The deserted husband sat alone upon the bank, sleepless and
faint with grief, until he was consoled by a comely young woman in
glossy black, who took compassion upon his distress and soothed him
with food and loving attentions. This was the bear-woman, from
whom again he was afterward separated by some mishap. The story
goes that he had children by each of his many wives, some of whom
resembled their father, and these became the ancestors of the human
race, while those who bore the characteristics of their
mother returned to her clan. It is also said that such as were
abnormal or monstrous in form were forbidden to reproduce their
kind, and all love and mating between man and the animal creation
was from that time forth strictly prohibited. There are some
curious traditions of young men and maidens who transgressed this
law unknowingly, being seduced and deceived by a magnificent buck
deer, perhaps, or a graceful doe, and whose fall was punished with
death.

The animal totems so general among the tribes were said to
have descended to them from their great-grandmother's clan,
and the legend was often quoted in support of our close friendship
with the animal people. I have sometimes wondered why the
scientific doctrine of man's descent has not in the same way
apparently increased the white man's respect for these our humbler
kin.

Of the many later heroes or Hiawathas who appear in this
voluminous unwritten book of ours, each introduced an epoch in the
long story of man and his environment. There is, for example, the
Avenger of the Innocent, who sprang from a clot of blood; the