Grizzly Bear Woman

Oo-soo'-ma-te, the Grizzly Bear woman of the First People, appears in the widely told Miwok narrative of the Bear and the Fawns, recorded by both Merriam and Gifford. She treacherously kills her sister-in-law O-woo'-yah the Deer while pretending to groom her, hides the victim's liver in a basket, and pursues the orphaned fawns, who finally kill her with heated rocks. Her Miwok name, ûsûma·ti, is the word from which the place-name Yosemite ultimately derives.

Domains

• bears and violence

Powers

• to lure a companion close under pretense of grooming and kill her

Sources

• C. Hart Merriam, The Dawn of the World: Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan Indians of California, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1910
• Edward Winslow Gifford, "Miwok Myths," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 12(8), 1917