When the Lapps had succeeded
in killing a bear with impunity, they thanked him for not hurting
them and for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him
his death wounds; and they prayed that he would not visit his death
upon them by sending storms or in any other way. His flesh then
furnished a feast.
The reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and
eat may thus be traced all along the northern region of the Old
World from Bering's Straits to Lappland. It reappears in similar
forms in North America. With the American Indians a bear hunt was an
important event for which they prepared by long fasts and
purgations. Before setting out they offered expiatory sacrifices to
the souls of bears slain in previous hunts, and besought them to be
favourable to the hunters. When a bear was killed the hunter lit his
pipe, and putting the mouth of it between the bear's lips, blew into
the bowl, filling the beast's mouth with smoke. Then he begged the
bear not to be angry at having been killed, and not to thwart him
afterwards in the chase.
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