ead from her robe
of woven mulberry-bark, which she did, and gave it to him. Then, going
up to the Great Elk, he bade him, in a very angry voice, hold out his
tongue. The trembling monster obeyed, displaying a tongue which would
have furnished the whole tribe of Ottawas with food for a season. The
god then made, with the sharp point of a thorn, a hole in the under
part of his tongue, half way between the root and the end, and another
in the skin upon the inner side of his jaw, and passing through these
holes the thread obtained from the Ottawa woman, he tied down the
tongue effectually. When he had done this, patting the Ottawa woman on
the shoulder, he bade her run, like a good woman, as she was, to the
nearest grove, and fetch him some black mushrooms, some pemine
berries, a handful of leaves from the squaw maple[A], and a small
quantity of the flowers of the dog-wood. She did as she was directed,
and brought them and laid them at his feet. These he caused to be
pounded, beaten together, moistened with the spittle of the Great Elk,
and fashioned into many little balls about the bigness of the
eye-balls of a humming-bird[B]. When the mass had been all made into
balls, he commanded all to be silent. When the camp had become so
hushed, that the chirp of a grasshopper or the hum of a bee might have
been heard from limit to limit, he cried with a loud voice:--

[Footnote A: The female maple, distinguished from the male by having
its wood paler and more streaked.]

[Footnote B: Called by the French Canadians, _l'Oiseau Mouche_, or the
fly-bird. The name has two derivations; the first, from the smallness
of the animal; the second, from the humming noise it makes with its
wings. Its body is not larger than an ordinary May-bug.]

"Ruling spirits of the beasts, and birds, and fishes, come hither!
Presiding Manitous of all, save man, that inhabit the earth, the air,
the water, hear and obey the voice of Michabou."

He had scarcely done speaking, when the air was darkened with wings of
Manitous hastening to the spot, and, but that the footsteps of spirits
are lighter than the shade which falls upon the earth at sunset, the
valley had shaken with the weight of the hoofs and feet which pressed
it. There were the spirits of all the fish in the waters, and fowls
and birds in the air, and beasts and four-legged or more-legged
creatures on or in the earth, and some very strange-looking creatures
there were(6). To each of these spir