Then he beheld his wife coming across the surface of this upper world toward him. Said she, “You should not have come here, because, after all your trouble, you will die anyway.” She took hold of him and made shift to raise him. Then she pulled him out after teasing him a little while. “Now,” she said to him, “we always play ball up here. There are men here whom you will meet. They are your brothers-in-law. They will want you to play ball. If they beat you in the game, they will kill you; but if you beat them, you will survive.”
Then she led him away to a village, where they saw a lot of great White Bears. This was the great White Bear’s home and his family. Now the old Bear arranged a contest for the stranger. Said he, “You take this ball and go around the edge of this world, running. One of these Bears will race with you, [[61]]to see who gets back here first.” So they started. The Bear took the ball in his mouth and, as soon as he started running, the man jumped upon his back and shook his ears, which made the Bear drop the ball. Then he threw the ball ahead. In this way, repeating the trick, they went around the world, and the man succeeded in getting back first. When he reached the starting point, the Bears said, “You seem to be a pretty good man; but there are still more tricks for you to perform. If you win, you can stay.”
And they all went out together and came to a big rock. One of the White Bears tried to move this rock, and with a great effort he succeeded in moving it a little. “Now, you try,” said they, “and if you can’t move it, you are a dead man.” Then the man took his bow and arrow and shot it at the rock. The rock immediately broke into fragments. “Indeed, you are a great man, our brother-in-law, and can stay here and hunt and live with us,” said the old White Bear. Then the old Bear told him, after a while, that he had better go and hunt, or he would grow lonesome in his new life. By this time they had grown to like him very much.
One afternoon, late, he started off to hunt. Everything that he met seemed strange to him in this new world. Soon he came to a lake with a little ice on it, and when he walked out he beheld tracks of some animal. Soon he came to a place where a big wooden mallet lay on the ice. He thought to himself that somebody had lost this mallet. Then he took it by the handle and hammered on the ice. Immediately the hammer fell through. Up from the hole in the ice a red otter emerged. He killed the red otter. Then he went on with the hammer to another place. There he tried again, and this time got a blue otter. He tried again at another place and got a black otter, which was like the otters of this world. So, taking his load of otters, he went home to display what he thought was a pretty good hunt. He carried his game in a bag of leather. When he got to his wigwam, he shoved his bag in the entrance ahead of him, so that his wife could open it and see what he had brought.[30] Thought she to herself, when she saw the game-bag, [[62]]“I wonder if he will show himself to be a good hunter.” She saw some blood on the bag. Opening it, she beheld the otters, Now the man had made a mistake, for these were tame otters and belonged to the Bears. She went out crying to her people, “This man has killed our otters!” When the old White Bear heard about the news, he said to his family, “We should have told this man about our otters, because he didn’t know. On this account it is all right.” He said no more, because he was afraid of the magic possessed by his new son-in-law.
(10) Ayas·e and the Origin of Bats.
The Ayas·e family was a large family. They lived in a camp. Very often they used to go picking berries, for their country was a rocky country where berries abounded. Very often some of the berry-pickers would get lost and never be found again. It was thought that some creature made a prey of them and ate them.
One time one of the Ayas·e men was travelling. On his way he came across a kind of cabin of rock, from the top of which smoke was rising and in front of which a number of human skulls hung in the opening. Now this Ayas·e managed to enter. By being very careful and not touching the skulls, he gained the inside of the rock house without making any noise. These skulls were put there to rattle when anybody tried to pass. When Ayas·e got inside, he beheld two old blind women. As soon as they became aware of his presence, one of them said, “We had better begin to cook something and we will find out if Ayas·e is passing here.” Now these old women had some grease in a bark dish and one of them put some of the grease in a cooking pail. When she did this, Ayas·e pulled it out with his hand and ate it. Then she took the spoon to taste her grease, but found it gone. So she put another lump in the dish. Ayas·e took this, and when she started to dip it up, it, too, was gone. This happened three or four times. At last the old woman said, “Ayas·e must have passed; somebody told us that Ayas·e was going to pass. He must have passed now.” Then she took a stick which she used to poke the fire with and began feeling all around, poking in the corners of the [[63]]wigwam to find if Ayas·e were there. Every time she came near poking him, he moved to another part of the wigwam, so she could not reach him. Pretty soon she touched him with the poker and then he took off his coat of fisher-skin which he was wearing and threw in into the door-way. The old women jumped up and when they felt the fur coat they thought it was Ayas·e trying to escape through the door. Now these old women had a sharp pointed bone at each elbow. With this pointed bone they began stabbing the fur coat in their haste to kill Ayas·e, and pretty soon in their blind fury they fell to stabbing each other, each one thinking she was stabbing Ayas·e. They killed each other. One of the old women said before she died, “I believe you hit me by mistake.” It was too late; they both died.
Now Ayas·e in the wigwam sat down and looked at them a long time. Then he dragged them outside and looked at them a long time. All around the wigwam he saw the men’s and women’s bones, the bones of the victims of these two old blind women. Then he knew that all of his lost people had been killed by the old women and eaten. They were cannibals in the shape of monster bats, large enough to kill and eat people. Then Ayas·e took their bodies and cut them up into small pieces. These he threw into the air and they sailed off, transformed into small bats as we see them to-day. I did not see any more.
(11) Origin of the Constellation Fisher (Ursa Major).[31]
The Fisher (mustela pennanti) was living somewhere in this world. Nobody knows where. Now in those times they had no summer. It was winter, winter all the time. They knew that summer existed somewhere, but it never came to them, although they wanted it very much.