The Bear Woman "Once, a man and woman, who thought they were the only two people on the face of the earth, lived in a remote valley filled with game and good gardens. Never did the man have to leave the valley to hunt until an animal he had wounded led him beyond the ridge.
When he didn't return for days, the woman did not know what to do. Not having been out hunting, she did not know which way to begin to search for her husband until a bird landed near her and told her that he was living one valley over with two other women.
She went to a chest filled with the hides of every animal, trying to choose one for a disguise. She choose to be the bear, who is a good, brave and strong traveler: this is what she would choose. She slipped the bearskin over her and became the bear.
With the speed of the bear, she climbed out of the valley and saw the smoke of another house in the distance. As the bear, she ran towards the house.
Before she got too close, she changed back into a woman and slipped out of the skin, hiding it just behind the house. Inside, there were two young women tending to the clothes piled before them. She recognized them as the clothes of her husband.
The two women in the hut became worried that the wife was so beautiful that, upon seeing her the husband would leave them. "Tell us your secret!" the two women begged her, "What makes you so beautiful?" Wanting to be rid of them she said,"I cannot tell you, but I will show you if you do exactly as I say. If you do , you will be forever beautiful."
Quickly they agreed and the woman told them to close their eyes tight, "When you open them again you will be beautiful." The women giggled with anticipation. Going to the fire, the woman took two cups full of boiling oil and handed one to each woman, saying, "Drink it in one gulp."
Doing so, the two women flapped about on the floor in pain and then were still, dead.
Just then she heard her husband approaching from the water. She ran back and slipped on the bear hide, turning once again to a bear. As her husband called out fond greetings to his two new wives, the bear charged down the beach at the man. "You are not my wife!" he said in surprise. "Neither were these two women who now lie dead inside the hut" the bear, who was really the woman, said. As the man returned towards the house, the bear cried out in a long agonized howl, "I am your wife!" and the man turned in surprise, and horror as the bear charged him and killed him.
Still in a rage, the bear roamed the countryside killing things as she came upon them until a raven and a fox, which she recognized as her two lost children, came to calm her. The raven and the fox remain near to the bear at all times now and so does the rage that drove her to kill. That is how the raven and fox came to be near the bear and why the bear is so unpredictable and dangerous."