Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Manitu   Listen
noun
Manitu, Manitou, Manito  n.  A name given by tribes of American Indians to a great spirit, whether good or evil, or to any object of worship. "Gitche Manito the mighty, The Great Spirit, the creator, Smiled upon his helpless children!" "Mitche Manito the mighty, He the dreadful Spirit of Evil, As a serpent was depicted."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Manitu" Quotes from Famous Books



... holds high place as the favourite haunt of the Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly by lightning, the islands ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... entrance. Immediately I heard a loud noise. They had discovered the two dead bodies and the rattlesnake. They thought the two whites had killed the rattlesnake, which is regarded as a sacred animal by them, and that Manitou, their god, had struck them dead. A place which Manitou visits is sacred to them, and I thought that they would leave the hut. An ugly Indian, who seemed to be the chief, commanded silence and delivered a long ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... "Great Manitou forbid!" said Aletha firmly. She grimaced at the bare idea. "I'm an Amerind. I'll want my husband to be contented. I want to be contented along with him. Mr. Bordman will never be either happy or content. No paleface husband for me! But I don't think he's ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Prajapati? His role is that of the great Hare in American myth; he is a kind of demiurge, and his name means "The Master of Things Created," like the Australian Biamban, "Master," and the American title of the chief Manitou, "Master of Life",(1) Dr. Muir remarks that, as the Vedic mind advances from mere divine beings who "reside and operate in fire" (Agni), "dwell and shine in the sun" (Surya), or "in the atmosphere" (Indra), towards a conception ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... of performing have already been mentioned. This class of sorcerers were met with by the Jesuit Fathers early in the seventeenth century, and referred to under various designations, such as jongleur, magicien, consulteur du manitou, etc. Their influence in the tribe was recognized, and formed one of the greatest obstacles encountered in the Christianization of the Indians. Although the J[)e]s/sakk[-i]d/ may be a seer and prophet as well as a practitioner of ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... words when he is happy," said the Onondaga. "His tongue runs on like the pleasant murmur of a brook, but he does it because Manitou made him that way. The world must have talkers as well as doers, and it can be said for Lennox that he acts ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and started before break of day, without having been observed by them. We stopped to breakfast at the Standing Stone, where the Indians had deposited bits of tobacco, small pieces of cloth, &c. as a sacrifice, in superstitious expectation that it would influence their manitou to give them buffaloes and a good hunt. Jan. 27th. soon after midnight, we were disturbed by the buffaloes passing close to our encampment: we rose early, and arrived at Qu'appelle about three o'clock. Nearly about the same time, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... he said, slowly, 'we call it the Great Manitou, because it kin do pretty well what it chooses; but in Europe, I am thinking of calling it the Martin Conway or the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... staying for dinner. He said that his wife accused him of marked discourtesy, but that, after the call of his neighbor, he had felt restless until I got away. I never met General Jackson before the war, nor during it, but have met him since at his very comfortable summer home at Manitou Springs, Colorado. I reminded him of the above incident, and this drew from him the response that he was thankful now he had not captured me. I certainly was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... man in the estimation of his tribe, for, besides being possessed of qualities which are highly esteemed among all savages—such as courage, strength, agility, and the like—he was a deep thinker, and held speculative views in regard to the Great Manitou (God), as well as the ordinary affairs of life, which perplexed even the oldest men of his tribe, and induced the younger men to look on him as a ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... were soon assembled and deliberating as to the manner in which they should receive the Manitou or Supreme Being on his arrival. Every measure was taken to be well provided with plenty of meat for a sacrifice, the women were desired to prepare the best victuals, all the idols were examined and put ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... like that to be found in 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a period when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The Lebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre, except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay Company's post at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... distant many minutes' walk to the village when they caught sight of Pochins, a medicine man famous among many tribes for his powerful manitou, his guardian spirit, which enabled him to communicate with the manitous ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... tell me, how can I make manifest to you that these things shall be as I say? Shall I beg of the Manitou, the Great Spirit, to give to you a sign that He approves of the words his servant speaketh, and that these things ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... Sacred temples for his worship, chose a "high place," and the sod Of the consecrated mountain was made holy by the rites Of footsore and weary pilgrims who had sought the sacred heights, So instinctively the red-men, roaming o'er the boundless main, Looked for their Manitou above the low level of the plain; Sought and found him on the summit of the green wave's swelling crest Rising upward like a mountain, in the valley ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... opinions on such a subject as to what constitutes the morality of magic. The old Shaman or Manitou regarded witchcraft as wicked. The Roman Catholic has taught the Indian that all sorceries and spells except his own are of the devil. Hence it came that I got from two Passamaquoddy Indians, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... salad dressing like that—and the whole town knows that was the price—the vaunted town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, with its old furniture and new culture, which Priscilla spoke of in such repressed ecstasy, is probably no better than Manitou, Colorado, where they get their Indian ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... could not harm me. I wore the French garb and my face was white, but I was something more universal than any race. I spoke all tongues. I was like the air which belonged to French and Indian alike. I was a manitou; I had been sent to lead the Indians back to the supremacy that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... religious conceptions and usages. In them the gods have names, and an ordained priesthood cares for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit, which is found among the ancient tribes of ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... replied