"The Ojibway call him Mishawabus--Great Rabbit; the Menomini call him
Manabush. He had other names also. One tribe called him Jouskeha, another
Messou, another Manabozho, and another Hiawatha. His father was
Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. There was an old woman named Nokomis, the
granddaughter of the moon, who had a daughter whose name was Wenonah. She
was the mother of twin boys, but at their birth she died and so did one of
the boys. Nokomis wrapped the living child in soft dry grass, laid it on
the ground at one end of her wigwam, and placed over it a great wooden bowl
to protect it from harm. Then in her grief she took up the body of Wenonah,
her daughter, and buried it, with the dead child, at some distance from her
wigwam. When she returned from thus laying away her dead she sat down in
her wigwam, and for four days mourned her loss. At the end of that time she
heard a slight noise in her wigwam, which she soon found came from that
wooden bowl. Then as the bowl moved she suddenly remembered the living
child, which she had forgotten in her great grief at the loss of its
mother. When she removed the bowl from its place, instead of there being
the baby boy she had placed there she beheld a little white rabbit, and on
taking it up she said, 'O my dear little rabbit, my Manabush!' Nokomis took
great care of it and it grew very rapidly.

"One day, when Manabush was quite large, it sat up on its haunches and
hopped slowly across the floor of the wigwam, and caused the earth to
tremble.

"When the bad Windegoos, or evil spirits who dwell underground, felt the
earth to thus tremble they said, 'What is the matter? What has happened? A
great Munedoo (spirit) is born somewhere.' And at once they began to devise
means by which they might kill Manabush, or Nanahboozhoo, as he was now
called, when they should find him.