lO CASTOROLOGIA. 



While the Indian cannot justly be classified among the spirit- 

 worshippers, though he had clear conceptions of spirits and a spirit- 

 world, yet he is much above the range of fetishism, and may most 

 properly be considered as a nature-worshipper. Being of a medita- 

 tive mind, he reasoned far beyond the visible world, though he 

 based his belief on material evidence. It was a logical process of 

 reasoning that brought him to face the problem of the world's 

 creation. He believed the world was all covered with water in the 

 beginning, and he peopled it with the beaver, the musquash and 

 the otter, whose aquatic habits we can easily understand must have 

 impressed him. But, as the building of the world was a prodigious 

 task, these animals were all of gigantic size. They dived and 

 brought up the mud with which the great spirit — the Manitou — ■ 

 made the earth. Then the features of the earth, the mountain 

 ranges, cataracts and caves, were all the works of the giant beavers ; 

 and the erratic boulders, which, in many places, stand so conspicu- 

 ously in our landscape, were the missies thrown by enraged spirits 

 at offending beavers. 



When the world became ready for the introduction of man, the 

 Indian philosophy solved the problem in a way that was curious and 

 masterly. The animals were said to have been endowed with 

 speech, and seemed to have used the gift even as wicked mortals 

 often do, accordingly, the great Manitou would frequently be vexed, 

 and his wrath caused him at times to slay the evil-doer. Then, by 

 a beautiful adaptation of the idea of the transmigration of spirits, 

 man came forth as the spirit of the departed animal, and bore hence- 

 forth a likeness in character to the animal from which he sprang. 

 The Amikonas, or " People of the Beaver," an Algonquin tribe of 

 Lake Huron, claimed descent from the carcass of the great original 

 beaver, or father of the beavers ; and the beaver was one of the eight 

 clans of the Iroquois. In the wonderful totem-poles of the Queen 

 Charlotte Islanders, a prominent place is afforded the beaver, and 

 doubtless the Hochelagans, or ' ' Indians of the Beaver-Meadow, ' ' 

 held the creature in high esteem. 



The Manitou was good to man, and to make him chief among 



