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On a morning in the latter part of October, Le Jeune embarked
with the Indians, twenty in all, men, women, and children. No other
Frenchman was of the party. Champlain bade him an anxious farewell,
and commended him to the care of his red associates, who had taken
charge of his store of biscuit, flour, corn, prunes, and turnips, to
which, in an evil hour, his friends had persuaded him to add a small
keg of wine. The canoes glided along the wooded shore of the Island
of Orleans, and the party landed, towards evening, on the small
island immediately below. Le Jeune was delighted with the spot, and
the wild beauties of the autumnal sunset.
His reflections, however, were soon interrupted. While the squaws
were setting up their bark lodges, and Mestigoit was shooting
wild-fowl for supper, Pierre returned to the canoes, tapped the keg
of wine, and soon fell into the mud, helplessly drunk. Revived by
the immersion, he next appeared at the camp, foaming at the mouth,
threw down the lodges, overset the kettle, and chased the shrieking
squaws into the woods. His brother Mestigoit rekindled the fire, and
slung the kettle anew; when Pierre, who meanwhile had been raving
like a madman along the shore, reeled in a fury to the spot to
repeat his former exploit. Mestigoit anticipated him, snatched the
kettle from the fire, and threw the scalding contents in his face.
"He was never so well washed before in his life," says Le Jeune; "he
lost all the skin of his face and breast. Would to God his heart had
changed also!"1 He roared in his frenzy
for a hatchet to kill the missionary, who therefore thought it
prudent to spend the night in the neighboring woods. Here he
stretched himself on the earth, while a charitable squaw covered him
with a sheet of birch-bark. "Though my bed," he writes, "had not
been made up since the creation of the world, it was not hard enough
to prevent me from sleeping."
Such was his initiation into Indian winter life. Passing over
numerous adventures by water and land, we find the party, on the
twelfth of November, leaving their canoes on an island, and wading
ashore at low tide over the flats to the southern bank of the St.
Lawrence. As two other bands had joined them, their number was
increased to forty-five persons. Now, leaving the river behind, they
entered those savage highlands whence issue the springs of the St.
John,--a wilderness of rugged mountain-ranges, clad in dense,
continuous forests, with no human tenant but this troop of miserable
rovers, and here and there some kindred band, as miserable as they.
Winter had set in, and already dead Nature was sheeted in funereal
white. Lakes and ponds were frozen, rivulets sealed up, torrents
encased with stalactites of ice; the black rocks and the black
trunks of the pine-trees were beplastered with snow, and its heavy
masses crushed the dull green boughs into the drifts beneath. The
forest was silent as the grave.
Through this desolation the long file of Indians made its way, all
on snow-shoes, each man, woman, and child bending under a heavy
load, or dragging a sledge, narrow, but of prodigious length. They
carried their whole wealth with them, on their backs or on their
sledges,--kettles, axes, hides of meat, if such they had, and huge
rolls of birch-bark for covering their wigwams. The Jesuit was
loaded like the rest. The dogs alone floundered through the drifts
unburdened. There was neither path nor level ground. Descending,
climbing, stooping beneath half-fallen trees, clambering over piles
of prostrate trunks, struggling through matted cedar-swamps,
threading chill ravines, and crossing streams no longer visible,
they toiled on till the day began to decline, then stopped to
encamp.2 Burdens were thrown down, and
sledges unladen. The squaws, with knives and hatchets, cut long
poles of birch and spruce saplings; while the men, with snow-shoes
for shovels, cleared a round or square space in the snow, which
formed an upright wall three or four feet high, inclosing the area
of the wigwam. On one side, a passage was cut for an entrance, and
the poles were planted around the top of the wall of snow, sloping
and converging. On these poles were spread the sheets of birch-bark;
a bear-skin was hung in the passage-way for a door; the bare ground
within and the surrounding snow were covered with spruce boughs; and
the work was done.
This usually occupied about three hours, during which Le Jeune,
spent with travel, and weakened by precarious and unaccustomed fare,
had the choice of shivering in idleness, or taking part in a labor
which fatigued, without warming, his exhausted frame. The sorcerer's
wife was in far worse case. Though in the extremity of a mortal
sickness, they left her lying in the snow till the wigwam was
made,--without a word, on her part, of remonstrance or complaint. Le
Jeune, to the great ire of her husband, sometimes spent the interval
in trying to convert her; but she proved intractable, and soon died
unbaptized.
