The Indians believe that Michabou, the God of the Waters, formed Lake Superior to serve as a nursery for beavers. The rocks at the _Sault de Saint Marie_, or Falls of St. Mary, according to the tradition of the Indians, are the remains of a causeway made by the God in order to dam up the waters of the rivers, which supply this great lake. At the time he did this, he lived, they add, at Michillimackinac, _i.e._ a great place for turtles, pronounced Mak-i-naw. He it was who taught the ancestors of the Indians to fish, and invented nets, of which he took the idea from the spider's web. Very many of the northern tribes recognise this same divinity, but the Hurons alone assign Lake Superior as the place of his residence. (4) _House of Death._--p. 302. The funeral customs of the Indians are very various, and all are sufficiently curious to merit a place in this note. I have only space for a few. The first extract relates rather to the place of deposit for the dead, than to the dead themselves. It describes the common cemetery of the tribes living west of the Rocky Mountains. "Among the Pishquitpaws, who live beyond the Rocky Mountains, the place in which the dead are deposited is a building about sixty feet long, and twelve feet wide, and is formed by placing in the ground poles or forks six feet high, across which a long pole is extended the whole length of the structure. Against this ridge-pole are placed broad boards and pieces of canoes in a slanting direction, so as to form a shed. It stands east and west, and neither of the extremities are closed. On entering the western end we observed a number of bodies, wrapped carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards, which were then covered with mats. This was the part destined for those who had recently died: a little further on, bones half decayed were scattered about, and in the centre of the building was a large pile of them heaped promiscuously on each other. At the western extremity was a mat on which twenty-one sculls were placed in a circular form, the mode of interment being first to wrap the body in robes, and as it decays the bones are thrown into the heap, and the sculls placed together. From the different boards and pieces of canoes which form the vault were suspended on the inside fishing-nets, baskets, wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and trinkets of various kinds, obviously intended as offerings of affection to deceased relatives. On the outside of the vault were the skeletons of several horses, and great quantities of bones were in the neighbourhood, which induced us to believe that these animals were most probably sacrificed at the funeral rites of their masters."--_Lewis and Clarke_, ii, 24.