before four thousand men and women at the
Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, recounting
that narrative to them as fellow-creatures, and
he shall see a sight!

WAR PAINT AND MEDICINE-BAGS.

ON the western side of Kitchi-Gami, or the
Big Water (Lake Superior), is a certain island
known as Shaguamikon, or "Something gnawed
on all sides;" and on this island a couple of
squaws and a lame unlucky lad, who could never
be a Brave, built Mr. Kohl's birch-bark
wigwam, laid his clean new mats, and lighted his
fire, in the midst of the Ojibbeway braves.
Very pleasant, we find, by the book he has written
about it, was that life of his among the painted
savages; full of magic and mysteries, medicine
bags and ceremonies, legends and traditions,
which gave to Mr. Kohl a strange kaleidoscopic
kind of insight into the Red Man's inner or
spiritual nature; always the most difficult
phase of savage life to understand. Bold as lions
in the presence of physical danger, and with a
fortitude almost superhuman when under physical
suffering, the Red Man is among the most
superstitious and superstitiously timid of God's
creatures. Everything with them is matter for
worship, or for awe. They have not only their
Kitchi-Manitou, or Great Good Spirit, up in
heaven; their Matchi-Manitou, or Bad Spirit,
mysteriously connected somehow with the
earth; their spiteful old water god, who puts
one in mind of old Nis in the island of
Rügen; their Menaboju—their Prometheus, or
kind of creative demigod, but they have also
their personal gods, or fetishes—the Manitou
personnel, or nigonime, "My Hope," in
everything they see that strikes their fancy or
overwhelms their imagination. One makes his
private or personal manitou out of a rock that
seemed to nod to him one day when he rested
at its base, giddy with fatigue and exhaustion;
another hears the wind whispering strangely in
the larch-tree, and forthwith makes that tree
his Hope, and the great director of his path;
a third owes all his success in hunting, and all
his prowess in war, to a lump of copper shining
out among the roots and moss above his
wigwam; and a fourth finds a large misshapen
boulder the nearest approach to divinity which
heaven and earth has for him.

Worship includes sacrifice, and the principal
Indian sacrifices are dogs and tobacco. The
first, as the holiest offering possible to be made,
is chiefly reserved for the Great Spirits; but
tobacco is laid everywhere—on graves, on
boulders, on masses of copper, at the roots of
trees which have become private or peculiar
manitous or nigonimes, and, indeed, wheresoever
the Red Man wishes to show respect or to
propitiate favour. Dogs hold an anomalous
position in the Indian world. Kicked and cuffed
out of the wigwam, so rarely caressed that, if
you attempt to pat or play with them, they will
tuck their tails between their legs, and run off
snarling and whining, they are yet considered
as eminently sacred, and among the greatest
boons of Indian life. They say that "the dog
was created in heaven itself, and sent down
expressly for the Indians." The pups are never
killed, but are apportioned as playthings among
the children, and, while pups, suffered to enjoy
the same affectionate immunity from rough
usage as the infants themselves. When grown
up to perfect doghood, their treatment is as
rigorous as that given to the boys and youths.
Only one man is spoken of as especially kind to
dogs, and he had Saxon blood in him. He was
a very great chief called The Little Pine, the
son of an English officer and an Indian squaw,
and he, unconsciously obeying the instincts of
his father's race, surrounded himself with a pack
of dogs which he taught and admonished like
children; arguing with them gravely on the
faultiness of their conduct, and treating them
precisely as a good family brave would have
treated the young barbarians of his name and
race. No, not of his name; for the Indians are
too individual to accept even of parental
designations; and no one is rightly "christened"
until he or she has been put through various
ceremonies. At the first the little papoose has
no name; then some occasion offers—an animal
crosses the creature's path in an out of the way
place, the little hands clutch after something
special and not quite trivial, or the father has a
dream which settles all; and a dark cloud, a
grey sky, a black bird, or a violent rain, seen in
the dream, becomes humanised, so to speak, and
remains as the designation of the child for
evermore. If the father cannot dream satisfactorily,
or if a hitch seems to come in any way between
his vision and his child, he secures the services
of a friend—a better dreamer than himself—
who undertakes the office, and who perhaps
gives such a name as The Man who Runs,
The Yellow Fox, The White Otter, The Muskrat,
and so on. But the friend is often asked
only to superadd a name, so that the child
may have the benefit of both dreams. At
baptism, or when received into the order of the
Midés, a second or a third name is again added;
but of all these names one only gains the upper
hand, and by one only is the future sage or
warrior known. Another peculiarity about these
names is, that an Indian will never tell his own,
nor a squaw mention her husband's or her
stepson's, if possible to be avoided. When you want
to know an Indian's name you must always ask
it of another. Ask a squaw whose gun is that,
and she will answer "It belongs to him," or "to
the man who has his seat there," pointing to her
husband's place. If she speaks of her son-in-law,
she is equally reticent and paraphrastic. "The
man who performs the part of son-in-law in our
house," is the most direct title which a stranger
will get from her.

Dreams are great powers in Indian life; they
are preliminaries or adjuncts on every
occasion. But the most important is that which
comes to a youth, when, on approaching
manhood, he is led out into the forest to fast and
dream. A bed is prepared in the high trees by