Ixviii INTRODUCTION. 



Nature or of man, nothing exists, however seemingly 

 trivial, that may not be endowed with a secret power 

 for blessing or for bane. 



Men and animals are closely akin. Each species of 

 animal has its great archetype, its progenitor or king, 

 who is supposed to exist somewhere, prodigious in size, 

 though in shape and nature like his subjects. A belief 

 prevails, vague, but perfectly apparent, that men them- 

 selves owe their first parentage to beasts, birds, or rep- 

 tiles, as bears, wolves, tortoises, or cranes ; and the 

 names of the totemic clans, borrowed in nearly every case 

 from animals, are the reflection of this idea.^ 



An Indian hunter was always anxious to propitiate the 

 animals he sought to kill. He has often been known to 

 address a wounded bear in a long harangue of apology .^ 

 The bones of the beaver were treated with especial ten- 

 derness, and carefully kept from the dogs, lest the spirit 

 of the dead beaver, or his surviving brethren, should take 

 offence.^ This solicitude was not confined to animals, 



1 This belief occasionally takes a perfectly definite shape. There 

 was a tradition among Northern and Western tribes, that men were cre- 

 ated from the carcasses of beasts, birds, and fishes, by Manabozho, a 

 mythical personage, to be described hereafter. Tlie Amikouas, or People 

 of tlie Beaver, an Algonquin tribe of Lake Huron, claimed descent from 

 the carcass of the great original beaver, or father of the beavers. They 

 believed that the rapids and cataracts on the French River and the Upper 

 Ottawa were caused by dams made by their amphibious ancestor. (See 

 the tradition in Perrot, Memoire sur les Moeurs, Coustumes et Relligion des 

 Sauvages de VAvi^rique Septentrionale, p. 20.) Charlevoix tells the same 

 story. Each Indian was supposed to inherit something of the nature 

 of the animal whence he sprung. 



'^ McKinney, Tour to the Lakes, 284, mentions the discomposure of a 

 party of Indians when shown a stuflTed moose. Thinking that its spirit 

 would be offended at the indignity shown to its remains, they surrounded 

 it, making apologetic speeches, and blowing tobacco-smoke at it as a 

 propitiatory offering. 



3 This superstition was very prevalent, and numerous examples of it 

 occur in old and recent writers, from Father Le Jeune to Captain Carver. 



