According to this legend, which is related from a monograph on "The Celestial Bear" by Stansbury Hagar, the whole bear is represented by the stars of the Big Dipper. The first hunter, who is the first star in the handle of the Dipper, was called the robin and carried the bow with which to kill the bear. The chicadee, the second star in the handle of the Dipper, carried the pot, the little star Alcor, in which to cook the bear. The third hunter, the moosebird, carried the sticks with which to build the fire. Four other hunters followed besides the three represented by the stars in the Dipper's handle.
The chase continues throughout the summer until part of the hunters disappear below the horizon. About mid-autumn the Bear rises up to defend herself but is pierced by an arrow of the robin, and the autumn leaves are stained scarlet from his wounds. The spirit of the dead Bear enters into another Bear and the chase begins again and so keeps up eternally. In the Indian version the group of stars above the hunters (which is the Bear's head in the Ursa Major of the Greeks), is the Bear's den. This den is picturesquely situated on the northern horizon early in the spring and, to the mind of the Indian, the great Bear seems as if it were just emerging after a long winter's hibernation.
There is also an old Iroquois Indian tale which claims that at one time in the distant past the bear had a fine bushy tail but that this tail was frozen off one cold winter when the foolish animal endeavored to catch a fish by letting the long appendage hang through a hole in the ice. In those days, perhaps, the bears were vain creatures,—which might explain, in part, why the star-jeweled tails on the shadowy forms of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are held with the upright pride of a cat with nine kittens as these mammoth plantigrades nightly promenade on their circular path around the Pole.
[47]
