Reading Notes: Great Plains, Part A - The Buffalo and the Grizzly Bear

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In this story, I'm not really sure about the grizzly's motivations. He's just walking along, and sees Buffalo Bull, and decides to antagonize him. What for? To start a fight? He claims that the buffalo had been walking around, saying he wanted to fight him, and the buffalo seems very confused about that. The bear beats him up a little, and starts to leave, and as the buffalo is considering whether he should strike back, the bear comes back again for another fight. I literally have no idea why here, I can't imagine why the bear keeps trying to start something with the buffalo, unless he's really that bored. The buffalo finally fights back, after a few more times of this back and forth, and he goes to push the bear off a cliff, and manages to do so, but his momentum sends him flying over the edge. The bear lands safely in a thicket, and when the buffalo finally comes back, he says they should be friends.

Since I don't know the reason the bear started the fight in the first place, it's hard to really hold onto the clear moral of the story, that instead of fighting, we should all be friends. Nothing seems to happen for any real reason, and it makes it really hard to invest in the ending.

An American buffalo (Encyclopedia Britannica) 

Story Source:Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Berry Judson (1913).

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