"Oh, 'e's bad feller, dat hootz," exclaimed Louie Paul, our half-breed Stickeen young man, the blood of his French father sparkling in his eyes and gesturing in his hands and shoulders. "'E's devil, 'im. Dat's no swear—dat's truf. Bad spirit got him, sure. Quonsum sallix (Always mad). 'E no savvy scare, no savvy love, no savvy die. 'E's devil, dat's all."
Louie's handsome face and coal-black eyes were alive with excitement, as he danced about his big bundle of tseek (black bear) skins, which he had just brought into Stevens' store at Fort Wrangell, and was unwrapping, preparatory to bartering. His outburst of language was called out by a question of mine. I had been noticing with surprise that among the great numbers of black bear skins that were being brought into the Wrangell stores daily by the Indians, were none of the big brown bear—the hootz. I knew these brown bears to be very plentiful up the Stickeen and Iskoot Rivers where Louie had been hunting. At this season (it was in early May) both species of bears, having wakened from their long winter's sleep, were roaming the banks of the streams restlessly day and night, making up in their fierce activity for their six months of torpor. Their coats were at their best—long, silky, glistening, thick and soft. The skins of the black bear Louie had brought were prime. They were more than black. Their ebony surfaces shone and sparkled, beneath our handling, like black diamonds.
Fort Wrangell, Alaska, on Etolin Harbor
To the left may be seen the first Protestant Church in Alaska, built by Dr. Young, 1879
I knew that the skins of the hootz would be equally beautiful and twice as large as those of the tseek. They would not be tawny at this season, but a rich, velvety brown, the color of the Irish setter's coat. In my canoe trips and steamboat voyages up the Stickeen I had seen more brown bears than black, standing boldly out on the bank to watch the sputtering steamboat, or grubbing for roots and worms in the green patches up the mountain slopes.
"Why don't you shoot the big bears?" I asked Louie. "I saw four in a bunch the other day. Don't you see any in your hunting trips?"
"Oh, yes," he confessed, "me plenty see hootz. All time me see heem. Yestaday me see tree—big fellers; stand up, all same man."
"What's the matter, then?" I pressed him. "Are you afraid of them?"
"Yes, you bet you boots, I scare of heem. I no shame scare about hootz. S'pose I big fool, I no scare; I shoot heem.—You never see me again no mo'."