ground;[1] the Indians being obliged to hunt so far back in the woods that they could not give him any assistance; and from the concurrent accounts of the traders in the north-west, as well as from the Savages who resorted to my house, it was the hardest winter they ever remembered.
About this time a large band of Chippeways arrived, traded with me for their hunt, and finished their frolic in a peaceable manner. While this band was with me, a curious circumstance occurred, which I shall relate.
One part of the religious superstition of the Savages, consists in each of them having his totam, or favorite spirit, which he believes watches over him. This totam they conceive assumes the shape of some beast or other, and therefore they never kill, hunt, or eat the animal whose form they think this totam bears.
The evening previous to the departure of the band, one
of them, whose totam was a bear, dreamed that if he
would go to a piece of swampy ground, at the foot of a
high mountain, about five days march from my wigwaum,
he would see a large herd of elks, moose, and other animals;
but that he must be accompanied by at least ten
good hunters. When he awoke he acquainted the band
with his dream, and desired them to go with him: they
all refused, saying it was out of their way, and that their
hunting grounds were nearer. The Indian having a superstitious
reverence for his dream (which ignorance, and
the prevalence of example among the Savages, carries to a
great height), thinking himself [87] obliged to do so, as
his companions had refused to go with him, went alone,
————
- ↑ Lake Savanne lies northwest of Lake Nipigon, on a tributary of the Albany River. A brief account of a voyage thither is given by Duncan Cameron, in Masson, Bourgeois, ii, p. 271. Cameron also says that four out of eight traders starved there in one year (ibid., p. 242).—Ed.
