Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

"I expect likely they did," said Hugh. "I know that whenever you hear any story about anything a bear has done, the Indians speak of his killing something. You remember Old White Calf Robe? You must have seen him in the camp. He was there two years ago at the medicine lodge. I remember him there, distinctly."

"No," said Jack, "I don't think I do remember him."

"Well," said Hugh, "he tells a story about being carried home by a bear, one time, many years ago, after he had been wounded in war. I don't doubt but that the old man believes that he is telling the plain truth, just as it happened; but in that story, he travelled along with a bear and a wolf, and I know that he says that the bear killed an elk for him to eat, and I think the wolf killed something for him, too, but I can't be sure.

"But of course," Hugh went on, "bears don't get very much meat. Certainly they don't live on meat, by any means. When they first come out in the spring, they generally travel pretty high up on the bare ridges, and live largely on the fresh green grass that starts early on the hillsides. They are always on the watch for mice and ground squirrels, and they dig out a good many wood-chucks, but I fancy their main food is grass. Then, a little later, roots start up which they like to gather,—pomme-blanche, camas, and a whole slew of other plants,—and that carries them along pretty well until the berry time. In the early summer I have seen them in little mountain parks, digging out mice or ground squirrels. A bear will see where a mouse or ground squirrel has a run close to the surface of the ground, and if his nose or any other sense tells him that it is inhabited, he will quickly run his paw along the tunnel, digging it up, and if the animal happens to be there, throwing it out on the surface of the earth. Then it is fun to see a big bear that will weigh three or four hundred pounds, and maybe twice as much, dancing around and striking the ground with his paws to try to kill the little animal that is dodging about, trying to get away. You'd never think how mighty active a bear can be under those circumstances.

"When berry time comes the bears spend a great deal of time around the sarvis berry patches, the plum thickets, and the choke-cherry groves; and every now and then a number of Indian women gathering berries, will run across one, and the women will get scared half to death, and light out for camp. Once in a long time an Indian gathering berries will suddenly come on a bear, and the bear will kill him; or, perhaps, sometimes an old bear that is mean will lay for an Indian, and kill him just for fun.

"The Indians say that when the sarvis berries are ripe, bears will ride down the taller bushes, pressing the stems down under their breasts, and walking along them with their forelegs on either side of the stem. I never saw them do it, but I've seen plenty of places where the bushes have been ridden down in this way, and had bear hair stuck to them. I once saw a mother and some cubs picking huckleberries high up in the mountains during fall. They walked about from one bush to another, and seemed to be picking the berries one by one, though I was so far away that I couldn't tell much about it.

"It's fun to see them turn over stones, and they're mighty cute about it, too. Now, if you or I have occasion to turn over a stone, the chances are we'll stoop over it, take hold of it by its farther edge, and pull it over toward us, and of course, unless we straddle it or watch it pretty close, we're likely to drop it on our toes; but a bear always turns a stone over not toward himself, but to one side. He gets his hind feet well under him, braces one fore foot, and then with the other fore foot turns over the stone, swinging it out from him to one side, and after he has finished the motion, he drops his head into the bed where the stone lay and gobbles up whatever insects are there. Sometimes he makes a claw or two with one foot into the bed, perhaps to turn up the ground to see whether there are some insects below the surface, or to see if there may be the hole of some little animal passing close beneath the stone."

"That's mighty interesting, Hugh," said Jack, "and I am greatly obliged to you for telling us about it. Now, Mr. Fannin, have you seen much of the way bears of this country feed?"