One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man. I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary. One revelation made to many of all races was the notion that the bright stars near the hub of the sky had something to do with a bear. Most constellations rise and set, appearing and disappearing with the hours of the night and the seasons of the year. Not the bear, The Great Bear.
Most animals live and die where they are, or migrate with the seasons.
Not the bear, at least, not in the snowy reaches of the northern hemisphere. The bear enters the earth, a cave, or the hollow beneath some boulders, or among the roots of a massive tree. The bear goes to sleep in the earth, dies to the world while the forest is in the grip of winter, and reappears with the budding of new life in the spring. So the bear is not merely eternal in the sky, he enacts the mystery of resurrection, an animal enacting the universal re-birth of spring. And not content with being resurrected, the bear, if a female, comes forth to new life with new life, cubs born and nurtured in that earth womb, so we speak of women bearing children.