They were too clever to be caught as other animals are, and he saw that he would have to adopt some unusual method.  He decided that he would go down very early to the spot on the bank of the river where they were in the habit of sunning themselves and disguise himself as an old stump of a tree, then, when they came out and were enjoying the sunshine, he would shoot the fine old white one with the beautiful glossy skin that he had so much admired.  As on other days the lions came, and when they saw this stump the white lion, which was a kind of king among them, said: 

“‘I never saw that big stump before.  I think it must be Nanahboozhoo.’

“Another one said he thought the same thing.

“Others only laughed, and said, ‘It is only an old pine stump.’

“However, as a number of them were suspicious, it was decided to go up and shake it and see if it would move, and thus really find out.  They went to it, and three of them together used their greatest efforts to move it.

“Nanahboozhoo had to make one of the hardest efforts of his life to hold firm.  However, he succeeded, and so the lions only said: 

“’It really is a stump of a tree, but it is very strange we did not notice it before.’  Then they rolled about on the warm sand in the sunshine until one after another fell asleep.

“Nanahboozhoo now noiselessly and quickly turned himself into a young hunter, then taking up his bow and arrow he shot the white lion.  His arrow stuck fast in his body and badly wounded him, but did not kill him.  At once the lions all plunged into the river and disappeared.  Nanahboozhoo was sorry that he did not get the lion’s skin, indeed he was greatly vexed and annoyed to have to return to his wigwam without it.  A day or two after, as he was walking in the woods, he met with a very old woman.  She had a bundle of slippery elm bark, out of which poultices were made by the Indians for wounds and bruises, and also some roots for medicine.

“’Where are you going, nookoom (grandmother), and what are you going to do with the bark and roots?’

“‘O’ said she, ’you cannot imagine what trouble we are in, for Nanahboozhoo has shot and badly wounded one of our chiefs, and great efforts are going to be made to catch and kill him.’

“She also told him that she had been honored in being sent for to come and use all of her healing arts to try and restore the wounded chief to health again, and that now she was on her way to his abode to poultice him with the slippery elm bark, and to give him medicine, made by boiling the roots, to allay the great fever from which he was suffering.

“Nanahboozhoo thus discovered that these lions, as he had supposed them to be, were wicked magicians who had been doing a great deal of harm, and who when they chose to do so could change themselves into the form of lions and live either under the water or on land, as best suited them, to escape from being killed by those whom they had injured.  As the old woman was very talkative, Nanahboozhoo soon obtained from her all the information he desired.  Among other things she told him that sometimes people came to her for bad medicines, to give to persons with whom they had quarreled, and in this way they would kill them with the poisons which she made out of toadstools and other deadly things.