The voice appeared to come from below, and the boy looked downward to some trees. In the crotch of one of these trees he saw a man sitting. The man had no legs. The Stone Boy approached this stranger, who was an aged person, and asked why he had found him thus helpless.

"Alas, grandson," said the old man, "I am suffering because of one man who has destroyed all the people of this very coun-try, killing them with a very long knife. This man cut off my legs and placed me here."

The Stone Boy took this old man down from his perch and carried him to the top of the hill. "My grandson," said the man, "you are very kind. Listen, I am old and wise. Do not go near the first island which you see in yonder lake. There the man lives of whom I have told you. He is of the wakan people and will do you a mischief."

The Stone Boy said, "Very well, grandfather, we shall see about this." He made a sweat lodge and then ran to where he had killed Huti. He cut off the bear's legs and fetched them. He tied these legs to the man's stumps, and so put him in the sweat lodge. He gave the man a vapor bath and then brought him forth. The stranger was half bear and half man.

"Pshaw!" said the boy. "This is indeed a poor creature!" He seized the man by his bear's legs and swung him to and fro, tossing him into some tall grass.

"You shall be a brown bear like no other," said the boy. As he said this a brown bear came from the grass and fled into some woods. Since then there have been brown bears on the earth.

Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera, p. 43-44