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Manitou

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Webster Dictionary
• Manitou
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Manitou
McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Manitou
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Manitou

is the name of any object used as a fetish or amulet among some tribes of the American Indians those of the North and North-west. "The Illinois," wrote the Jesuit Marest, "adore a sort of genius which they call Manitou; to them it is the master of life, the spirit that rules all things. A bird, a buffalo, a bear, a feather, a skin — that is their manitou." "If the Indian word manitou," says Palfrey, "appeared to denote something above or beside the common aspects and agencies of nature, it might be natural, but it would be rash and misleading to confound its import with the Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish, Egyptian, or Greek conception of the Deity, or with any compound or selection from some or all of those ideas." SEE INDIANS.