Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820: Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
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Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820: Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Great Lakes (North America); Mississippi River -- Sources; Northwest, Old -- Description and travel
We were informed that there is neither school, preaching, a physician
(other than at the garrison), nor an attorney, in the place. There are,
however, courts of law, a post-office, and a jail, and one or more
justices of the peace.
There is a fish market every morning, where may be had the trout--two
species--and the white fish, the former of which are caught with hooks
in deep water, and the latter in gill nets. Occasionally, other species
appear, but the trout and white fish, which is highly esteemed, are
staples, and may be relied on in the shore market daily; whole
canoe-loads of them are brought in.
The name of this island is said to signify a great turtle, to which it
has a fancied resemblance, when viewed from a distance. Mikenok, and
not Mackenok, is, however, the name for a tortoise. The term, as
pronounced by the Indians, is Michinemockinokong, signifying place of
the Great Michinamockinocks, or rock-spirits. Of this word, _Mich_ is
from _Michau_ (adjective-animate), great. The term _mackinok_, in the
Algonquin mythology, denotes in the singular, a species of spirits,
called turtle spirits, or large fairies, who are thought to frequent its
mysterious cliffs and glens. The plural of this word, which is an
animate plural, is _ong_, which is the ordinary form of all nouns ending
in the vowel _o_. When the French came to write this, they cast away the
Indian local in _ong_, changed the sound of _n_ to _l_, and gave the
force _mack_ and _nack_, to _mök_ and _nök_. The vowel _e_, after the
first syllable, is merely a connective in the Indian, and which is
represented in the French orthography in this word by _i_. The ordinary
interpretation of great turtle is, therefore, not widely amiss; but in
its true meaning, the term enters more deeply into the Indian mythology
than is conjectured. The island was deemed, in a peculiar sense, the
residence of spirits during all its earlier ages. Its cliffs, and dense
and dark groves of maples, beech, and ironwood, cast fearful shadows;
and it was landed on by them in fearfulness, and regarded far and near
as the _Sacred Island_. Its apex is, indeed, the true Indian Olympus of
the tribes, whose superstitions and mythology peopled it by gods, or
monitos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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