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is no single boss for every species of animal or plant, but a boss in each 
locality. The bosses are always larger than other plants and animals of 
their kind, and in the case of animals (including birds and fish) always 
white. They generally keep out of sight of human beings, 1 but now and 
then the Indians see and kill them. One informant had seen a boss of 
the pickerel in a rapid 3 or 4 miles behind Parry Sound; it was about 20 
feet long, all white, and it lay a foot or two below the surface of the water, 
so surrounded with other pickerel that the pebbles on the bottom were 
invisible. The brother of another informant had been so terrified by the 
appearance of a boss turtle that he fainted in his canoe. 
“ Long ago some Indians found a hole into which many bears had entered. The 
mouth of the hole lay under water, but the Indians poked a long stick into 
it and discovered what direction it took; then, going ashore, they dug through 
the soil and opened the hole up. Inside they killed nine bears, all black, and, 
last of all, a much larger bear that was white. It was the chief or boss of all 
the bears in the district ” (Jonas King) . 
There was a boss maple tree on Coop island, near Christian island, 
which was about 2 fathoms in circumference when a lumber company cut 
it and sawed it into timber. The maples w r ould get another boss 
somewhere else to take its place. So stated one old Indian when dis- 
cussing this question of chiefs in the world of nature. Another imme- 
diately added that the black birches had an even larger boss in the 
interior of Parry island. It was 6 feet or more in diameter, and when 
it was cut down in the winter of 1928-9 two teams of horses could hardly 
drag one log. Until they obtained steel axes, he continued, the Indians 
could not fell these huge boss trees. 
“ Before the white man reached Georgian bay a certain Indian gathered many 
beaver, otter, and other skins, which he kept in his wigwam in the woods. One 
still night he heard ,the crashing of a tree, and then a wailing of many voices 
* Our king has gone.' When morning came he found that a giant white oak 
had fallen, being rotten at the base; the white oaks around it had bewailed its 
fall. He gathered up all his furs, laid them over the trunk as in burial, and returned 
to his -wigwam. Night came, and as he slept he dreamed that a manido visited him and 
said, ‘You have done well. Now take your furs again and travel east. There you 
will find a man who will give you clothing of a new kind in exchange for them/ The 
Indian travelled east and discovered French traders on the St. Lawrence river. He was 
the first Ojibwa to see or trade with white men” (James Walker). 
At death a man’s soul travels to the land of the west, but the souls 
of animals have a home in bitokomegog 11 the tier or world below this 
earth.” The souls of ducks and geese have their home far in the south; 
the souls of seagulls in the sky, perhaps because these birds seem to soar 
high up above the clouds. Whither the souls of other birds go the Indians 
do not know. Sometimes many souls come up from below to be reborn, 
sometimes only a few; then there are correspondingly many or few animals 
upon this earth. The bosses of each species regulate their numbers, know- 
ing beforehand whether an epidemic or other calamity will devastate the 
land. So a district may teem with hares one winter and contain hardly 
any the next, because their boss has ordered them to move into another 
1 Just as the ordinary Indian cannot see the ‘'government” when he goes to Ottawa, old Jonas King remarked. 
He goes from one office to another, he is introduced to this man and to that, each of whom may claim to be the 
"boss"; but he never sees the real “government,” who keeps himself hidden. 
