[27] Mackenzie's Voyages, Hist. Fur Trade, vii.
[29] Report of the Trials of De Reinhard, &c. Montreal, 1818.
Society at Michilimackinac consists of so many diverse elements, which impart their hue to it, that it is not easy for a passing traveller to form any just estimate of it. The Indian, with his plumes, and gay and easy costume, always imparts an oriental air to it. To this, the Canadian, gay, thoughtless, ever bent on the present, and caring nothing for to-morrow, adds another phase. The trader, or interior clerk, who takes his outfit of goods to the Indians, and spends eleven months of the year in toil, and want, and petty traffic, appears to dissipate his means with a sailor-like improvidence in a few weeks, and then returns to his forest wanderings; and boiled corn, pork, and wild rice again supply his wants. There is in these periodical resorts to the central quarters of the Fur Company, much to remind one of the old feudal manners, in which there is proud hospitality and a show of lordliness on the one side, and gay obsequiousness and cringing dependence on the other, at least till the annual bargains for the trade are closed.
We were informed that there is neither school, preaching, a physician (other than at the garrison), nor an attorney, in the place. There are, however, courts of law, a post-office, and a jail, and one or more justices of the peace.
There is a fish market every morning, where may be had the trout--two species--and the white fish, the former of which are caught with hooks in deep water, and the latter in gill nets. Occasionally, other species appear, but the trout and white fish, which is highly esteemed, are staples, and may be relied on in the shore market daily; whole canoe-loads of them are brought in.
The name of this island is said to signify a great turtle, to which it has a fancied resemblance, when viewed from a distance. Mikenok, and not Mackenok, is, however, the name for a tortoise. The term, as pronounced by the Indians, is Michinemockinokong, signifying place of the Great Michinamockinocks, or rock-spirits. Of this word, _Mich_ is from _Michau_ (adjective-animate), great. The term _mackinok_, in the Algonquin mythology, denotes in the singular, a species of spirits, called turtle spirits, or large fairies, who are thought to frequent its mysterious cliffs and glens. The plural of this word, which is an animate plural, is _ong_, which is the ordinary form of all nouns ending in the vowel _o_. When the French came to write this, they cast away the Indian local in _ong_, changed the sound of _n_ to _l_, and gave the force _mack_ and _nack_, to _mök_ and _nök_. The vowel _e_, after the first syllable, is merely a connective in the Indian, and which is represented in the French orthography in this word by _i_. The ordinary interpretation of great turtle is, therefore, not widely amiss; but in its true meaning, the term enters more deeply into the Indian mythology than is conjectured. The island was deemed, in a peculiar sense, the residence of spirits during all its earlier ages. Its cliffs, and dense and dark groves of maples, beech, and ironwood, cast fearful shadows; and it was landed on by them in fearfulness, and regarded far and near as the _Sacred Island_. Its apex is, indeed, the true Indian Olympus of the tribes, whose superstitions and mythology peopled it by gods, or monitos.