the captive with exultation flashing in his eyes, 'Ah-kre-nay was in the midst of a nest of vultures—fifty warriors surrounded him; but the manitou blinded all their eyes, and the Assineboin ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... trees which they use for making cords, and bonds of a very firm texture and hold (the only ones indeed which they have), and instead of being buried in the earth was hung up to a large oak. The reason of this was that, as his favorite Manitou was the eagle, his spirit would be enabled more easily from such a situation to fly with ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... respect God and their consciences. I cannot now stop to rehearse to you the mode of proceeding I shall adopt; but it is all arranged in my own mind. It will be necessary to call the Deity the 'Great Spirit' or 'Manitou'—and to use many poetical images; but this can I do, on an emergency. Extempore preaching is far from agreeable to me, in general; nor do I look upon it, in this age of the world, as exactly canonical; nevertheless, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... longer permits even this doubt; thought, freed from every barrier, but conquered by its own successes, is forced to affirm what seems to it clearly contradictory and absurd. The savages say that the world is a great fetich watched over by a great manitou. For thirty centuries the poets, legislators, and sages of civilization, handing down from age to age the philosophic lamp, have written nothing more sublime than this profession of faith. And here, at ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... is invested with great power in her tribe. One of their ancient customs, well authenticated, was to honor the virtuous women of their tribe with sacred titles, investing them, in their blind belief, with power to call down the favor, in behalf of the people, of their Manitou, or Great Spirit. But every woman who aspired to this honor, was required upon a certain day in the year, to run the gauntlet of braves. This was sometimes a terrible scene. All the warriors of the tribe, arrayed in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... would easily suggest the idea of a massive serpent, and with this inaccessibility to the spot would produce a peculiar feeling of awe, as if it were a great Manitou which resided there, and so a sentiment of wonder and worship would gather around the locality. This would naturally give rise to a tradition or would lead the people to revive some familiar tradition and localize it. This having been done, the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... unostentatious aid from her medicine-man—ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of their temple. Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition of Listening Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's Manitou through the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her father's fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom, sometimes a decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian counselor of warriors, and at ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... drunk," says the young officer. Their paradise was rather a hell; for sometimes, when mad with brandy, they grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves. They were continually "making medicine," that is, consulting the Manitou, to whom they hung up offerings, sometimes a dead dog, and sometimes the belt-cloth which ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... with us on the condition of our feeding them, which was the reason that our young men parted in the summer, having almost consumed all our provisions. During the winter nothing worthy of mention passed, except that some savages made several juggles to know from our Manitou, who is their familiar spirit among them, if my father and my uncle would return in the spring; who answered them that they would not be missing there, and that they would bring with them all kinds of merchandise and of that which would avenge them ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... others. If they do not fear God according to the tenets of any one seminary, they shall learn to worship him upon the broad scale of nature. The Supreme Being does not reside in peculiar churches or communities; he is equally the great Manitou of the woods and of the plains; and even in the gloom, the obscurity of those very woods, his justice may be as well understood and felt as in the most sumptuous temples. Each worship with us, hath, you know, its peculiar political tendency; there it has none but to inspire gratitude and ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... pigwidgeon[obs3], will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart[obs3], banshee, loup-garou[Fr], lemures[obs3]; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk[obs3]; siren; satyr, faun; manito[obs3], manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a gayer fancy. Well— Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers, Lingering amid the bloomy waste he loves, Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone— Slender and small, his rounded cheek all brown And ruddy with the sunshine; let him come On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake, And part ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... forest. But he was still more delighted when he saw a cross planted in the midst of the place. The Indians had decorated it with a number of dressed deer-skins, red girdles, and bows and arrows, which they had hung upon it as an offering to the Great Manitou of the French,—a sight by which, as Marquette says, he was ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... do all these things, but he is far more likely to become excited, and finally bewitched by guide-books, and photographs, and talk all about him of this or that canyon, this or that pass, the Garden of the Gods, Manitou, the Seven Sisters' Falls, the grave of "H. H.;" and unless a fool or a philosopher, before he knows it to be in the full swing of sight-seeing, and becoming learned in the ways of burros, the "Ship of the Rockies," so indispensable, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... dignity—the guardian spirit of the region. No wonder the simple red man, as he roamed these wilds, should pause as he caught sight of this great stone face gazing off through the mountain openings into the distant valley, and worship it as the countenance of his Manitou. All are impressed with it, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... The bright scarlet leaves of the oak and maple pressed against the windows, giving them in the sunlight something of the appearance of stained glass; the rippling of the river was heard below, and round us, far, far away, stretched the forest. Here, where the great Manitou was once worshipped, a purer faith now reigns, and the allegiance of the people is more firmly established by "the sound of the church-going bells" than by the bayonets of our troops. These heaven-pointing spires are links between Canada and England; they remind the emigrant ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... him on the bank. He rolled down like a big stone to the water. He looked at me before he dived, and as we looked in each other's eyes I knew he was a Manito; but he is evil, and my father said, 'When an evil Manito comes to trouble you, you must ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com