Bear skin

“ Besides the skin of the yellow bear (which being almost an anomaly in that country, is out of the regular order of nature, and, of course, great medicine, and converted to a medicine use) , there are attached to it the skins of many animals, which are also anomalies or deformities, which render them, in their estimation, medicine; and there are also the skins of snakes, and frogs, and bats,—beaks and toes and tails of birds,—hoofs of deer, goats, and antelopes ”

“ The animals which should be skinned open are bear, beaver, raccoon, badger, timber wolf and wolverines. The way to do this is to rip the skin open from the point of the lower jaw, in a straight line, to the vent. Then rip it open on the back of the hind legs, and the inside of the front legs, and peel the skin carefully off the body. Beaver, however, should not have the front legs split open and the tail, having no fur, is of course cut off. If the skin is a fine one, and especially in the case of bear, the feet should not be cut off, but should be skinned, leaving the claws on. ”

“ I would advise every one to hold the birds in the easiest position to themselves. Be careful to keep the feathers from touching the flesh. A very good plan is to work with a small plug of cotton wool, pressing the skin from the body with it, but bear in mind that a bird's skin is very thin and delicate, not like an opossum's, which you can pull right off the body without a break. Having skinned down to the legs, take first one then the other and insert your fingers inside the skin and push it back, thus showing the second joint where it has been previously broken or disjointed. ”

“ The uses of the white bear are chiefly confined to the skin, the flesh, and the fat. Of these the skin, which is perhaps the most valuable part, is employed for beds, shoes, boots, and, in various ways, as leather. The flesh is eaten by the Greenlanders and the inhabitants of other northern countries, and is described to be as excellent as mutton, though this must be very doubtful when we consider the food on which these animals subsist. The fat is melted and employed instead of oil ”

“ The flesh of the bear, if he is not too old or has not recently eaten rotten seal-flesh, is very eatable, being intermediate in taste between pork and beef. The flesh of the young bear is white and resembles veal. The eating of the liver causes sudden illness.
Although, as already mentioned, the Polar bear sometimes drifts to land and is killed in the northernmost part of Norway, his skin is not enumerated by Othere among the products of Finmark. ”

“ The skin of the bear is, perhaps, more likely to spoil than any other, and the ears especially, are likely to taint and slip the fur. To prevent this, slit the ears open on the inside, skin then back almost to the edge and fill them with salt, also salt the base of the ears, on the flesh side of the hide. ”

“ In consequence of this the operation of skinning a Lion or Bear is a comparatively easy one. After the first cut the beast may be pulled out of his skin, almost without further use of the knife; while with an Antelope or an Ox the skin has to be cut away carefully and laboriously from the underlying flesh. ”

“ To case skin an animal such as ermine, fox, fisher, lynx, marten, mink, otter, muskrat, rabbit, or skunk, the skin is cut down the inner side of each hind leg until the two cuts meet just under the tail, and then the pelt is peeled off by turning it inside out. To split skin an animal such as wood-buffalo, moose, wapiti, caribou, deer, bear, beaver, wolf, or wolverine, the skin is cut down the belly from throat to tail and also on the inside of each leg to the centre cut, and then the pelt is peeled off both ways toward the back. ”

“ In the matter of furs, no better can be selected than buffalo-skin, or wash-leather made of bear’s hide; though no [232] covering can surpass that which is made from the skins of birds—Eider-ducks, for example—which is equally good for either summer or winter, during the march, or even during sleep, and which need be exchanged for furs only when the temperature during a night-camping falls 35° to 58° below zero F. Sheep-skin and wolf-skin are too heavy ”

“ It is sometimes permitted to remain in that position for a considerable time; and when taken from the snow, is hung up in the open air. The more intense the frost, the greater is its drying quality; and by being wafted about by the wind, with a little scraping, it in time becomes perfectly supple, and both pelt and hair beautifully white. Drying deer, beaver, and otter skins, in this manner render their pelts very white, but not supple; probably owing to the close texture and thickness of their skins; whereas the skin of the bear, though so large an animal, is remarkably thin and spungy. ”

