one]
SAVAGE ALLIES OF NEW FRANCE
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thirty to forty leagues, and return laden with game; in autumn they depart for the winter hunt (which is the best [time of the year] for the skins and furs), and return in the spring laden with beavers, pelts, various kinds of fat, and the flesh of bears and deer. They sell all of which they have more than enough. They would be exceedingly well-to-do if they were economical; but most of them have the same traits as the Sauteurs.
The Hurons are more provident; they think of the future, and they support their families. As they are sober, it is seldom that they suffer from poverty. This tribe is very politic, treacherous in their actions, and proud in all their behavior; they have more intellect than all the other savages. The Hurons are liberal; they show delicacy in their conversation, and they speak with precision. The others try to imitate them. They are insinuating, and are seldom cheated by any person whatsoever in any of their undertakings. The Outa-oiiaks, who are their neighbors, have imitated their customs and their rules of conduct; these people were at first very rude, but by intercourse with the Hurons they have become much more intelligent. They have imitated the valor of the latter, and have made themselves feared by all the tribes who are their enemies, and looked up to by those who are their allies.
Michilimakinak, according to the old men, is the place where Michapous sojourned longest. There is a mountain on the shore of the lake which has the shape of a hare; they believe that this was the place of his abode, and they call this mountain Michapous.198   It is
198 Manabozho, Messou, Michabo are among the synonyms of Nanabozho, "the demiurge of the cosmologic traditions of the Algonquian tribes." He is • "apparently the impersonation of life, the active quickening power of life—of life manifested and embodied in the myriad forms of sentient and physical nature. He is therefore reputed to possess not only the power to live, but also the correlative power of renewing his own life and of quickening and there-