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And as the relics of the bear may not enter the house by
the door, and Aino houses in Saghalien have no windows, a man gets
up on the roof and lets the flesh, the head, and the skin down
through the smoke-hole. Rice and wild potatoes are then offered to
the head, and a pipe, tobacco, and matches are considerately placed
beside it. Custom requires that the guests should eat up the whole
animal before they depart; the use of salt and pepper at the meal is
forbidden; and no morsel of the flesh may be given to the dogs. When
the banquet is over, the head is carried away into the depth of the
forest and deposited on a heap of bears' skulls, the bleached and
mouldering relics of similar festivals in the past.
The Gilyaks, a Tunguzian people of Eastern Siberia, hold a
bear-festival of the same sort once a year in January. "The bear is
the object of the most refined solicitude of an entire village and
plays the chief part in their religious ceremonies." An old she-bear
is shot and her cub is reared, but not suckled, in the village.


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