But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries
he was alleged to reside toward the east, and in the holy formulae of
the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the
east is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and
there, at the edge of the earth, where the sun rises, on the shore of
the infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house and sends
the luminaries forth on their daily journies.[164-1]
It is passing strange that such an insignificant creature as the rabbit
should have received this apotheosis. No explanation of it in the least
satisfactory has ever been offered. Some have pointed it out as a
senseless, meaningless brute worship. It leads to the suspicion that
there may lurk here one of those confusions of words which have so often
led to confusion of ideas in mythology. Manibozho, Nanibojou, Missibizi,
Michabo, Messou, all variations of the same name in different dialects
rendered according to different orthographies, scrutinize them closely
as we may, they all seem compounded according to well ascertained laws
of Algonkin euphony from the words corresponding to _great_ and _hare_
or _rabbit_, or the first two perhaps from _spirit_ and _hare_ (_michi_,
great, _wabos_, hare, _manito wabos_, spirit hare, Chipeway dialect),
and so they have invariably been translated even by the Indians
themselves.
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