“Indeed, this animal” (the grizzly bear) “was then so large, strong, and cunning, that the Creator somewhat feared him, and hollowed out Mount Shasta as a wigwam for himself, where he might reside while on earth in the most perfect security and comfort.  So the smoke was soon to be seen curling up from the mountain where the Great Spirit and his family lived, and still live, though their hearth-fire is alive no longer, now that the white-man is in the land.”

Here the superior race seeks shelter in a cave on Mount Shasta, and their camp-fire is associated with the smoke which once went forth out of the volcano; while an inferior race, a Neanderthal race, dwell in the plains at the foot of the mountain.

“This was thousands of snows ago, and there came after this a late and severe spring-time, in which a memorable storm blew up from the sea, shaking the huge lodge” (Mount Shasta) “to its base.”

(Another recollection of the Ice Age.)

“The Great Spirit commanded his daughter, little more than an infant, to go up and bid the wind to be still, cautioning her, at the same time, in his fatherly way, not to put her head out into the blast, but only to thrust out her little red arm and make a sign, before she delivered her message."[1]

Here we seem to have a reminiscence of the cave-dwellers, looking out at the terrible tempest from their places of shelter.

[1.  Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, p. 91.]

{p. 204}

The child of the Great Spirit exposes herself too much, is caught by the wind and blown down the mountain-side, where she is found, shivering on the snow, by a family of grizzly bears.  These grizzly bears evidently possessed some humane as well as human traits:  “They walked then on their hind-legs like men, and talked, and carried clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms.”  They represent in their bear-skins the rude, fur-clad race that were developed during the intense cold of the Glacial Age.

The child of the Great Spirit, the superior race, intermarries with one of the grizzly bears, and from this union came the race of men, to wit, the Indians.

“But the Great Spirit punished the grizzly bears by depriving them of the power of speech, and of standing erect—­in short, by making true bears of them.  But no Indian will, to this day, kill a grizzly bear, recognizing as he does the tie of blood.”

Again, we are told: 

“The inhabitants of central Europe and the Teutonic races who came late to England place their mythical heroes under ground in caves, in vaults beneath enchanted castles, or in mounds which rise up and open, and show their buried inhabitants alive and busy about the avocations of earthly men. . . .  In Morayshire the buried race are supposed to be under the sandhills, as they are in some parts of Brittany."[1]

Associated with these legends we find many that refer to the time of great cold, and snow, and ice.  I give one or two specimens: