White Bear (Hųcskaga)

by Richard L. Dieterle

	Spirit Bear

White Bear was Earthmaker's first and greatest creation. He was created not only as a Bear Spirit, but as the North Wind. He was placed in the north quadrant as an Island Weight to bring stability to the primeval earth which spun out of control when it was first created. Because of his priority, White Bear controls this earth and is the source of all knowledge and inspiration. His pure white fur symbolically expresses his special powers of life energy.¹ As first in the zoological world, White Bear's spirit makes his subclan the leaders in all matters brought before the Bear Clan as a whole. Therefore too, the Bear Chief is usually drawn from the White Bear Subclan.²

Mark G. Thiel adds:

In personal conversations about “huucskaga” or “White Bear,” the late Kenneth Funmaker, Sr., and other Ho-Chunk elders described it as a dazzling black bear in springtime on an open snowscape illuminated doubly by sunshine. For “mazaska” or “white metal,” Siouan speakers identify it as “steel” in Ho-Chunk, “coins or money” in Lakota and Ponca, and “silvery” for bright and shiny open waters in Dakota/Lakota.³

This appears to be an attempt to rationalize a black bear being called "white" (ska). However, there is no reason to suppose that the Hōcągara were not acquainted with the polar bear from early times, as trade in their fur could easily have penetrated as far south as the Wazija. The white "spirit bear" is found only in distant British Columbia.

Outside British Columbia only about one in a million black bears is white. One of these white bears, a subadult male, lived near Orr, Minnesota, in 1997. Hair samples showed him to be genetically different from white Kermode [spirit] bears. Named Halo, he caused such a media stir that the Minnesota legislature gave protection to all white bears in the state, but Halo remains the only white bear ever reported in Minnesota.⁴

Albino black bears are also extremely uncommon, but like the more famous white buffalo, they are hardly unknown. The attempt to rationalize a regular black bear as a candidate to be the white bear of this tradition, is probably an attempt, very common in Hōcąk clan myths, to establish one's own clan or subclan as a potential candidate for primacy and chiefdom. The Deer Clan says, for instance, that the primordial deer that founded their clan blew on the dying embers of the Thunders' first fire, and revived it. Such claims give a sacred rationale for leadership that may have been acquired by numbers or force. There is also another interestng possibility. The ursine clans of the other tribes most closely related to the Hōcągara all have just a Black Bear Clan, and if there are subclans as among the Hōcągara, they would reflect the colors of the black bear, which span the same spectrum of colors found among bears generally. So the idea of a bear with a black coat appearing under cirtain circumstances to be white, might even derive from a tradition of the ancient Black Bear Proto-Clan, before it was reorganized and reconceptualized as the Hōcąk Bear Clan.

Comparative Material. Among the Cherokee, the chief of the bears is White Bear. Wounded bears go to be cured of their injuries where he lives.⁵

Links: Bear Spirits, Island Weights, Bear, North Wind, Earthmaker, Were-Grizzlies and Other Man-Bears, Red Bear, Blue Bear, Black Bear.

Stories: featuring White Bear as a character: The Creation of the World, Bear Clan Origin Myth (v. 7); mentioning (spirit) bears (other than were-bears): Blue Bear, Black Bear, Red Bear, Bear Clan Origin Myth, The Shaggy Man, Bear Offers Himself as Food, Hare Visits His Grandfather Bear, Grandmother Packs the Bear Meat, The Spotted Grizzly Man, Hare Establishes Bear Hunting, The Woman Who Fought the Bear, Brass and Red Bear Boy, Redhorn's Sons, The Meteor Spirit and the Origin of Wampum, The Wolf Clan Origin Myth, Hocąk Clans Origin Myth, The Messengers of Hare, Bird Clan Origin Myth, The Hocąk Migration Myth, Red Man, Hare Recruits Game Animals for Humans, Lifting Up the Bear Heads, Hare Secures the Creation Lodge, The Two Boys, Creation of the World (v. 5), Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, The Brown Squirrel, Snowshoe Strings, Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, East Enters the Medicine Lodge, Lake Winnebago Origin Myth, The Spider's Eyes, Little Priest's Game, Little Priest, How He went out as a Soldier, Morning Star and His Friend (v. 2), How the Thunders Met the Nights, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, Trickster's Tail, Old Man and Wears White Feather, The Warbundle Maker, cf. Fourth Universe.

Polar Bear

Themes: something is of a (symbolic) pure white color: Deer Spirits, The Journey to Spiritland (v. 4), White Flower, Big Eagle Cave Mystery, The Fleetfooted Man, Thunderbird and White Horse, The Orphan who was Blessed with a Horse, Worúxega, The Two Boys, The Lost Blanket (white spirits), Skunk Origin Myth, He Who Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle, White Wolf, A Man and His Three Dogs, The Messengers of Hare, The Brown Squirrel, The Man Who Fell from the Sky, Bladder and His Brothers, White Thunder's Warpath, The Shell Anklets Origin Myth, The Dipper, Great Walker's Medicine (v. 2), Creation of the World (v. 12), Hare Secures the Creation Lodge, The Descent of the Drum, Tobacco Origin Myth (v. 5), The Diving Contest, Otter Comes to the Medicine Rite, The Arrows of the Medicine Rite Men, The Animal Spirit Aids of the Medicine Rite, Grandmother's Gifts, Four Steps of the Cougar, The Completion Song Origin, North Shakes His Gourd, Lifting Up the Bear Heads, Thunder Cloud is Blessed, Peace of Mind Regained.

Notes

¹ Walter W. Funmaker, The Bear in Winnebago Culture: A Study in Cosmology and Society (Master Thesis, University of Minnesota: June, 1974 [MnU-M 74-29]) 13, 59, 65. Dr. Funmaker is a member of the Hocągara tribe. His informant was Walking Soldier (1900-1977), a member of the Bear Clan.

² Walter Funmaker, The Winnebago Black Bear Subclan: a Defended Culture (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Minnesota: December, 1986 [MnU-D 86-361]]) 48. Informant: One Who Wins of the Bear Clan.

³ Mark G. Thiel, Personal Communication to Richard Dieterle, 15 May 2023.

⁴ North American Bear Center > What is a Spirit Bear? Viewed: 20 May 2023.

⁵ "The Four-Footed Tribes," in James Mooney, History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (Asheville, North Carolina: Bright Mountain Books, 1992 [1891/1900]) Story 15, p. 264.