The Ottawas, according to Ragueneau (Relation des Hurons, 1648, 77),
were accustomed to invoke the "Maker of Heaven" at their feasts; but they
recognized as distinct persons the Maker of the Earth, the Maker of
Winter, the God of the Waters, and the Seven Spirits of the Wind.
He says, at the same time, "The people of these countries have received
from their ancestors no knowledge of a God"; and he adds, that there is
no sentiment of religion in this invocation. ]

The East, the West, the North, and the South were vaguely personified as
spirits or manitous. Some of the winds, too, were personal existences.
The West-Wind, as we have seen, was father of Manabozho. There was a
Summer-Maker and a Winter-Maker; and the Indians tried to keep the latter
at bay by throwing firebrands into the air.

When we turn from the Algonquin family of tribes to that of the Iroquois,
we find another cosmogony, and other conceptions of spiritual existence.
While the earth was as yet a waste of waters, there was, according to
Iroquois and Huron traditions, a heaven with lakes, streams, plains,
and forests, inhabited by animals, by spirits, and, as some affirm,
by human beings. Here a certain female spirit, named Ataentsic, was once
chasing a bear, which, slipping through a hole, fell down to the earth.
Ataentsic's dog followed, when she herself, struck with despair, jumped
after them. Others declare that she was kicked out of heaven by the
spirit, her husband, for an amour with a man; while others, again,
hold the belief that she fell in the attempt to gather for her husband
the medicinal leaves of a certain tree. Be this as it may, the animals
swimming in the watery waste below saw her falling, and hastily met in
council to determine what should be done. The case was referred to the
beaver. The beaver commended it to the judgment of the tortoise, who
thereupon called on the other animals to dive, bring up mud, and place it