CHAPTER ONE.
It was late in the month of March, at the dying-out of the Eagle Moon, that Neewa the black bear cub got his first real look at the world.
Noozak, his mother, was an old bear, and like an old person she was filled with rheumatics and the desire to sleep late.

So instead of taking a short and ordinary nap of three months this particular winter of little Neewa's birth she slept four, which, made Neewa, who was born while his mother was sound asleep, a little over two months old instead of six weeks when they came out of den.
In choosing this den Noozak had gone to a cavern at the crest of a high, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down into the valley.

For a time, coming out of darkness into sunlight, he was blinded.

He could hear and smell and feel many things before he could see.

And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding warmth and sunshine in place of cold and darkness, stood for many minutes sniffing the wind and looking down upon her domain.
For two weeks an early spring had been working its miracle of change in that wonderful country of the northland between Jackson's Knee and the Shamattawa River, and from north to south between God's Lake and the Churchill.
It was a splendid world.