This story is reprinted from Hall (II, p. 240):
Many moons ago, a woman obtained a polar bear cub but two or three
days old. Having long desired just such a pet, she gave it her
closest attention, as though it were a son, nursing it, making for
it a soft warm bed alongside her own, and talking to it as a
mother does to her child. She had no living relative, and she and
the bear occupied the house alone. Kunikdjuaq, as he grew up,
proved that the woman had not taught him in vain, for he early
began to hunt seals and salmon, bringing them to his mother before
eating any himself, and receiving his share from her hands. She
always watched from the hilltop for his return, and if she saw
that he had been unsuccessful, she begged from her neighbors
blubber for his food. She learned how this was from her lookout,
for if successful, he came back in the tracks made on going out,
but if unsuccessful always by a different route. Learning to excel
the Inuit in hunting, he excited their envy, and, after long years
of faithful service, his death was resolved upon. On hearing this,
the old woman, overwhelmed with grief, offered to give up her own
life if they would but spare him who had so long supported her.
Her offer was sternly refused. Upon this, when all his enemies had
retired to their houses, the woman had a long talk with her
son--now well grown in years--telling him that wicked men were
about to kill him, and that the only way to save his life and hers
was for him to go off and not return. At the same time she begged
him not to go so far that she could not wander off and meet him,
and get from him a seal or something else which she might need.
The bear, after listening to what she said with tears streaming
down her furrowed cheeks, gently placed one huge paw on her head,
and then throwing both around her neck, said, “Good mother,
Kunikdjuaq will always be on the lookout for you and serve you as
best he can.” Saying this, he took her advice and departed, almost
as much to the grief of the children of the village as to the
mother.
Not long after this, being in need of food, she walked out on the
sea ice to see if she could not meet her son, and soon recognized
him as one of two bears who were lying down together. He ran to
her, and she patted him on the head in her old familiar way, told
him her wants, and begged him to hurry away and get something for
her. Away ran the bear, and in a few moments the woman looked upon
a terrible fight going on between him and his late companion,
which, however, to her great relief, was soon ended by her son’s
dragging a lifeless body to her feet. With her knife she quickly
skinned the dead bear, giving her son large slices of the blubber,
and telling him that she would soon return for the meat, which she
could not at first carry to her house, and when her supply should
again fail she would comeback for his help. This she continued to
do for “a long, long time,” the faithful bear always serving her
and receiving the same unbroken love of his youth.