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peter kalifornsky Qezdaghnen Ggagga Beghun The Other Half of the Kustatan Bear Story This is the other part of the Kustatan Bear Story.1 There were three brothers; they were not shamans, but their spiritual convictions were strong. Because of their strong beliefs, this was what had happened. They had killed the bear in which the two Qizhjeh shamans had been residing, and that weakened the shamans’ powers. Then the shamans from Cook Inlet [literally ‘‘from this side’’] talked and sent the two shamans [who had been in the bear] along with the sickness [back to the other side] on the Cook Inlet people. And those shamans [from the Lake Clark area] and these shamans [from Cook Inlet] battled each other for perhaps thirty years. These shamans [from Cook Inlet] sent their shaman power into the one who killed the Kustatan bear and he became like a shaman. They hoped they would figure out some way to end the shaman war. And various sicknesses broke out. Some of the shamans took the sicknesses into themselves. [They did this] to save the people. The shamans from Qizhjeh caused the spirit of a Cook Inlet shaman to invade a moose to do evil. And that moose was sent after an old man [the chief] of Kalifornsky village. That old man was out hunting rabbits upland from the cemetery and the moose charged him. The old man was wearing snowshoes, and the moose chased him and stepped on his snowshoes, and he fell over. And the little dog he had with him jumped up and bit the moose by the bell [on its neck]. While the moose was trying to fight the little dog off, the old man escaped. From then on, every time the old man tried to go out that same moose would pursue him. After some time, the old man told his partner, ‘‘I’m going out to get that moose in the morning.’’ He got up in the morning and went to church and prayed. He prayed and placed three bullets on the cross. He sprinkled holy water on the three cartridges [that is, he baptized them] and he went out fter the moose.  Dena’ina He went all over back behind the village where there were trails. He looked all over, but he could not find that moose. Then, as he was going near the gulch getting close to the cemetery, he came upon the moose lying down. When the chief saw the moose lying there, it got up. He took a cartridge that wasn’t baptized and shot the moose from a short distance away, but the moose just shook himself. Then he shot it again, this time with a baptized cartridge, and the moose went down. It would get up and fall and try to get up again. Then the young men from the village ran there and shot the moose in the head. Their bullets did not faze it and the moose got up. So the old man shot it with the second baptized bullet. He shot it in the neck. The young men cut off its head and set it down. It was still blinking its eyes at that old man. Finally , he shot it with the third baptized bullet and killed it. It was just like mush inside the head. And the men went to work and they sliced off the front and back quarters and lay them separate from the body. The men butchered that moose and then they buried it in the ground just behind the cemetery. Then the Cook Inlet shaman [whose spirit the Lake Clark shaman had caused to invade the moose] said, ‘‘My head aches.’’ And he fell down and died. And more time went by. The one who had killed that moose had a big house at Kalifornsky village. The man didn’t sleep in the bed. He slept on the floor. At this time he had a big black dog. The dog would lie by his feet. One night the dog got up and started growling, looking at the bed. And then the chief got up, but he did not see anything. Then he saw a great big bear paw coming out from under the bed trying to reach over to get him. The big dog got between the chief and the bear paw. The chief had a little table in the corner. He always kept it covered [with a clean cloth where he kept his...

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