Reading Notes: British North American, Part A

For the first half of this week's reading, I chose to focus on the British North American unit, and more specifically, the story called "Grizzly Bear and the Coyote." I really liked this story because it was quick and to the point. In the beginning, the grizzly bear meets with the coyote and said that he wants darkness all the time. So he sung and danced, "darkness! darkness! darkness!" But the coyote wanted light, so he sung "light! light! light!" Finally, they were exhausted, so they decided to agree on it being dark 50% of the time and light the other 50%. Then the grizzly bear thought winter was too short and he wanted winter to be 22 months long. So the coyote tricked the bear by saying "let there be as many moons in the year as there are feathers in Flicker's tail." The bear thought there were a lot, but there were only 12. So they split that in half, and agreed to have six months of warm weather and six months of cold weather.

I like this story and I really like the overall message of compromise. If I were to change this story, I would probably adjust the characters, in turn adjusting the things that they want to change about the world.

Image information:

Bear and coyote. Web Source. 


Bibliography:

Grizzly Bear and Coyote from Myths and Legends of British North America by Katharine Berry Judson (1917).