The Bear Hunt or the Hunting of Mishi-Mokwa
This is played by half a dozen or more boys. Each has a club about the size and shape of a baseball club, but made of straw tied around two or three switches and tightly sewn up in burlap.
One big fellow is selected for the Bear. He has a schoolbag tightly strapped on his back, and in that a toy balloon fully blown up. This is his heart. On his neck is a bear-claw necklace of wooden beads and claws. He has three dens about one hundred yards apart in a triangle. While in his den the Bear is safe. If the den is a tree or rock, he is safe while touching it. He is obliged to come out when the chief hunter counts 100, and must go the rounds of the three till the hunt is settled.
The object of the hunters is to break the balloon or heart, that is, kill the Bear. He must drop dead when the heart bursts. The hunter who kills him claims the necklace.
But the Bear also has a club for defense. Each hunter must wear a hat, and once the Bear knocks a hunter’s hat off, that one is dead and out of this hunt. He must drop where his hat falls.
Tackling of any kind is forbidden.
The Bear wins by killing or putting to flight all the hunters. In this case, he keeps the necklace.
The savageness of these big Bears is indescribable. Many lives are lost in each hunt; and it has several times happened that the whole party of hunters has been exterminated by some monster of unusual ferocity.
This game has also been developed into a play.
The Big Bear Hunt
The Bear Hunt with spears is a game invented and developed with success by the Chief.
The spears are made with iron heads and hickory handles; altogether five feet long, with a bunch of colored wool eighteen inches from the top; this is to identify the spears, also to make them fly better. The bear is about five feet long from tail to snout, and is made of burlap and hay on a backbone of board which runs the whole length.
The bear is hung from a twenty-foot rope, clear of the ground and worked by a bear man, ..text pokračuje
