SURVIVING THROUGH THE DAYS "ch07"

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7. The Bear Girl

Chimariko 1921 Sally Noble, narrator J. P. Harrington, collector Katherine Turner, translator

INTRODUCTION BY KATHERINE TURNER

The Chimariko language was once spoken on the Trinity River in Northwestern California, a heavily forested and mountainous country. Chimariko is classified by linguists as a Hokan language, but it is only distantly related to some of the other languages spoken in prehistoric California. To the west and northwest their neighbors were the Athabascan Whilkut and Hupa. Their neighbors to the south and east were Penutian-speaking Wintu people.

Sally Noble was the last known fluent speaker of the Chimariko language. She told the story of “The Bear Girl” to John Peabody Harrington in 1921. Mrs. Noble told Harrington several Chimariko stories as well as recounting historical events, describing customs such as tattooing and doctoring, and giving her personal reminiscences. There is no place in Harrington's notes of his work with her where she told a single story from

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start to finish. Sally Noble was remembering these stories from long before she told them to Harrington, and each time she told a story she would remember another detail or episode. Although she knew Chimariko, she had seldom spoken the language as an adult. By the time she told this story, she had not spoken Chimariko for many years, so she told it in many overlapping fragments. This story was pieced together from those fragments.

J. P. Harrington amassed more data about North American languages and cultures than any other person. An ethnographer and linguist, he was employed by the Bureau of American Ethnography. He recorded his notes on the Chimariko language from Sally Noble between September 1921 and January 1922. His notes are stored in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. They have been photographed and microfilmed, making them more accessible to libraries around the world. By January 1922 Harrington had compiled several thousand pages of notes on Chimariko, and he planned to return to his work with Sally Noble in May. Mrs. Noble died in February 1922.

The story of “The Bear Girl” told here is my translation of Mrs. Noble's Chimariko, not her English versions of the story. She spoke in English at first, then in both Chimariko and English, and, finally, in Chimariko with an occasional English word or phrase. When she spoke English, Harrington wrote it down in English, and when she spoke Chimariko, he wrote it down phonetically because there is no alphabet for Chimariko. As Sally Noble got into the story of “The Bear Girl” in her own language, she added a wealth of detail absent from her English tellings.

In Chimariko the story is lyrical through its use of repetition to unfold the plot gradually. There is a majestic beauty in the repetitions. For most of the story, Mrs. Noble speaks one phrase and then partially restates it, adding just a little more detail before moving on to the next sentence. This is such a prominent feature that it is quite noticeable when Mrs. Noble does not exploit this device but moves straight ahead with her story, adding new information with each new sentence. For instance, in the scene where the Bear Girl abandons civilization for good (lines 60–73), there is very little repetition, and its absence underscores one of the climaxes of the story. We find the same pattern again near the end of the story (lines 96–104) at another dramatic moment, the scene where her brother shoots the Bear Girl.

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FIGURE 2. Sally Noble. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

A few additional notes about the translation of Chimariko may be in order. First, there is no di erence between he and she in Chimariko, so I have supplied the distinction for English-speaking readers; it would look and sound odd had I translated the Chimariko pronouns as it. Second, I have changed the order of the words from Chimariko word order to that of English and moved descriptive words to where they would occur in an English sentence.

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This story gives us a glimpse of Chimariko culture and beliefs, as in the concept that there was a time long ago when a person could grow up or “turn out” to be an animal. In translating this story into English, I have tried to reflect the style and phrasing as Sally Noble told it in Chimariko. The line breaks are an attempt to suggest the controlled, rhythmic pace of delivery that seems implicit in the language of the original. I have not elaborated or filled in blanks, because that would alter the story told and add nothing of significance. This story speaks for itself.

THE BEAR GIRL

	Long ago there was a cross Indian girl.
	She was cross and angry all the time.
	She did not like people.
	She had no appetite for food.
5	She did not like the food her mother fed her.
	She did not eat the food she was given.

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	They were afraid of her.
	They could do nothing with her.
	They wondered what she would amount to.
10	Everybody wondered how she would turn out.

