Reading Notes: British North America - Part B, The Making of Lakes and Mountains

The Making of Lakes and Mountains

This story is focused on one woman's escape from a family of bears, and she uses various objects to help in her escape. For these notes, I thought I would list those objects, and their purpose, because they have a lot to do with the goal of the story, which is to explain how lakes and mountains were made.

Items:

1. Hair oil
2. A whetstone (a "grinder's stone" meant for sharpening metal tools)
3. Hair combings 
4. Red ochre

Uses:

1. Hair oil - The hair oil, when poured out, turns into a lake. Though the bears can swim, by putting a lake between herself and her pursuers, the woman hopes to slow them down.
2. Whetstone - When the woman breaks off a part of the whetstone and throws it on the ground, it becomes a mountain, offering another obstacle to slow down the bears' pursuit.
3. Hair combings - The woman throws down the hair combings, and they become a mass of fallen trees. Again, bears can climb, but it does manage to slow them down a bit so she can continue to escape.
4. Red ochre - Snowbirds (I did some research, and the closest thing I can find to a "snowbird" is a type of bird called the junco, which migrate south to the United States in the winter, but spend the rest of the year in Canada) surround the woman, and she pours out some of the red ochre, and the birds fly to paint their faces in it. 

A junco bird (Source: Jocelyn Anderson/Audubon Photography Awards)

The woman uses these items repeatedly in order to escape, but in the end is only really saved when a man brings her into his canoe and sets his carved club in the water, which then magically beats the bears to death.

Story Source:Myths and Legends of British North America by Katharine Berry Judson (1917).