The Woman Who Married a Bear (Folktale)

Author: Gary Snyder

Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE; 1951 CE–2000 CE

Country or Culture: United States; North America

Genre: Folktale

Overview

Acclaimed as a masterpiece of oral narrative, the Woman Who Married a Bear is a seminal folktale among First Nations people in southern Yukon. The basic purpose of this tale of a young woman’s marriage to a bear—and her subsequent transformation into one as well—is to explain customs regarding grizzly bears, but it achieves much more than this. The tale subtly explores the tensions between nature and culture, as well as within culture, particularly in family and social structures. With its profound treatment of issues fundamental to the realms of nature, society, and family, the tale’s widespread diffusion among First Nations people and other cultures globally is not surprising (Loucks 219).

The story as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet Gary Snyder (b. 1930) retains the essential details of many surviving First Nations versions. A young woman disobeys the cultural injunction against women stepping over bear droppings and finds herself taken away by a mysterious man with shamanic powers. The man enchants her, causing her to forget her family temporarily. Given his shape-shifting ability, she realizes only gradually that he is a bear. Believing she must stay with him to survive, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to two children. Nonetheless, she marks the trees and earth with her scent so that her brothers’ dogs might one day find her. The bear-man prophesies that her brothers will indeed come and repeatedly threatens to fight them, but the woman begs him to sacrifice himself for the sake of their children, and he finally agrees to do so. When the brothers arrive and kill the bear, the woman grieves because she has come to love her husband. After she performs a ritual burning of the bear’s head and tail, she gradually reenters human society with her children. When her brothers kill another bear the following spring, they ask her to wear a bear hide. She refuses, warning that it will cause her to become a bear, but her brothers deceive her and throw the hide over her and her children. The woman and her children indeed transform into bears; they kill her mother and all her brothers except the youngest and depart to live in the mountains.

His big canine teeth looked like swords. “These are what I fight with,” he said. She kept pleading. “Don’t do anything. I’ll still have my children if they kill you!” She really knew he was a bear then. They went back to sleep. When she woke again he was singing his song. “It’s true,” he said. “They are coming close. If they do kill me I want you to get my skull and my tail from them.”

“The Woman Who Married a Bear”

With its explanation of customs and rituals regarding bears, the story is an obvious lesson about respecting the balance between the animal and human realms. Nonetheless, the tale presents many puzzles: Why is the protagonist a young woman, or more precisely, why are only women forbidden from stepping over bear droppings? Why is the woman’s punishment to marry the bear, and what is the meaning of her wrenching choice between her brothers and her husband and her ultimate loss of them all (including her mother)? A sociological interpretation that contextualizes the story within the cultures producing it helps to answer these questions. An understanding of the bear’s significance in these cultures reveals how the story indeed depicts the consequences of upsetting the balance between nature and culture—a balance that Snyder underscores in his conclusion. Yet the tale focuses even more powerfully on the dangers of violating social taboos within the family, especially regarding the role of women, one of the story’s most perplexing aspects. Attention to the story’s psychological and cultural underpinnings suggests fears of violating sacred figures and taboos regarding incest. A sociological reading also helps to unravel the mystery of why the woman who carefully teaches her brother a bear’s rituals eventually becomes the object of such rites herself.

Summary

Snyder begins “The Woman Who Married a Bear” by introducing the protagonist as a ten-year-old child who is gathering berries in the summer with her family. The gatherers occasionally see bear droppings, which girls are not supposed to walk over, although men are allowed to do so. The girl nonetheless disobeys her mother because she likes to jump over and kick the droppings. She grows older, and one summer while berry picking with her mother, aunt, and sisters, she sees bear droppings and says “all kinds of words to them, kick[s] them, and jump[s] over them” (Snyder). At the end of the day, the young woman slips, spilling some of her fruit. She stops to collect it as her companions make their way home. Suddenly, a well-dressed young man with a painted red face appears; he offers to show her better berry crops and to walk her home. She agrees, and they continue picking until it is dark, at which point the man tells her it is too late to go home, so he cooks dinner over a fire. They make a bed and sleep in the leaves, but he tells her not to look at him in the morning. When they wake, the man suggests they continue to gather berries; when the woman mentions her parents and returning home, the man initially tells her not to worry and says he will take her home. He then casts a spell on her by slapping his hand on the top of her head and tracing a circle around it, which causes her to forget her home and to remain with him.