“ It is the stomach of a polar bear, with the muscular and glandular layers removed, dried and carefully worked down with a skin scraper into something like goldbeater’s skin. This makes a large, nearly spherical bag 71⁄2 inches in diameter, of a pale brownish color, soft and wrinkled, with a mouth 6 inches wide. A small hole has been mended by drawing the skin together and winding it round tightly on the inside with sinew. ”

“ The face, which is covered by a white skin, is monstrously ugly, being all over wrinkled as with old age; the teeth broad and yellow; the hands have no more hair than the face, but the same white skin, though all the rest of the body is covered with long black hair, like a bear. ”

“ For this purpose they put the animal’s head between two long poles, which are squeezed together by fifty or sixty people, both men and women. When the bear is dead they eat his flesh, keep the liver as a medicine, and sell the skin, which is black and commonly six feet long, but the longest measure twelve feet. As soon as he is skinned, the persons who nourished the beast begin to bewail him; afterwards they make little cakes to regale those who helped them. ”

“ Before berries are ripe a bear goes around clawing the bark from logs and dead trees and feeds on the borers and ants. He has a banquet when he strikes a well-populated ant heap, and then he smells and tastes like ants if you try to eat him. His meat is rank, and if you eat it for a day or two you will break out all over with a sort of rash that is mightily uncomfortable. There is no fur on a bear in summer and his skin is not worth taking, so you see there was no reason why I should fool away time and cartridges on Bruin. ”

“ Against the intense cold of its Arctic home the white bear is well protected by its long and dense coat, as well as by the thick layer of fat underlying the skin. By means of the hairy covering of the soles of the feet—which in other bears are naked—the animal is enabled to obtain a firm foothold on the ice ”

“ The same writer mentions a bear having sprung out of a thicket, and with one blow of his paw completely scalped a man, laying bare the skull, and bringing the skin down over the eyes. Assistance coming up, the bear made off without doing him further injury; but the scalp, not being replaced, the poor man lost his sight, though it is stated the eyes were uninjured. ”

“ Thus, instead of attributing the retirement of the bears to the effects of the cold, the myth makes the cold to depend on the seclusion of the bears!
The fat of bears has, from time immemorial, [Pg 553] enjoyed a high reputation for promoting the growth of hair; but not a thousandth part of the bear's grease sold in shops comes from the animal whose name it carries. In Scandinavia, the only part used for the hair is the fat found about the intestines. The great bulk of the fat, which in a large bear may weigh from sixty to eighty pounds, is used for culinary purposes. ”

“ I have not a doubt that, at the great deluge, an immense posse of white antediluvian bears, then as large as elephants, were swept from the polar regions, and hurled headlong into the great cauldron beneath Wisbaden. There they have been simmering from the days of Noah—their flesh, fat, and marrow oozing up daily, in the shape of cream or bear’s grease, as well as broth, through the Kochbrunnen, greatly to the advantage of the Wisbadenites, and the benefit of those afflicted with gout, rheumatism, and the stiff-joints of old age. ”

“ For, they say, if the bears, beaver, and other wild animals which we capture in hunting should know that their bones were given to dogs and broken to pieces, they would not suffer themselves to be taken so easily. They wipe off upon their hair the grease which is collected from fatty foods; sometimes they smear their cheeks or arms for the sake, as they say, of elegance and health; for they think that not only is the skin made resplendent with grease, but that the limbs are thus strengthened. ”

“ But for this wonderful foresight on the part of Nature in making the bear’s nose black, the order of evolution might have been reversed. Man strolling along and seeing nothing but white snow might have slipped out of existence in the warm embrace of Ursus Maritimus. The protective coloration of the black nose, from the man’s point of view, surely proved that Nature originally intended the bear to be cooked with onions for our dinner. ”

