Amanda Bear, Solomon's wife, was a full-blood Indian. My mother tells of hiding behind her mother's skirts when they heard a horse screaming near the barn. My grandfather had a team of draft horses and one, Jack, a Percheron, had become tangled in barbed wire and had cut his throat. Mother remembers her father running from the barn, jumping a little creek by the house and dashing up the hill to Amanda's house. He pulled the big Indian woman down the hill and led her as quickly as possible to the horse. Amanda turned, made signs to the four winds and began to chant. She placed her hands on the horse's neck and continued to chant. After what seemed a long time, the bleeding stopped, the men helped the horse to his feet and led him to the barn to care for him and Amanda lifted her skirts and with great dignity, walked back up the hill to her house.

She also stopped the bleeding on my uncle's hand after he stuck it into a squirrel's nest and was bitten. She never told anyone how she did it but would only say, "Anyone can do it. It's in your Bible."

Submission by Joy Johnson, October of 2009

Other Ringgold County webpages that may be of interest are:

   
    BEAR Family
    Bear Cemetery
    Bear Cemetery Transcriptions
    Civil War Gravestones of Adam and John BEAR
    Solomon BEAR Biography
       Pages 252-53, Biography & Historical Record of Ringgold County, Iowa, 1887
    Solomon BEAR Biography