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“Ke-koo-too-yem, the Sleeping Water.”

Yo-sem-i-te, Large Grizzly Bear

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WHEN the world was made, the Great Spirit tore out the heart of Kay-o-pha, the Sky Mountains, and left the gash unhealed. He sent the Coyote to people the valley with a strong and hardy race of men, who called their home Ah-wah-nee, and themselves, the Ah-wah-nee-chees.

The Ah-wah-nee-chees lived the simple, savage life, which knows no law but to hunt and kill and eat. By day the trackless forests rang with the clamor of the chase. By the flaring light of their fires the hunters gorged themselves upon the fresh-killed meat, feasting far into the night. They made war upon the tribes that lived beyond the walls of Ah-wah-nee and never knew defeat, for none dared follow them to their rock-ribbed fastness. They were feared by all save the outcasts of other tribes, whose lawless deeds won for them a place among the Ah-wah-nee-chees. Thus the children of Ah-wah-nee increased in number and strength.

As time went by, the Ah-wah-nee-chees, in their pride of power, forgot the Great Spirit who had given them their stronghold and made them feared of all their race. And the Great Spirit, turning upon them in his wrath, loosed his evil forces in their midst, scourging them with a black sickness that swept all before it as a hot wind blights the grain at harvest time.

The air of the valley was a poison breath, in which the death shade hovered darkly. Before the Evil Spirit medicine men were powerless. Their mystic spells and incantations were a weird mockery, performed among the dying and the dead; and when at last the Evil One passed onward in his cursed flight, the once proud and powerful band of Ah-wah-nee-chees was like a straggling pack of gaunt gray wolves. Their eyes gleamed dully in their shrunken faces, and the skin hung in loose folds on their wasted bodies.

Those who were able fled from the valley, which was now a haunted place, eerie with flitting shadows of funeral fires and ghostly echoes of the funeral wail. They scattered among the tribes beyond the mountains, and Ah-wah-nee was deserted.

A vast stillness settled upon the valley, broken only by the songs of birds and the roar of Cho-look when Spring sent the mountain torrents crashing over his head. The mountain lion and the grizzly roamed at will among the rocks and tangled chinquapin, fearless of arrows; the doe led her young by an open path to the river, where trout flashed their colors boldly in the sun. In the autumn the choke-cherries and manzanita berries dried upon their stems, and ripened acorns rotted to dust upon the ground after the squirrels had gathered their winter store. The homeless Ah-wah-nee-chees circled wide in passing the valley.

Over beyond To-co-yah, the North Dome, among the Mo-nos and Pai-u-tes, a few of the ill-fated Ah-wah-nee-chees had found refuge. Among them was the chief of the tribe, who after a time took a Mo-no maiden for his bride. By this Mo-no woman he had a son, and they gave him the name of Ten-ie-ya. Before another round of seasons, the spirit of the Ah-wah-nee-chee chieftain had wandered on to the Land of the Sun, the home of happy souls.

Ten-ie-ya grew up among his mother’s people, but the fire of a warrior chief was in his blood and he liked not to live where the word of another was law. The fire in his blood was kept aflame by the words of an old man, the patriarch of his father’s tribe, who urged him to return to Ah-wah-nee, the home of his ancestors, and gather about him the people whose chief he was by right of birth.

So Ten-ie-ya went back across the mountains by a trail abandoned long ago, and from the camps of other tribes came those in whose veins was any trace of Ah-wah-nee-chee blood; and, as before, the number was increased by lawless braves of weaker bands who liked a greater freedom for their lawlessness. Again, under the favor of the Great Spirit, the Ah-wah-nee-chees flourished and by their fierce strength and daring became to other tribes as the mountain lion to the wolf and the coyote and the mountain sheep.

“A monster grizzly that had just crept forth from his winter cave.”

And it chanced that one day while Ten-ie-ya and his warriors were camped near Le-ham-i-te, the Cañon of the Arrow-wood, a young brave went out in the early morning to the lake of Ke-koo-too-yem, the Sleeping Water, to spear fish. His lithe, strong limbs took no heed of the rocky talus in his path, and he leaped from boulder to boulder, following the wall that rose sheer above him and cut the blue sky overhead.

As he reached the base of Scho-ko-ni, the cliff that arches like the shade of an Indian cradle basket, he came suddenly upon a monster grizzly that had just crept forth from his winter cave. The grizzly knows no man for his friend; least of all, the man who surprises him at the first meal after his long sleep. The rivals of Ah-wah-nee were face to face.

The Ah-wah-nee-chee had no weapon save his fish spear, useless as a reed; yet he had the fearlessness of youth and the courage of a race to whom valorous deeds are more than strings of wampum, piles of pelt or many cattle. He faced the grizzly boldly as the clumsy hulk rose to its full height, at bay and keen for attack. With instinctive love of conflict roused, the young chief seized a broken limb that lay at his feet, and gave the grizzly blow for blow.

The claws of the maddened brute raked his flesh. The blood ran warm over his glistening skin and matted the bristled yellow fur of the grizzly.

The Ah-wah-nee-chee fought bravely. While there was blood in his body, he could fight; when the blood was gone, he could die; but with the traditions of his ancestors firing his brain, he could not flee.

Furious with pain, blinded by the blows from the young chief’s club and by the blood from the young chief’s torn flesh, the grizzly struggled savagely. He, too, was driven by the law of his breed, the universal law of the forest, the law of Indian and grizzly alike,—which is to kill.

Such a battle could not last. With a low growl the crippled grizzly brought himself together and struck with the full force of his powerful arm. The blow fell short.

Urging his waning strength to one last effort, the Ah-wah-nee-chee raised his club high above his head and brought it down with a heavy, well-aimed stroke that crushed the grizzly’s skull and sent him rolling among the boulders, dead.

That night as the Ah-wah-nee-chees feasted themselves on bear meat, the story of the young chief’s bravery was told, and told again; and from that hour he was known as Yo-sem-i-te, the Large Grizzly Bear.

In time the name Yo-sem-i-te was given to all the tribe of Ah-wah-nee-chees, who for fearlessness and lawlessness were rivaled only by the grizzly with whom they shared their mountain fastness. And when long afterward the white man came and took Ah-wah-nee for his own, he gave it the name by which Ten-ie-ya’s band was known; and Cho-look, the high fall that makes the earth tremble with its mighty roar, he also called by the name of the Large Grizzly Bear, Yo-sem-i-te.