When Grizzlies Walked Upright” is a short fictional story retold by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz. The Chief of the Sky Spirits is a key character who is selfish, ungrateful, and thoughtless. The Chief starts a new on earth and brings his family down to enjoy his creation, until his youngest daughter fell through with his demand. Due to her intense desire to see the view her father talked about, the wind took her away from her carelessness. The youngest daughter was found by the grizzlies and taken in as part of the family, as time passed by she was mated to the eldest son, they together created Indians.
“Before there were people on Earth” explains the Modoc tribe ancestors. The scenery the Chief of Spirits endured everyday became indifferent for him. “ He carved a hole in the sky with a stone and pushed all the snow and ice down below until he made a great mound that reached from the earth almost to the sky”. As the Chief was creating the new world it started to become habitable. “ Wherever his finger touch a tree grew” as the Chief walked “the snow melted in his footsteps, and the water ran down in rivers”. The Modoc tribe believed that the Sky Spirit was Earth’s creator and everything else that became alive with it.
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One spring night the Chief and his family were enjoying the fire until the wind blew wildly. The Sky Spirit asked his youngest daughter to “climb up to the smoke hole and ask the wind spirit to blow more gently”. At the top of the mountain the youngest daughter curiosity got the best of her when she remember her father mentioning the view from the top of the mountain.The youngest forgot the direct order from her father “to be careful not to stick your head out at the top. If you do, the wind may catch you by the hair and blow you away”. The child unintentionally forgets a parents