Reading Notes: British North America, Part B

(Found on Wikimedia Commons, represents bear in the story)

 For Part B of this reading, I focused on "The Making of Lakes and Mountains" from Myths and Legends of British North America by Katharine Berry Judson (1917).

In this story, a woman is kidnapped by bears and plots a plan to escape. In her effort to escape, she brings a handful of items with her to assist on her journey. As she's escaping, she gets chased out by the bears and other animals in an effort to bring her back to the bears. She uses the few items she brought with her - including hair combings, hair oil, whetstone, and red ochre - as distractions to confused the animals that are chasing her. As she throws these items as distractions, they become much more powerful than she expected. The hair oil became large lakes that separated her from the animals chasing her, and the whetstone became so big that they served as mountains. She created a whole new terrain that only she could navigate, and her plan to escape started to look more and more attainable. 

There was a swarm of birds that kept getting closer to her, but she used her hair combings to turn them into trees and distract them. She also threw out the red ochre that they used to paint their faces with. Just as she thought she was in the clear, the group of bears nearly overtook her, and she had to think quick. Looking at the new land she had formed, she saw a man on a canoe in the great sea, and she went with him. The bears continued to follow, swimming after her in the sea, just when the man put a carved club in the water and killed all the bears. The man had saved her, and her escape had worked.

What I took from this story was how important relationships are with others. This woman was strong on her own and was able to make it a far distance using her own power and resources, but once she trusted in someone else she was able to achieve true safety. I think this is a great and applicable life lesson because no matter what context or what situation, connections with others are always powerful. When we connect with others and work together, that's when we're the strongest.