288 A JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 



period, are indelibly engraven on our memories. Of their notions 

 of a Deity, or future state, we never could obtain any satisfactory 

 account ; they were unwilling, perhaps, to expose their opinions to 

 the chance of ridicule. Akaitcho generally evaded our questions on 

 these points, but expressed a desire to learn from us, and regularly 

 attended Divine Service during his residence at the fort, behaving 

 with the utmost decorum. 



This leader, indeed, and many others of his tribe, possessed a 

 laudable curiosity, which might easily be directed to the most im- 

 portant ends ; and I believe, that a well-conducted Christian mis- 

 sion to this quarter could not fail of producing the happiest effect. 

 Old Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme 

 Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, 

 whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had 

 not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The old sceptic 

 is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his 

 speeches evinces : " It is very strange that I never meet with any 

 one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of 

 his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition : 

 The earth had been formed, but continued enveloped in total dark- 

 ness, when a bear and a squirrel met on the shores of a lake; a 

 dispute arose as to their respective powers, which they agreed to 

 settle by running in opposite directions round the lake, and which 

 ever arrived first, was to evince his superiority by some signal act 

 of power. The squirrel beat, ran up a tree, and, loudly demanded 

 light, which instantly beaming forth, discovered a bird dispelling 

 the gloom with its wings ; the bird was afterwards recognised to be 

 a crow. The squirrel next broke a piece of bark from the tree, 

 endowed it with the power of floating, and said, Behold the ma- 

 terial which shall afford the future inhabitants of the earth the means 

 of traversing the waters. 



The Indians are not the first people who have ascribed the origin 



