The name of the place is pronounced Mish-i-nim-auk-in-ong, by the Indians, The term mishi, as heard in mishipishiu, panther, and mishigenabik, a gigantic serpent of fabled notoriety, signifies great; nim, appears to be derived from nimi, to dance, and auk from autig, tree or standing object; ong is the common termination for locality, the vowels i (second and fifth syllable) being brought into the compound word as connectives.  In a language which separates all matter, the whole creation, in fact, into two classes of nouns—­deemed animates and inanimates—­the distinctions of gender are lost, so far as the laws of syntax are involved.  It is necessary only to speak of objects as possessing and wanting vitality, to communicate to them the property named, whether it in reality possesses it in nature or not.  For this purpose words which lack it in their penultimate syllables, take the consonant n to make their plurals for inanimates, and g for animates.  By this simple method, the whole inanimate creation—­woods, trees, rocks, clouds, waters, &c.—­is clothed at will with life, or the opposite class of objects are shorn of it, which enables the speaker, whose mind is imbued with his peculiar mythology and necromancy, to create a spiritual world around him.  In this creation it is known to all who have investigated the subject, that the Indian mind has exercised its ingenuity, by creating classes and species of spirits, of all imaginable kinds, which, to his fancied eye, fill all surrounding space.  If he be skilled in the magic rites of the sacred meda, or jesukewin, it is but to call on these spirits, and his necromantic behest is at its highest point of energy.

In reference to this spiritual creation, the word mish signifies great, or rather big, but as adjectives are, like substantives, transitive, the term requires a transitive objective sign, to mark the thing or person that is big, hence the term michi signifies big spirit, or “fairy”—­for it is a kind of pukwudjininne, and not of monetoes that are described.  The terms nim and auk, dance and tree, and the local ong, are introduced to describe the particular locality and circumstances of the mythologic dances.  The true meaning of the phrase, therefore, appears to be, Place of the Dancing Spirits.  The popular etymology that derives the word from Big Turtle, is still farther back in the chain of etymology, and is founded on the fact that the michi are turtle spirits.  This is the result of my inquiries with the best interpreters of the language.  The French, to whom we owe the original orthography, used ch for sh, interchanged n for l in the third syllable, and modified the syllables auk and ong into the sounds of ack—­which are, I believe, general rules founded on the organs of utterance, in their adoption by that nation of Indian words.  Hence Michilimackinack.  The word has, in Indian, a plural inflective in oag, which the French threw away.  The Iroquois, who extended their incursions here, called it Ti-e-don-de-ro-ga.