	Her mother hired a good Indian doctor to ask
	what was the matter with the girl.
	She was not like people.
	She was not like our flesh.
	She was not a person.
15	She was not a human woman.
	She was going to turn out to be a bear.
	That's what the matter was.

	Everybody was afraid of her because she was so cross.
	She was always slapping.
20	She did not use a stick, not ever.
	She always slapped with her hand.
	She was not like the other children.
	She always slapped.
	When good children play,
25	they do not slap with their hands but use a stick.
	Their mother told the children: “Don't hit her.
	I am going to punish you if you hit the bear girl.”
	But they would sometimes hit her with a rock because she was so
	mean.

	When she was still a little girl,
30	she already slept alone in a little house,
	because everybody was afraid of her because she was so cross.
	When the hazelnuts and berries got ripe,
	she gathered wild blackberries,
	but she did not eat them in the house.

35	She had only one brother.
	Her brother watched his sister as she got a little bigger and
	crosser every year.

	Everybody kept a watch on her.
	Every year she got worse and worse.

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	When the old women went to gather hazelnuts,
40	she went with them.
	Each time she went a little further.
	She watched other people cracking the hazelnuts
	and learned how to crack them too,
	though she had been told not to.
45	She gathered lots of hazelnuts and cracked them,
	but she did not eat them in the house.
	Maybe she ate them out in the woods.
	In the house she threw everything around.
	She got worse and worse every year—bigger and crosser.

50	When the women went out to gather hazelnuts,
	the girl went to get a drink further upstream.
	When it was time to go home, the women called out:
	“We are going home.”
	They called to her and hollered,
55	“Come on, let's go.”
	They hollered but she did not answer.
	She went a little further every time.
	She went further into the brush.
	Finally she set the basket down on the trail and just kept going.

60	They say her brother followed her through the thick brush,
	and found the basket.
	She kept going, up into the mountains,
	and she threw away her apron.
	But she wore a nice fancy dress, well fixed up.
	Her brother found the apron and put it in the basket.
	She kept going, climbing higher and higher.
	Her brother found her nice fancy dress.
	He put it in the basket, laying it across her apron.
	Then he found her hat.
70	Her brother kept following her upstream through the brush.
	Finally he caught up with her.
	She had already changed into a bear.

	She looked back.
	She said:
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75	“My brother,
	I thought I was a natural born person,
	but I am a big bear.
	Now I get where I want to go,
	now I turn out to be a bear,
80	so that's how I turn out.
	I have turned out to be a bear,
	a cross female bear.
	Remember what I say:
	You will see me in a clover patch with lots of other bears.
85	I will be the biggest black bear.
	I won't run.
	That will be me.
	Don't shoot.”

	She had become a bear, she ran away as a bear.
90	That is the reason why the little girl was so mean.

	Her brother returned to the village and told the people what she
	said.
	“I am going to be big and black,
	don't shoot me,” she told him.
	Then, after a while, that boy got to be an old man.
95	All the men went bear hunting.
	The old man saw a big patch of clover and went to look at it.
	He saw lots of bears.
	He shot one.
	He shot a black bear twice.
100	Then he heard her:
	“Don't you recollect?
	I told my brother not to shoot me!”

	The bear got away through the snow high up on the mountain.
	The man looked for her,
105	but he never knew whether the bear died or not.
	But that bear could talk Indian.

	Finally, the man went home.
	At supper time he wouldn't eat or say anything.
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	He looked like he'd been crying.
110	He wouldn't say anything.
	He lay in bed for two days looking sick but saying nothing.

	His wife asked him,
	“What's the matter? Are you sick?”
	But he wouldn't say anything.

115	After a while he told his wife,
	“I shot her. I shot her twice.”
	And his wife said,
	“Don't tell the old folks. Don't tell them.”
	His wife said,
120	“Well, what's the use to cry, you can't help it,
	that part of it is done already,
	that part of it is gone,” she said.
	“She is alive and that's all.”

	So, he never told any people at all.
125	He told nobody else.
	He told only his wife.

7. The Bear Girl

Chimariko 1921 Sally Noble, narrator J. P. Harrington, collector Katherine Turner, translator

INTRODUCTION BY KATHERINE TURNER

FIGURE 2. Sally Noble. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

FURTHER READING

THE BEAR GIRL