any one
approach its nest.

* * * * *

The story of this chief of northern myths is dropped in my notes at
this point of his triumph over the strongest of the reptile race. But
his feats and adventures by land and sea do not terminate here. There
is scarcely a prominent lake, mountain, precipice, or stream in the
northern part of America, which is not hallowed in Indian story by his
fabled deeds. Further accounts will be found in several of the
subsequent tales, which are narrated by the Indians in an independent
form, and may be now appropriately left as they were found, as
episodes, detached from the original story. To collect all these and
arrange them in order would be an arduous labor; and, after all, such
an arrangement would lack consistency and keeping, unless much of the
thread necessary to present them in an English dress were supplied by
alteration, and transposition. The portions above narrated present a
beginning and an end, which could hardly be said of the loose and
disjointed fragmentary tales referred to. How long Manabozho lived on
earth is not related. We hear nothing more of his grandmother; every
mouth is filled with his queer adventures, tricks, and sufferings. He
was everywhere present where danger presented itself, power was
required, or mischief was going forward. Nothing was too low or trivial
for him to engage in, nor too high or difficult for him to attempt. He
affected to be influenced by the spirit of a god, and was really
actuated by the malignity of a devil. The period of his labors and
adventures having expired, he withdrew to dwell with his brother in the
North, where he is understood to direct those storms which proceed from
the points west of the pole. He is regarded as the spirit of the
northwest tempests, but receives no worship from the present race of
Indians. It is believed by them that he is again to appear, and to
exercise an important power in the final disposition of the human race.

In this singular tissue of incongruities may be perceived some ideas
probably derived from Asiatic sources. It will be found in the legends
of the visitors to the Sun and Moon, and of the white stone canoe, that
Manabozho was met on the way, and he is represented as expressing a
deep repentance for the bad acts he had committed while on earth. He
is, however, found exercising the vocation of a necromancer; has a
jossakeed's lodge, from which he utters or