INDIANS OP LAKE SUI'ERIOR. • A CONTRIEITTION to "the proper study
of mankind" is offered us by the unwearied traveller and facile writer, J. G. Kohl, in his wanderings round " Kitchi-Gami," the Indian equivalent of Lake Superior—" the Big Water." The present work forms a supple- mentary volume to a large book of travels in North-western America "which has met with great success in Germany." The translation by Mr. L. Wraxall has been supervised by the author, a distinguished proficient in the English language, whose ap- proval may be considered as a satisfactory voucher for its accu- racy.
The peculiarities which mark the infancy of the human race constantly reappear in the individual child or in the uncivilized man, with such modification as an artificial action may have superinduced ; for the perfect insulation of either the infant or adult savage is necessarily of brief continuance. Yet if foreign influences affect young and old barbarians alike, we do not find it difficult to make some general estimate of their amount, and roughly extricate the elements of a spontaneous self-unfolding from their adventitious accretions. In the case of Mr. Kohl's Ojibbeway Indians, European intercourse has undoubtedly im- paired the purity of their original traditions. They have heard and reproduced with the appropriate alterations passages of our Biblical history. Thus we do not always get their own primitive mythological views. The monotheism of the Indians, with its simple belief in the Great Spirit, has often been the subject of eulogistic wonder ; and deservedly, if it had been of native evo- lution. The probability, however, is that the ascription of so reasonable a faith to the Indians is based on a total misconcep- tion, and that, where the monotheism with which they are accre- dited is not of European importation, it exists only in the fanci- fully-inferring mind of the aseriber. Mr. Cornwallis tells us that that the Takelly or Carrier Indians never allude to a Deity, and that their language has no term in it which expresses either God, spirit, soul, heaven, or hell. Such theological ignorance as their exclusive vocabulary implies certainly cannot be pre- dicted of Mr. Kohl's Indians. But if he attests their supe- rior faith or credulity, he by no means considers their mono- theistic belief established. Their Kitchi-Manitou, or Great Spirit, he remarks, does not fare much better than the " Optimus maximus " of the Romans. He presides in heaven, indeed, but on earth coarse natural strength and terrestrial objects are deified. In fact, the Indians seem to be polytheists who have not even out- lived their primitive fetichism. Every Indian selects some "pro- tecting. god," in the shape of a rock, a tree, a stone, which he calls his hope, and "to which he sacrifices more zealously than to the Great Spirit." This term our traveller inclines to think is not so much the proper name of a single Great Being as the appellation of an entire class of Great Spirits. According to one Indian in- formant there are six Manitous ; one in the heavens and one in the water, and, the other four in the North, South, East, and West. Of these the two former are the most powerful. Possibly the celestial Manitou is the supreme though not the sole Indian God. Mr. Kohl seems to admit that the Ojibbeways mention one Great Spirit in their festivals.
Assisted by Menaboju, the Hiawatha of Longfellow, the Great Spirit created the world. Men were by their joint decree pre- destined to happiness ; but the Evil Spirit interfered and produced among them wickedness, misery, and death. Grieved at the ills that desolated mortal life the Great Spirit ordered Menaboju to prepare a Paradise for men in the West. Here they live happily : dancing, playing the drum, and feeding on a kind of mushroom and a species of phosphorescent wood. War and hunting are at an end. To enter into this Paradise is a work of extreme difficulty. On the path of souls is the tempting strawberry. Beyond is the undulating bridge, which looks like a great tree-stump, but is really an ever-moving serpent. To taste the strawberry or slip from the bridge is to forfeit Paradise. Dexterity rather than virtue seems the passport to felicity. Retribution scarcely ap- pears to enter into the Indian idea of a future life. They have one place for all, and whether the Great Spirit makes any distinc- tion between good and bad remains with them an open question. Matchi-Manitou, or the Evil Principle, is frequently represented by the Sturgeon, "the king of fish." In an Oriental Saga, Rahab is the mystical leviathan, crocodile, or other sea-monster, who col- lects his allies, fights against Eloah (God), is defeated, and trans- formed into a constellation. With the Jews the leviathan became the emblem of Egypt, their hated persecutor. Subsequently, if we are not mistaken, it acquired a certain ideal personality as an embodiment of abstract evil. Yet, like the Sturgeon of the In- dians, it was regarded by them as the king of fish, and figures as the piece de resistance, in their great white bait dinner, on "Doomsday in the Afternoon." A curious initiatory rite prevails among the Indians of the Big Water. In obedience to a supposed revelation they lead their children into the forest when they approach man's estate. Here, after fasting, it may be for several days, a dream is pro- mised them, as an indication of their fate, a conscecration to deity, and an omen of good for their path of life. If a bad dream visits them they return home, and try again and again, till the right dream comes. We are thus reminded of the infallible specific for rain, so celebrated in some Catholic country, where a solemn pro- cession to the shrine of the appropriate saint is always succeeded by a copious supply of the desired blessing from the celestial
• Ifitchi-Ganii. Wanderings round Lake Superior. By J. C. Kohl, Author of "Travels in Russia." Published by Chapman and Hall.
watering-pot, because the visit is invariably repeated till, theologically speaking, the miracle is wrought, or till, in secular language, it does rain. The Indians have a religious ceremonial ; a temple which re- called to our traveller "the bowers built by the jews for their Feast of Tabernacles" ; and a priesthood or sacred fraternity, called Midas or brothers. These Mides are provided with medi- cine bags, filled with valuable and sacred objects, which of course are not allowed to be seen. It is supposed that a spirit or breath is exhaled from the bags which possesses the power of suspending or restoring animation. At the reception of an infant into the Order of Midas, at which Mr. Kohl was present, the good spirit, whose residence is in Heaven, was frequently invoked, but the evil spirit who wanders about on the ground appear § to have been recognized only by a symbolical stone.
