaguhi would not come back, but said, “We are going where there is always plenty to eat. Hereafter we shall be called Yonv(a) (bears), and when you yourselves are hungry come into the woods and call us and we shall shall come to give you our own flesh. You need not be afraid to kill us, for we shall live always.”

Then they taught the messengers the songs with which to call them and bear hunters have these songs still. When they had finished the songs, the Ani Tsaguhi started on again and the messengers turned back to the settlements, but after going a little way they looked back and saw a drove of bears going into the woods.

Long ago, a group of girls of the tribe were out gathering huckleberries. One among them was a bit of a chatterbox, who should have been singing to tell the bears of her presence instead of laughing and talking. The bears, who could hear her even though some distance away, wondered if she was mocking them in her babbling. By the time the berry-pickers started home, the bears were watching. As she followed at the end of the group, the girl’s foot slipped in some bear dung and her forehead strap, which held the pack filled with berries to her back, broke. She let out an angry laugh. The others went on. Again she should have sung but she only complained. The bears noted this and said “Does she speak of us?” It was growing dark. Near her appeared two young men who looked like brothers. One said, “Come with us and we will help you with your berries.” As the girl followed them, she saw that they wore bear robes. It was dark when they arrived at a large house near a rock slide high on the mountain slope. All of the people inside, sitting around a small fire, were wearing bearskins also. Grandmother Mouse ran up to the girl and squeaked to her that she had been taken into the bear den and was to become one of them. The hair on her robe was already longer and more like a bear’s. She was frightened. One of the young bears, the son of a chief, came up to her and said, “You will live if you become my wife. Otherwise you will die.” She lived on as the wife of the bear, tending the fire in the dark house. She noticed that whenever the Bear People went outside they put on their bear coats and became like the animal. In the winter she was pregnant, and her husband took her to a cliff cave near the old home, where she gave birth to twins, which were half human and half bear. One day her brothers came searching for her, and the Bear Wife knew she must reveal her presence. She rolled a snowball down the mountainside to draw their attention, and they climbed up the rock slide. The Bear Husband knew that he must die, but before he was killed by the woman’s brothers, he taught her and the Bear Sons the songs that the hunters must use over his dead body to ensure their good luck. He willed his skin to her father, who was a tribal chief. The young men then killed the bear, smoking him out of the cave and spearing him. They spared the two children, taking them with the Bear Wife back to her people. The Bear Sons removed their bear coats and became great hunters. They guided their kinsmen to bear dens in the mountains and showed them how to set snares, and they instructed the people in singing the ritual songs. Many years later, when their mother died, they put on their coast again and went back to live with the Bear People, but the tribe continued to have good fortune with their hunting. (Another version has the Bear Mother, after her sons are grown, returning to the Cave of the Bear people. There she watches over and promises protection to lost humans. She also provides guidance to those who come regarding the medicine powers that are known to be possessed by Bears.)