I wanted to do one more follow up informational item on that Hollow Earth story I wrote yesterday. This one is about the name of the ship that William Windigo rides around on, The Manitou.

This entry from Pantheon.org has a good basic description of what I understood about the term “manitou” before I wrote the story.

Manitou, The Great Spirit, is an Algonquin term, often erroneously applied as spirit monster. Manitou combines the meanings of Spirit, mystery, magic, and generally is applied to the manifestation of some form of power that is not readily understood or coming from elsewhere.

But then, after I wrote it, I found a really excellent short article about what Native American’s in Illinois used the term manitou to describe. It’s short, so I’m gonna reproduce the whole thing here.

Each [person] has his own god, which they call their Manitou. This is a serpent, a bird, or other similar thing, of which they have dreamed while sleeping, and in which they place all their confidence for the success of their war, their fishing, and their hunting. (Jacques Marquette, 1674)

Illinois men and women interacted with the supreme deity, Kitchesmanetoa, by way of personal spirits called manitous. Beginning at the age of adolescence, young people sought to engage manitous by going on vision quests in the wilderness. During such a quest, the person went without food and water for up to seven days as they strove to envision a manitou in a dream. A manitou could take the form of a bison, bear, wolf, mountain lion, bobcat, deer, bird, or some other animal. Warrior manitous were species of birds, including falcons, crows, ducks, swallows, and parakeets. People displayed the skin or feathers of their manitou in their lodge, and they appealed to these representations for power and guidance in hunting, fishing, and warfare.

Along this same train of thought, I also came across a decent article about Native American religion. I’m sure there are tons of these out there, but this is just one I happened across. Well, here’s another one, but I haven’t read this. And here is the entry on Native American Spirituality from ReligiousTolerance.org

Oh, and on a side note, I also discovered that the name “Harold” (who is one of the main characters in the story that inspired this post) means “leader of the army,” which seems somehow appropriate, I think. Hm, oddly enough, “Chad” (Harold’s friend in the story) means “warlike.” William (the billionaire old guy) means “resolute guardian” or “valiant protector”. Walter (the helicopter dude) means “powerful warrior” or “ruler of the army”. That’s really fucking strange that every single character name was chosen by me more or less at random, and they all mean something very similar. Eerie.

1. Behind the Name (etymology and history of first names)
2. Baby Names (from Parenthood.com)