The usual sacrifices to the Divinity or the great spirits are a dog and tobacco. "The dog," said an Indian, "is our domestic com- panion, our dearest and most useful animal. It is almost like sacrificing ourselves."
The Arts exist among the Indians in a rudimentary form. All
expression consists of signs. The Ojibbeways have "a kind of excellent dumb discourse." They convey their meaning by gesture. Thus, to indicate the first person an Indian points to himself. The rapid motion of the fingers signifies a journey on horseback. The hand once passed over the face furnishes the no- tion of day ; and when finally three fingers are presented before his friend's eyes' he has informed him that he has ridden for so many days over the prairie.
The fixation and transmission of these signs were eventually achieved with a little paint. This was the origin of their picture-writing. The growing universality of the signs would in time give them a conventional value and thus they would tend, under certain conditions, to crystallize into an alphabet. Substi- tuting vocal signs for visual signs, we get a hint of the genesis of language proper. Mr. Kohl confirms the surmise "that the Indians not only possessed certain hieroglyphics for things and ideas, but that they also had music notes to mark the modification of tune in their songs." Their melodies are exceedingly monotonous, but the characteristic variations are traceable after repeated hearings. Their songs are described as versified sighs or exclamations of joy. They commonly consist of one verse with a continued i iteration. The drum s the chief if not sole instrument with which the Indians accompany the voice.
Their architecture is representekby their temples and houses, called wigwams, from a word which meanseither the birch-tree or Its bark. They make cradles, mats, canoes, mocassins &c. They are fond of sports, and delight in hearing stories. Some of their tales are related by Mr. Kohl. and are not without a fantastic grace.
Our author commends the Indian character for its natural good- ness. A liberal and noble hospitality distinguishes the savage of the Lake. Self-glorification is allowable, but "any man con- victed of falsehood at the solemnity of a war dance, is ruined for life. A liar can hardly ever regain the confidence of his country- men ; while next to the liar no one is so despised by the Indians as the narow-hearted egotist and greedy miser." For subsistence the Ojibbeways depend chiefly on hunting, but they avail themselves also of the splendid variety of fish which enriches their great lakes. They collect herbs' plants and leaves, which they eat when quite young andfresh.Tliey preserve various fruits, and prepare three sorts of sugar of the sap of the maple-tree. Tubers, hazel nuts, and maize cakes are among their nutritive resources. The Indians on Lake Superior are all ac- quainted with the raw flesh eaters or Eskimos, whom they regard with aversion. The name by which they designate them is Ash- kimeg. According to Bishop Baraga's lexicon, Ashki means raw. The termination meg is not explained by either the Bishop or Mr. Kohl, but it occurs in the name atikameg, given by the Indians to the " poisson blanc," and may be conjectured to mean fish or food. "Probably this word Ashkimeg is very old in the Algic language, and we formed of it our European word Esquimaux."
The lidian North American tribes are not anthropophagous, but the wild thirst for revenge sometimes impels them to swallow human flesh. In the more barren districts "they shoot down their fellow men like game, and eat them in the same way." Educated traders, under the coercion of hunger, have been driven to dine on articles of leather, and a Canadian voyageur assured our traveller that he had more than once roasted and eaten his mocassins. The immorality of want is sometimes fearfully illus- trated among the Indians. With a national repugnance to can- nibalism, a famine-stricken wretch will occasionally resort to this extreme method of saving his life. Henceforth he is outlawed and must live retired from his fellow men. He is regarded with horror and receives the opprobrious name of Windigo or cannibal.
In a nation so devoted to superstitious fancies, strange stories grow up about Windigos just as the belief in witches once pro- dneed witches. Gloomy-minded persons are proclaimed Windigos tIll they accept the general opinion and believe themselves really Windigos. For "in all physical and mental diseases incidental to humanity, there is a certain epidemic tendency and a spon- taneous self-production and propagation." Among the Indians moreover, there is a prevalent tradition that in the primitive ages there were cannibal giants called Windigos. The fancy busies itself with them till they begin to dream of them, and persuade themselves that they are the subjects of a terrible destiny.
Regarding the suggestions of their visioned hours as authoritative, they yield them a prompt and implicit obedience. Thus, to believe in a dream is to fulfil a dream ; and murder and' canni- balism are perpetrated because they are supposed to be super- naturally commanded. However, "there seems not a doubt," says Mr. Kohl, "that these poor people, persecuted and shot as Windigos, are, like our witches, very often wretched persons driven to extremities by starvation." It is only when the tripe de roohe, or windigo cabbage, a herb of bitter rocky growth, entirely fails them, that they descend into the lowest depths of brutalization. Such is the result of the step-dame economy which nature is com- pelled to practise when she keeps house in those regions of wicked and atrocious poverty. The Windigo mania, as we have seen, has its mythological phases. The giant race of cannibals is the theme of many a tale, "as amusing to listen to, as our Hop o' my Thumb.' It is curious enough, too, that the Indian fancy, like that of the Scandinavians and other nations, invented and created a dwarf- like race by the side of the cannibal giants. They believe that these pigmies, though not visible to all, still really exist, and they populate all the forests with them." The hunter often hears a little snapping shot, as if from the gun of one of these minatim sportsman. "These dwarfs too have delicate little canoes like the Indians, and glide over the lakes and rivers. Some Indians have so sharp a sight that they can distinctly see them moving along in the reeds and narrow channels, between the broad leaves of the water plants."
We follow Mr. Kohl's praiseworthy example, concluding our review as he concludes his chapter, abating somewhat of the dis- agreeable impression which the notice of the eldrich Windigo superstition can scarcely have failed to produce by the evocation of the not unpleasant apparition of "these interesting little people or spirits."
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