ity, which he afterward evinced. The timidity
and rawness of the boy quickly gave way in the courageous developments
of the man. He soon evinced the sagacity, cunning, perseverance, and
heroic courage which constitute the admiration of the Indians. And he
relied largely upon these in the gratification of an ambitious,
vainglorious, and mischief-loving disposition. In wisdom and energy he
was superior to any one who had ever lived before. Yet he was simple
when circumstances required it, and was ever the object of tricks and
ridicule in others. He could transform himself into any animal he
pleased, being man or manito, as circumstances rendered necessary. He
often conversed with animals, fowls, reptiles, and fishes. He deemed
himself related to them, and invariably addressed them by the term "my
brother;" and one of his greatest resources, when hard pressed, was to
change himself into their shapes.

Manitoes constitute the great power and absorbing topic of Indian lore.
Their agency is at once the groundwork of their mythology and
demonology. They supply the machinery of their poetic inventions, and
the belief in their multitudinous existence exerts a powerful influence
upon the lives and character of individuals. As their manitoes are of
all imaginary kinds, grades, and powers, benign and malicious, it seems
a grand conception among the Indians to create a personage strong
enough in his necromantic and spiritual powers to baffle the most
malicious, beat the stoutest, and overreach the most cunning. In
carrying out this conception in the following myth, they have, however,
rather exhibited an incarnation of the power of Evil than of the genius
of Benevolence.

Manabozho was living with his grandmother near the edge of a wide
prairie. On this prairie he first saw animals and birds of every kind.
He there also saw exhibitions of divine power in the sweeping tempests,
in the thunder and lightning, and the various shades of light and
darkness, which form a never-ending scene of observation. Every new
sight he beheld in the heavens was a subject of remark; every new
animal or bird an object of deep interest; and every sound uttered by
the animal creation a new lesson, which he was expected to learn. He
often trembled at what he heard and saw. To this scene his grandmother
sent him at an early age to watch. The first sound he heard was that of
the owl, at which he was greatly terrified, and, quickly descending the
tree he ha