His other texts[3] show us savages consulting each his Manitou, 'a powerful being' (_quelque nature puissante_), or _diable_. A Manitou is 'any superior being, good or bad:' the God of the Jesuits is _le bon Manitou_, Satan is _le mauvais Manitou_.
I am not arguing that these phrases are more than the pigeon-French of the savage flock, or that the ideas expressed did not later become implanted in their minds. But Mr. Tylor, in his essay of 1892, omits what he quotes in his 'Primitive Culture,' the Jesuit evidence of 1633 (p. 16) to 'one Atahocan who made everything. Speaking of God in a hut one day, they asked me, "What is God?" I replied, "The All Powerful One, who made heaven and earth." They then began to say to each other, "Atahocan, Atahocan, he is Atahocan."' 'They have no worship which they are used to pay to him whom they hold for their god.' (This is the religious condition of the Kaffirs described by Dos Santos in Pinkerton, xvi. 687.) Now it is Atahocan who interests me, as pre-missionary: no doubt he was not called _le bon Manitou_--but there he was! In 1634 Father Le Jeune consulted a very hostile sorcerer, who minimised Atahocan. 'They do not know,' said the sorcerer, 'who was the author of the world, perhaps Atahocan: it was uncertain. They only spoke of Atahocan as one speaks of something so remote as to be dubious. In fact the word _Nitatahocan_ means in their language, "I tell a story, an old tale."'[4] The 'sorcerer,' a servant of familiar spirits, had no interest in Atahocan, though the tribesmen recognised in him the God and Creator of Father Le Jeune. There was but a waning tradition of a primal maker; interesting and important just because it was waning, and therefore could not be of fresh European introduction. The beings in receipt of sacrifice were _Khichikouai_, to whom they threw fat on the fire, with prayer.'[5] It appears to me that these affable familiar ghosts, practically serviceable, had cast the otiose Atahocan into the background. But he, like Andouagni, Kiehtan, and others, was certainly there before the Jesuits, and these beings are elsewhere cited by Mr. Tylor. The question is one of the existence of belief in such a being, not (for me at least) of the origin, which may well be post-European, of the words 'Kitchi Manitu, or Great Spirit.' If the Mandans believed, as Mr. Tylor does not deny in 'Omahank Numakchi, the Creator, whose name appears to mean Lord of Earth,' it is quite unimportant that 'there is no Mandan deity whose name answers to that of Great Spirit.'[6]