ORIGIN OF DISEASE AND MEDICINE In the old days the beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and plants could all talk, and they and the people lived together in peace and friendship.
But as time went on the people increased so rapidly that their settlements spread over the whole earth, and the poor animals found themselves beginning to be cramped for room.
This was bad enough, but to make it worse Man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears, and hooks, and began to slaughter the larger animals, birds, and fishes for their flesh or their skins, while the smaller creatures, such as the frogs and worms, were crushed and trodden upon without thought, out of pure carelessness or contempt.
So the animals resolved to consult upon measures for their common safety.
The Bears were the first to meet in council in their townhouse under Kuwâ′hĭ mountain, the “Mulberry place,” and the old White Bear chief presided.
After each in turn had complained of the way in which Man killed their friends, ate their flesh, and used their skins for his own purposes, it was decided to begin war at once against him.
Some one asked what weapons Man used to destroy them.
“Bows and arrows, of course,” cried all the Bears in chorus.
“And what are they made of?” was the next question.
“The bow of wood, and the string of our entrails,” replied one of the Bears.
It was then proposed that they make a bow and some arrows and see if they could not use the same weapons against Man himself.
So one Bear got a nice piece of locust wood and another sacrificed himself for the good of the rest in order to furnish a piece of his entrails for the string.
But when everything was ready and the first Bear stepped up to make the trial, it was found that in letting the arrow fly after drawing back the bow, his long claws caught the string and spoiled the shot.
This was annoying, but some one suggested that they might trim his claws, which was accordingly done, and on a second trial it was found that the arrow went straight to the mark.
But here the chief, the old White Bear, objected, saying it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees.
“One of us has already died to furnish the bow-string, and if we now cut off our claws we must all starve together.
It is better to trust to the teeth and claws that nature gave us, for it is plain that man’s weapons were not intended for us.” No one could think of any better plan, so the old chief dismissed the council and the Bears dispersed to the woods and thickets without having concerted any way to prevent the increase of the human race.
Had the result of the council been otherwise, we should now be at war with the Bears, but as it is, the hunter does not even ask the Bear’s pardon when he kills one.
The Deer next held a council under their chief, the Little Deer, and after some talk decided to send rheumatism to every hunter who should kill one of them unless he took care to ask their pardon for the offense.
They sent notice of their decision to the nearest settlement of Indians and told them at the same time what to do when necessity forced them to kill one of the Deer tribe.
Now, whenever the hunter shoots a Deer, the Little Deer, who is swift as the wind and can not be wounded, runs quickly up to the spot and, bending over the blood-stains, asks the spirit of the Deer if it has heard the prayer of the hunter for pardon.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage is a quintessential example of animism, depicting beasts, birds, and plants as possessing speech, reason, and agency, living in a community with humans and holding councils to determine their fate.
Penitential sorrow for sin as the first movement of the soul's healing — Julian's first of three medicines ('by contrition we are made clean'), the Christian compunction tradition, Sufi tawba, Greek metanoia, Hebrew teshuvah; the wound of sorrow that turns bitterness into hope of mercy. Distinct from self_examination (the diagnostic practice), rejection_of_hypocrisy (critique of others' form), and dark_night (imposed aridity): contrition is the soul's own penitent turning.
The story centers on the necessity of penitential sorrow and asking for forgiveness (contrition) as a mechanism to heal the breach caused by killing an animal.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage functions as an etiological myth explaining the origin of specific diseases (rheumatism) and the current state of human-animal relations.
A binding agreement or relationship between the divine and a people or individual, establishing mutual obligations.
The interaction between the Deer and humans establishes a conditional agreement where human survival depends on adhering to specific ritual obligations of apology.
Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.
The narrative establishes a specific ritual practice where hunters must verbally ask for pardon from the spirits of the animals they kill to avoid divine retribution.