The Bear Mother (Haida)
In this classic Haida narrative, a woman who mocked the bears was taken by a bear who made her his wife. She was led into the bear's den deep in the forest, where she lived among the bear people and bore children who were half-human, half-bear. Her human brothers eventually tracked her down and killed the bears in a great hunt, but the woman herself had been transformed by her time with the bears. This story, common across many Northwest Coast tribes including the Tlingit version known as Kaats' and the Bear, serves to explain the special relationship between humans and bears. The bear woman's