Bear and Ant
Page-14
A Note on the Text and the Translation The Lushootseed text of the story is a transcription
of the tape-recording of Hagan Sam made by Thorn Hess at Tulalip in 1963. Some spelling changes have been made to clarify the grammar, and false starts
have been omitted. In both the Lushootseed and English versions, groups of words that were written as short sentences in the original transcript have been combined to create a written
style that reflects more accurately the way Hagan Sam sounded when he was talking.
The Bear and Ant story has been told all over Lushootseed country
for many generations, sometimes with different animals in the main roles. Stories like it have been recorded as far away as the pueblos of New Mexico.
An annotated Lushootseed text of Hagan Sam’s story, along with a grammar and glossary, appears in Lushootseed Reader with Introductory Grammar, Vol. 1:
Four Stories from Edward Sam, edited by Thorn Hess and published jointly by the Tulalip Tribes and the University of Montana as volume 11, Occasional
Papers in Linguistics, 1995.