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INDIAN SUPERSTITION BY EPHRAIM S. WILLIAMS
INDIAN SUPERSTITION
THE MUN-E-SOOS
LEGENDS OF INDIAN HISTORY IN SAGINAW VALLEY
I notice with pleasure an article upon the defeat and extermination of the Socks from the Saginaw country by the Chippewas and- other tribes, which I have always understood to be the fact, and Saginaw derives its names from the fact of its having been the Socks' country, the Indian name being Saw-gee-nong, meaning the Socks' country, also as regards their superstitions and notions that the country they had captured from the Socks was haunted by the Mun-e-soos or bad spirits of the Socks, or in their phrase, the bad Indians. I will give a little of my experience of twelve years' residence among them.
The fact is, they carried their fears and superstitions to a very great length and at many times to their very great loss of property. Many of their frights I have witnessed and have tried to persuade them otherwise, but to no purpose, they having so long been deluded.
There was a time, every spring, when the Indians from Saginaw and the interior, would congregate in large parties upon the Saginaw bay for the purpose of putting up large quantities of dried sturgeon, which made a very delicate dish when properly cooked and was much used in those days, by the first families in Detroit. At the Point Au Gres, so called in those days, being a shallow point making- out into the bay, with a smooth limestone bottom, the sturgeon would run up the smooth point in large numbers, working up until quite up shore, and lie like floating cord wood. The Indians camped here on the point and would select the best at their leisure, flay them, hang them across poles in rows about four feet from the ground and the rows about two or three feet apart.
Michigan Indians
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