They camp together and come to a place that the young woman recognizes as where her family goes to dry meat. The man once again performs the spell and then leaves to hunt gophers. He returns, and when they continue traveling the next day, the woman finally realizes that he is actually a bear. He tells her they must make a home and asks her to gather some brush. When she gathers branches from high in the trees, he tells her they must leave because humans will see the broken branches and discover their location. They relocate to a valley that the woman recognizes as her brothers’ bear-hunting grounds. They begin to make a den, and though the woman gathers brush from the ground as instructed by the bear, she deliberately bends some upper branches as a clue for her brothers. She also rubs her body on the trees so that the brothers’ dogs will pick up her scent. Returning to the den, she notes that the man appears as a bear when he is digging but otherwise seems to be a normal man. Because she does not know how else to survive, “she stay[s] with him as long as he was good to her” (Snyder).

Late in the fall, they go into hibernation, waking once each month to eat. The passage of time is indistinct and a month seems to be only a day. The woman becomes pregnant and delivers two children. The bear-man, now called her husband, sings in the night, and he is said to have become “like a shaman” since living with her. One night, the husband’s singing wakes his wife, and he prophesies that her brothers will come before the end of winter. When he threatens to fight them, she urges him not to harm his brothers-in-law: “If you really love me you’ll love them, too. Don’t kill them. Let them kill you!” (Snyder). He finally agrees not to fight but says he wanted to warn her of what would occur. When he shows her his teeth that resemble swords, she again urges him to sacrifice himself.

When they wake again, he announces that the time of her brothers’ arrival is drawing near, and he tells her that after her brothers have killed him, she should burn his skull and tail while singing a particular song. As time passes, he becomes restless and tells the woman to leave the den to see if spring has arrived. When she goes out, she makes a ball of sand and mud, rubs it on herself, and rolls it down the hill so that her brothers’ dogs will find her. The bear-man chastises her for this. After sleeping and waking twice more, at which points he again threatens to fight her brothers, the woman again urges him against this, saying, “Who will look after my children if you kill them? You must think of the kids. My brothers will help me” (Snyder). Leaving her for the last time, the bear-man tells her that she will not see him again and pushes a dog into the den. Soon, the woman realizes her brothers have killed the bear, ties an arrow onto the dog, and sends it down to them. They respond by sending the youngest brother to find her. When the brother arrives, she tearfully informs him that the bear was their brother-in-law. She instructs him to preserve the bear’s skull and tail and asks that her mother sew clothes for her and her children. The woman performs the ritual as instructed by the bear and returns home, where she must adjust to the smell of humans before living with her mother again.

The next spring, her brothers kill a bear and want the woman and her children to imitate the animals by donning its hide. The woman insists that doing this will transform her into a bear, warning that she is already partway there as indicated by the animal hair on her body. Her brothers nonetheless sneak up on her and throw the bear hide on her and her children. The woman and her children transform into bears, and she kills her mother and all her brothers except the youngest. She and her cubs then retreat to live in the mountains. The story’s coda explains that grizzly bears are part human, which is why people eat only black bears. Bears and humans are said to have had “good relations” after this incident (Snyder). The coda adds that in the past, the “Bear Wife was remembered by human beings as a Goddess under many names” and that there were once numerous stories about her children, “but that period is over now” (Snyder). The tale concludes by lamenting the killing of bears, population growth, and the destruction of the natural world.

Bibliography

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Fortier, Alcée, ed. “Compair Taureau and Jean Malin.” Louisiana Folktales: Loupin, Bouki, and other Creole Stories in French Dialect and English Translation.Lafayette: U of Louisiana at Lafayette P, 2011. 7–13. Print.

Loucks, Georgina. “The Girl and the Bear Facts: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.”Canadian Journal of Native Studies 5.2 (1985): 218–39. Print.

McClellan, Catharine. The Girl Who Married the Bear: A Masterpiece of Indian Oral Tradition. Ottawa: Natl. Museums of Canada, 1970. Print.

McClellan, Catharine, Maria Johns, and Dora Austin Wedge. “The Girl Who Married the Bear.” Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America. Ed. Brian Swann. New York: Random, 1996. Print.

Rockwell, David. Giving Voice to Bear: North American Indian Rituals, Myths, and Images of the Bear. Niwot: Roberts Rinehart, 1991. Print.

San Souci, Robert D. Callie Ann and Mistah Bear. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print.

Snyder, Gary. “The Woman Who Married a Bear.” Dialogue for Kids. Idaho Public Television, 2012. Web. 16 July 2012.