“ The old world brown bear is the tamest of all. He will sit upon his haunches, cross his paws over his breast and catch peanuts in his mouth. Sometimes, when the band plays, he will dance and gambol about like a big, playful dog. The smaller, fine-coated black bear is friendly sometimes; but often he climbs the oak tree in his pit, folds his limp body across a big limb, like your mama's rug muff, and sulks or sleeps. You couldn't coax him down with a pot of honey! The big "grizzly" bear has an ugly temper. ”

“ The nose does not possess the flexibility of that of the rest of the bear family, although the polar bear has the higher development of the sense of smell. Johnson says that the flesh is good to eat, but other writers do not agree with him. ”

“ His hungry hunt for roots, bugs, ants and small game makes him lean and cross. His claws grow long, his hair is unkempt and he is soon a shaggy ghost of himself, looking “like a second-hand sofa with the stuffing coming out,” and in this out-at-elbows condition he loses his own self-respect.
Mr. Miller has strenuously insisted that bears of the United States are of more than one or two species. In this he has the unqualified support of the latest scientific investigations. Not long ago naturalists were disposed to recognize but three kinds of bear in North America. ”

“ Skins are dressed by spreading, scraping off the flesh, and for some purposes the hair, with a sharp piece of bone, stone, or iron attached to a short handle, and used like an adze. The skin is then smeared with the animal's brains, and rubbed or pounded by a very tedious process till it becomes soft and white, some hides being previously smoked and bleached with white clay. ”

“ Being white and a good deal about the ice in winter, some have supposed it to be a variety of polar bear, but the zoologists dispute it.’ My own impression is that these bears are the same, the white variety not being an albino, but the blue bear with his winter coat on. I could only hear of two of these white bears having been killed—one at Chilcaht, the other on the Taku Glacier, near Juneau, and this latter was described as having been almost white. ”

“ Naturalists have also told me that whilst waiting for a seal at its breathing-hole in the ice, the bear covers its nose with its paws to prevent the seal seeing the conspicuous black of its nostrils. I should think myself this is to keep his hands warm. Five black claws on each foot must be as conspicuous to the seal as the black nose. Again, sometimes a bear covers itself completely with snow, all but its nose! This allows man in his turn to have a chance of proving himself to be the fittest. ”

“ Petersburgh, London, and Paris, for the perfumers. These people shut them up, and make them very fat, and then kill them for their grease. This is used by the fops and dandies to make their locks grow. I suppose they think that the fat will operate on them as it does on the bear, and give them abundance of hair. I’m told that in the great cities, now-a-days, a young man is esteemed in proportion as he resembles a bear in this respect. Accordingly bears’ grease is the making of a modern dandy, and so there’s a great demand for the creature that affords such a treasure. ”

“ The Bull Ermine, or the Four Bears, or the Red Daybreak, or whatever may be the brave's name, hands over the horse, and gets in return a blanket, a gun, a capote, ball and powder, and tobacco. The term "skin" is a very old one in the fur trade; the original standard, the beaver skin or, as it was called, "the made beaver" was the medium of exchange, and every other skin and article of trade was graduated upon the scale of the beaver; thus a beaver, or a skin, was reckoned equivalent to 1 mink skin, one marten was equal to 2 skins, one black fox 20 skins, and so on ”

“ The flesh of the young is delicate and good, and that of the old one eatable; but as the latter is mixed with an oily fat, the paws alone, which are more firm, can be considered as a delicacy.
The hunting of the bear without being dangerous, is highly profitable, when attended with success; of all coarse furs their skins are the most valuable, and the quantity of oil procured from one bear is considerable. The flesh and fat are boiled together, and then the oil is separated ”

“ The surface of the skin generally is covered with short, adpressed hair of a light, yellowish-brown colour, which, on the under parts of the body and base of the flippers, passes into dark reddish-brown or chestnut. In old animals the hair becomes more scanty, sometimes almost entirely disappearing, and the skin shows ample evidence of the rough life and pugnacious habits of the animal in the innumerable scars with which it is usually covered. It is everywhere more or less wrinkled, especially over the shoulders, where it is thrown into deep and heavy folds. ”