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confifting only of two or three notes, which are 

 eternally repeated. On this account one is apt to 

 grow extremely weary at thofe feafts after the nrft 

 time, as they laft a great while, .and as you hear al- 

 ways the fame thing over again. 



As the nations in the neighbourhood of the Bay, 

 if you except the Poutewatamies, are much more 

 ignorant than the others, they are like wife much 

 more addicted to all forts of fuperftition. Their 

 principal divinities are the fun and thunder, and 

 they feem much more perfuaded than the nations 

 which we frequent more, that every fpecies of ani- 

 mals has a genius that watches for theT preferva- 

 tion. A French man having one day thrown away 

 a moufe he had juft taken, a little girl took it up 

 to eat it ; the father of the child who perceived it 

 fnatched it from her, and fell a carefTing the dead 

 animal ; and the French man afking him the rea- 

 fon of it : "It is", anfwered he, " in order to 

 <c appeafe the genius of the mice, that they may 

 " not torment my child after fhe has eaten it." 

 After which he reftored the animal to the girl who 

 eat it. 



They have above all things a prodigious vene- 

 ration for bears : when they happen to have 

 killed one, they make a feaft which is accompa- 

 nied with very fingular ceremonies. The head 

 of the bear, after being painted with all forts* of co- 

 lours, is fet during the repaft in a confpicuous place, 

 where it receives the homage of all the guefts, 

 Who celebrate in fongs the praifes of the animal, 

 whilft they are tearing his body in pieces and re- 

 galing themfelves with-it. Thefe Indians have 

 not only like all the reft a cuftom of preparing 



themfelves 



