without mentioning to anyone my design, I loaded my gun as for a bear,
and set off on our back track. I soon met a woman belonging to one of
the brothers of Taw-ga-we-ninne, and of course my aunt. This woman had
shown little friendship for us, considering us as a burthen upon her
husband, who sometimes gave something for our support; she had also
often ridiculed me. She asked me immediately what I was doing on the
path, and whether I expected to kill Indians, that I came there with my
gun. I made her no answer; and thinking I must be not far from the place
where my mother had told Wa-me-gon-a-biew to leave the path, I turned
off, continuing carefully to regard all the directions she had given. At
length I found what appeared at some former time to have been a pond. It
was a small, round, open place in the woods, now grown up with grass and
small bushes. This I thought must be the meadow my mother had spoken of;
and examining around it, I came to an open space in the bushes, where,
it is probable, a small brook ran from the meadow; but the snow was now
so deep that I could see nothing of it. My mother had mentioned that,
when she saw the bear in her dream, she had, at the same time, seen a
smoke rising from the ground. I was confident this was the place she had
indicated, and I watched long, expecting to see the smoke; but, wearied
at length with waiting, I walked a few paces into the open place,
resembling a path, when I unexpectedly fell up to my middle in the snow.
I extricated myself without difficulty, and walked on; but, remembering
that I had heard the Indians speak of killing bears in their holes, it
occurred to me that it might be a bear's hole into which I had fallen,
and, looking down into it, I saw the head of a bear lying close to the
bottom of the hole. I placed the muzzle of my gun nearly between his
eyes and discharged it. As soon as the smoke cleared away, I took a
piece of stick and thrust it into the eyes and into the wound in the
head of the bear, and, being satisfied that he was dead, I endeavoured
to lift him out of the hole; but being unable to do this, I returned
home, following the track I had made in coming out. As I came near the
camp, where the squaws had by this time set up the lodges, I met the
same woman I had seen in going out, and she immediately began again to
ridicule me. 'Have you killed a bear, that you come back so soon, and
walk so fast?' I thought to myself, 'How does she know that I