Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and
preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the
fabrication of an idle fancy or a designing priestcraft, but in origin,
deeds, and name the not unworthy personification of the purest
conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All. To Him at early
dawn the Indian stretched forth his hands in prayer; and to the sky or
the sun as his homes, he first pointed the pipe in his ceremonies, rites
often misinterpreted by travellers as indicative of sun worship. As
later observers tell us to this day the Algonkin prophet builds the
medicine lodge to face the sunrise, and in the name of Michabo, who
there has his home, summons the spirits of the four quarters of the
world and Gizhigooke, the day maker, to come to his fire and disclose
the hidden things of the distant and the future: so the earliest
explorers relate that when they asked the native priests who it was they
invoked, what demons or familiars, the invariable reply was, "the
Kichigouai, the genii of light, those who make the day.
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