32.—He adds: "Les François ont avoüé eux-mêmes qu'ils étoient nez pour la guerre, & quelques maux qu'ils nous ayent faits nous les avons toujours estimez."—Ibid., 2.—La Potherie's book was published in 1722.
51. Lafitau, I. 479.
52. The following from Lafitau is very characteristic: "Ce que je dis de leur zèle pour le bien public n'est cependant pas si universel, que plusieurs ne pensent à leur interêts particuliers, & que les Chefs (sachems) principalement ne fassent joüer plusieurs ressorts secrets pour venir à bout de leurs intrigues. Il y en a tel, dont l'adresse jouë si bien à coup sûr, qu'il fait déliberer le Conseil plusieurs jours de suite, sur une matière dont la détermination est arrêtée entre lui & les principales têtes avant d'avoir été mise sur le tapis. Cependant comme les Chefs s'entre-regardent, & qu'aucun ne veut paroître se donner une superiorité qui puisse piquer la jalousie, ils se ménagent dans les Conseils plus que les autres; & quoiqu'ils en soient l'ame, leur politique les oblige à y parler peu, & à écouter plûtôt le sentiment d'autrui, qu'à y dire le leur; mais chacun a un homme à sa main, qui est comme une espèce de Brûlot, & qui étant sans consequence pour sa personne hazarde en pleine liberté tout ce qu'il juge à propos, selon qu'il l'a concerté avec le Chef même pour qui il agit."—Mœurs des Sauvages, I. 481.
53. Lalemant, while inveighing against a practice which made the public, and not the criminal, answerable for an offence, admits that heinous crimes were more rare than in France, where the guilty party himself was punished.—Lettre au P. Provincial, 15 May, 1645.
54. Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 80.
55. Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, gives a description of one of these ceremonies at length. Those of the Iroquois on such occasions were similar. Many other tribes had the same custom, but attended with much less form and ceremony. Compare Perrot, 73-76.
56. The proceedings for detecting thieves were regular and methodical, after established customs. According to Bressani, no thief ever inculpated the innocent.
57. Relation, 1660, 7 (anonymous). The Iroquois were at the height of their prosperity about the year 1650. Morgan reckons their number at this time at 25,000 souls; but this is far too high an estimate. The author of the Relation of 1660 makes their whole number of warriors 2,200. Le Mercier, in the Relation of 1665, says 2,350. In the Journal of Greenhalgh, an Englishman who visited them in 1677, their warriors are set down at 2,150. Du Chesneau, in 1681, estimates them at 2,000; De la Barre, in 1684, at 2,600, they having been strengthened by adoptions. A memoir addressed to the Marquis de Seignelay, in 1687, again makes them 2,000. (See N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 162, 196, 321.) These estimates imply a total population of ten or twelve thousand.
The anonymous writer of the Relation of 1660 may well remark: "It is marvellous that so few should make so great a havoc, and strike such terror into so many tribes."
58. This belief occasionally takes a perfectly definite shape. There was a tradition among Northern and Western tribes, that men were created from the carcasses of beasts, birds, and fishes, by Manabozho, a mythical personage, to be described hereafter. The Amikouas, 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. 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, Mémoire sur les Mœurs, Coustumes et Relligion des Sauvages de l'Amérique Septentrionale, p. 20.) Charlevoix tells the same story. Each Indian was supposed to inherit something of the nature of the animal whence he sprung.
59. McKinney, Tour to the Lakes, 284, mentions the discomposure of a party of Indians when shown a stuffed 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.
60. This superstition was very prevalent, and numerous examples of it occur in old and recent writers, from Father Le Jeune to Captain Carver.
61. There are frequent allusions to this ceremony in the early writers. The Algonquins of the Ottawa practised it, as well as the Hurons. Lalemant, in his chapter "Du Regne de Satan en ces Contrées" (Relation des Hurons, 1639), says that it took place yearly, in the middle of March. As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen. The net was held between them; and its spirit, or oki, was harangued by one of the chiefs, who exhorted him to do his part in furnishing the tribe with food. Lalemant was told that the spirit of the net had once appeared in human form to the Algonquins, complaining that he had lost his wife, and warning them, that, unless they could find him another equally immaculate, they would catch no more fish.
62. Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, 257. Other old writers make a similar statement.
63. Many tribes have tales of diminutive beings, which, in the absence of a better word, may be called fairies. In the Travels of Lewis and Clarke, there is mention of a hill on the Missouri, supposed to be haunted by them. These Western fairies correspond to the Puck Wudj Ininee of Ojibwa tradition. As an example of the monsters alluded to, see the Saginaw story of the Weendigoes, in Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, II. 105.
64. The figure of a large bird is perhaps the most common,—as, for example, the good spirit of Rock Island: "He was white, with wings like a swan, but ten times larger."—Autobiography of Blackhawk, 70.
65. Compare Cass, in North-American Review, Second Series, XIII. 100. A turkey-buzzard, according to him, is the vision of a medicine-man. I once knew an old Dahcotah chief, who was greatly respected, but had never been to war, though belonging to a family of peculiarly warlike propensities. The reason was, that, in his initiatory fast, he had dreamed of an antelope,—the peace-spirit of his people.
Women fast, as well as men,—always at the time of transition from childhood to maturity. In the Narrative of John Tanner, there is an account of an old woman who had fasted, in her youth, for ten days, and throughout her life placed the firmest faith in the visions which had appeared to her at that time. Among the Northern Algonquins, the practice, down to a recent day, was almost universal.
66. The author has seen a Dahcotah warrior open his medicine-bag, talk with an air of affectionate respect to the bone, feather, or horn within, and blow tobacco-smoke upon it as an offering. "Medicines" are acquired not only by fasting, but by casual dreams, and otherwise. They are sometimes even bought and sold. For a curious account of medicine-bags and fetich-worship among the Algonquins of Gaspé, see Le Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, Chap. XIII.