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The Host was raised aloft; the worshippers kneeled. Then their rough voices joined in the hymn of praise, Te Deum laudamus; and then a volley of their guns proclaimed the triumph of the faith to the okies, the manitous, and all the brood of anomalous devils who had reigned with undisputed sway in these wild realms of darkness.
The savages at first declared they were not so silly as to barter thirty-seven tutelar deities for one, but after much preaching and many pow-wows Mayhew succeeded in persuading them that the Deity of the white man was mightier than all their manitous.
There were many water gods about Lake Superior to whom the Indians paid homage, casting implements, ornaments, and tobacco into the water whenever they passed a spot where one of these manitous sat enthroned.
And they have not forgotten their Manitous, who have whispered to them when the clouds appeared in the northern sky, 'Rise up, Mohawks and Oneidas and Onondagas and Cayugas and Senecas, and stand firmly against this storm, and your homes and your fields shall not be destroyed." The house was silent with interest.
The most common offering was tobacco, thrown into the fire or water; scraps of meat were sometimes burned to the manitous; and, on a few rare occasions of public solemnity, a white dog, the mystic animal of many tribes, was tied to the end of an upright pole, as a sacrifice to some superior spirit, or to the sun, with which the superior spirits were constantly confounded by the primitive Indian.
There I found the cache which you spoke to me about; but I did not break into it at that time, as I was still well provided with food and ammunition. Because you had told me that the Forbidden River was unexplored and never visited, being haunted by Manitous and shades of the dead, I turned into it and travelled up it I thought that I should find safety there.
The Spaniards regarded these manitous as images of the devil, and in order to keep them the natives hid the little effigies from the friars and the troops. In the festivals of these gods there were dances, music, and an offering of flower-decorated cakes.
Then they took a last embrace and flung themselves into the water, still hand in hand. When the river is low you may hear their death-song sounding there. The manitous of the river and the wood were offended with the medicine-man because of his stubbornness and cruelty, although he suffered greatly because of the death his daughter died, and he the cause of it.
The various benefits conferred upon the Indians by their visiters confirmed them in the belief that they were indeed spiritual beings, he in red being in their estimation the Supreme Manitou, and his attendants, the inferior Manitous.
"Rene" seems to me very superior to "Atala." Both the stories show a talent of the first rank, but of the two the beauty of "Atala" is of the more transitory kind. The attempt to render in the style of Versailles the loves of a Natchez and a Seminole, and to describe the manners of the adorers of the Manitous in the tone of Catholic sentiment, was an attempt too violent to succeed.
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