Bear Legend
The great teacher is the Bear. He is one of the most curious and omnivorous of all animals. A bear feeds on nearly every food available, from insects to grasses.
Bear Clan members have special duties in the areas of food storage and preparation, also medicine gathering and teaching, just as Fire Clan people have a particular calling to be firekeepers, fuel gatherers and carvers.
Numerous pipe bowls show the bear standing and teaching before a seated pupil.
The Bear rises and prays at sunrise, like the Indian. The Cherokee today pretend that there are only seven clans and do not enumerate the Bear Clan among them. This is because, anciently, the members of the Bear Clan were considered bears, not human.
But there are many stories which Bear Clan members tell to one another, and they have an important history in the Cherokee Nation.
Red Bear tells a humorous story about an experience he had on the Black Path, which runs crosswise to the Red Path. He was returning from a tribal meeting in the Southwest and thought he would pay his respects to the resting place of his ancestors.
The town where his great-great-grandparents lived was now under water the result of some "dam project" but there was a state park located there.
Never before had he been to this place, at one time the capital of his Nation. Red Bear says that when he travels his attitude is that any land the government stole and has not yet parceled out is still Indian land, once removed, as it were.
He planned to camp and sleep that night on the Mother with his people. The park was closed for the season, so Red Bear left his car at the gates and walked in with his blanket, thinking he might find a spot to rest and leave early the next morning without anyone noticing him.
The night was black as it could be. Clouds covered the stars and there was a new moon, which is to say no moon.
Red Bear walked blindly and boldly along an asphalt road for almost a mile or more, leaving the lights of the park buildings far behind him. The darkness of the road was uniform, solid with that of the sky and surrounding trees.
Suddenly, he says, there was a line of shining spirits like giant warriors blocking his way. He stopped. He held out his hands in peace and greeted them in Cherokee, stating his intentions. The line divided to let him pass. He felt welcomed.
He continued on the black road, sensing that it curved and went down toward the river. He still could not see a thing. He followed his feet in blind faith. He walked for another mile or so before he said to himself, "Any way into the woods is as good as any other."
He left the road and found that his feet were now placed on a sandy beaten path. This he followed until he said to himself, "Any spot is as good as any other."
So he spread his blanket on the pine needles and prepared to go to bed. As he removed his tobacco pouch and laid it at his head, he felt the ground about it to make sure it was a good place to put it.
That is when he felt a stone fire ring immediately beside his bedding. He had found a campsite after all! He would not light a fire. This would be cold camping. But he would make a tobacco offering to the spirits of the woods and thank them for their hospitality.
The spirits of that place made a big to-do over the tobacco, he says. They had not had it for so long! Tobacco was once one of them. All growing things can speak, but tobacco is their special speaker. That is the word they used, Red Bear says-- "Speaker." When you wish to know the purpose of a plant, they said, you must speak to it and it will tell you what its gift is, its teaching, its medicine.
Would you like to see which plants in the woods are medicine plants? The woods then began to glow with a faint, chartreuse light.
Red Bear watched as the various plants brightened, one by one, large and small, high and low. In many cases, the light was not spread evenly through the plant but was stronger in certain parts. With some of the underbrush, each leaf glowed like a bright, trembling bead. There would be a patch of grass where every blade showed and another clump that was completely dark.
Red Bear could see the roots of certain bushes and weeds, like skeletons. The bark of some trees contained more light than any other part. In other trees, it was the fruit or flowers.
As Red Bear looked around he noticed that almost every plant within his vision had lit up. This included all trees, without exception. He told me the proportion of medicine plants to nonmedicinal vegetation was four to one. "The woods are a medicine chest," he said.
"Top of the morning to you, Chief!" said the ranger the next day. Red Bear learned that he had found the only primitive camping spot in the entire park. It overlooked the Tugaloo River, now a large reservoir.
From the time of that experience, he saw even the most nondescript-looking woods with different eyes.
"Oh, and by the way," he added, "those tobacco-hungry spirits somehow managed to make me leave my tobacco pouch there. I would have offered it to them but they beat me to the punch. They fooled me out of it. The next place I went to, someone gifted me with a new pouch.
