The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
When Chusco was converted to Christianity at the mission of
Michilimackinac, he had planted a field of potatoes on one of the
neighbouring islands in lake Huron. In the fall he went over in his
canoe, with his aged wife, to dig them--a labour which the old woman set
unceremoniously about, as soon as they got into the field. "Stop!" cried
the little old man, who had a small tenor voice and was bent nearly
double by age,--"dare you begin to dig, till we have thanked the Lord
for their growth." They then both knelt down in the field, while he
lifted up his voice, in his native language, in thanks.
SHINGABA-WOSSINS, OR IMAGE STONES.
The native tribes who occupy the borders of the great lakes, are very
ingenious in converting to the uses of superstition, such masses of
loose rock, or boulder stones, as have been fretted by the action of
water into shapes resembling the trunks of human bodies, or other
organic forms.
There appears, at all times, to have been a ready disposition to turn
such masses of rude natural sculpture, so to call them, to an idolatrous
use; as well as a most ingenious tact, in aiding the effect of the
natural resemblance, by dots or dabs of paint, to denote eyes, and other
features, or by rings of red ochre, around their circumference, by way
of ornament.
In the following figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, some of these masses are
represented.
[Illustration: IMAGE STONES]
Number 3. was brought to the office of the Indian Agent at
Michilimackinac in 1839, and placed among objects of analogous interest
to visiters. It consisted of a portion of a vein or mass of gneiss or
granite, from which both mica and feldspar were nearly absent, existing
only in trace, while the quartzy portion predominated, and had, by its
superior hardness, resisted the elemental action. The mode of the
formation of such masses is very well known to geologists, resulting, in
almost every case, from the unequal degree of hardness of various parts
of a mass, submitted to an equal force of attrition, such as is
ordinarily given by the upheaving and rolling force of waves on a lake,
or ocean beach. To the natives, who are not prone to reason from cause
to effect, such productions appear wonderful. All that is past
comprehension, or wonderful, is attributed by them to the supernatural
agency of spirits. The hunter or warrior, who is travelling along the
coast, and finds one of these self-sculptured stones, is not sure that
it is not a direct interposition of his God, or guardian Manito, in his
favour. He is habitually a believer in the most subtle forms of
mysterious power, which he acknowledges to be often delegated to the
native priests, or necromancers. He is not staggered by the most
extraordinary stretch of fancy, in the theory of the change or
transformation of animate into inanimate objects, and vice versa. All
things, "in heaven and earth," he believes to be subject to this subtle
power of metamorphosis. But, whatever be the precise operating cause of
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