Put then the bright gold in thy rolling locks, and let thine eyes shine as when I first saw thee. Be again as straight as the young fir, and array thyself in the garment which glittered like the sands of the Spirits' Island."
With a convulsive start, the warrior raised himself upon his couch to an upright posture. Gazing wildly around for a moment, he threw his arms forward, shouting "I come, beloved, I come!" and then falling back he lay a lifeless corpse. And so died Mishikinakwa, the Little Turtle of the Winnebagoes, of love for a phantom woman.
(1) _The Hottuk Ishtohoollo, or Holy People._--p. 273.
Almost every hill and cavern has, in the eye of the Indian, its tutelary deity. The tradition entitled "The Mountain of Little Spirits" is one which paints a genuine belief.
Adair, in his History of the North American Indians, says, "They (viz. the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, &c.) believe the higher regions to be inhabited by good spirits, whom they call _Hottuk Ishtohoollo_, and _Nana Ishtohoollo_, 'Holy People,' and relations to the 'Great Holy One?' The _Hottuk Ookproose_, or _Nana Ookproose_, 'accursed people,' or 'accursed beings,' they say possess the dark regions of the West; the former attend and favour the virtuous; and the latter in like manner accompany and have power over the vicious. Several warriors have told me," he says, "that their _Nana Ishtohoollo_, 'concomitant Holy Spirits,' or angels, have forewarned them, as by intuition, of a dangerous ambuscade, which must have been attended with certain death, when they were alone and seemingly out of danger; and, by virtue of the impulse, they immediately darted off, and with extreme difficulty escaped the crafty, pursuing enemy."
All the Northern Indians are very superstitious with respect to the existence of fairies. One of their tribes, the Chepewyans, speak of a race whom they call _Nant-e-na_, whom they say they frequently see, and who are supposed by them to inhabit the different elements of earth, sea, and air, according to their several qualities. To one or the other of these fairies they usually attribute any change in their circumstances either for better or worse; and, as they are led into this way of thinking entirely by the art of the conjurors, there is no such thing as any general mode of belief; for those jugglers differ so much from each other in their accounts of these beings, that those who believe any thing they say have little to do but change their opinions according to the will and caprice of the conjuror, who is almost daily relating some new whim or extraordinary event.