Thus lodged, they remained so long as game could be found within a
circuit of ten or twelve miles, and then, subsistence failing,
removed to another spot. Early in the winter, they hunted the beaver
and the Canada porcupine; and, later, in the season of deep snows,
chased the moose and the caribou.
Put aside the bear-skin, and enter the hut. Here, in a space some
thirteen feet square, were packed nineteen savages, men, women, and
children, with their dogs, crouched, squatted, coiled like
hedgehogs, or lying on their backs, with knees drawn up
perpendicularly to keep their feet out of the fire. Le Jeune, always
methodical, arranges the grievances inseparable from these rough
quarters under four chief heads,--Cold, Heat, Smoke, and Dogs. The
bark covering was full of crevices, through which the icy blasts
streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once
window and chimney, was so large, that, as he lay, he could watch
the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst,
fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he
had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the
crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these
evils were light, when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke.
During a snow-storm, and often at other times, the wigwam was filled
with fumes so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates were
forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing through mouths in
contact with the cold earth. Their throats and nostrils felt as if
on fire; their scorched eyes streamed with tears; and when Le Jeune
tried to read, the letters of his breviary seemed printed in blood.
The dogs were not an unmixed evil, for, by sleeping on and around
him, they kept him warm at night; but, as an offset to this good
service, they walked, ran, and jumped over him as he lay, snatched
the food from his birchen dish, or, in a mad rush at some bone or
discarded morsel, now and then overset both dish and missionary.
Sometimes of an evening he would leave the filthy den, to read his
breviary in peace by the light of the moon. In the forest around
sounded the sharp crack of frost-riven trees; and from the horizon
to the zenith shot up the silent meteors of the northern lights, in
whose fitful flashings the awe-struck Indians beheld the dancing of
the spirits of the dead. The cold gnawed him to the bone; and, his
devotions over, he turned back shivering. The illumined hut, from
many a chink and crevice, shot forth into the gloom long streams of
light athwart the twisted boughs. He stooped and entered. All within
glowed red and fiery around the blazing pine-knots where, like
brutes in their kennel, were gathered the savage crew. He stepped to
his place, over recumbent bodies and leggined and moccasined limbs,
and seated himself on the carpet of spruce boughs. Here a
tribulation awaited him, the crowning misery of his
winter-quarters,--worse, as he declares, than cold, heat, and dogs.
Of the three brothers who had invited him to join the party, one, we
have seen, was the hunter, Mestigoit; another, the sorcerer; and the
third, Pierre, whom, by reason of his falling away from the Faith,
Le Jeune always mentions as the Apostate. He was a weak-minded young
Indian, wholly under the influence of his brother, the sorcerer,
who, if not more vicious, was far more resolute and wily. From the
antagonism of their respective professions, the sorcerer hated the
priest, who lost no opportunity of denouncing his incantations, and
who ridiculed his perpetual singing and drumming as puerility and
folly. The former, being an indifferent hunter, and disabled by a
disease which he had contracted, depended for subsistence on his
credit as a magician; and, in undermining it, Le Jeune not only
outraged his pride, but threatened his daily bread.3
He used every device to retort ridicule on his rival. At the outset,
he had proffered his aid to Le Jeune in his study of the Algonquin;
and, like the Indian practical jokers of Acadia in the case of
Father Biard, [See "Pioneers of France," 268.] palmed off upon him
the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things
spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to
explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he
was interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws.
And now, as Le Jeune took his place in the circle, the sorcerer bent
upon him his malignant eyes, and began that course of rude bantering
which filled to overflowing the cup of the Jesuit's woes. All took
their cue from him, and made their afflicted guest the butt of their
inane witticisms. "Look at him! His face is like a dog's!"--"His
head is like a pumpkin!"--"He has a beard like a rabbit's!" The
missionary bore in silence these and countless similar attacks;
indeed, so sorely was he harassed, that, lest he should exasperate
his tormentor, he sometimes passed whole days without uttering a
word.4
Le Jeune, a man of excellent observation, already knew his red
associates well enough to understand that their rudeness did not of
necessity imply ill-will. The rest of the party, in their turn fared
no better. They rallied and bantered each other incessantly, with as
little forbearance, and as little malice, as a troop of unbridled
schoolboys.5 No one took offence. To
have done so would have been to bring upon one's self genuine
contumely. This motley household was a model of harmony. True, they
showed no tenderness or consideration towards the sick and disabled;
but for the rest, each shared with all in weal or woe: the famine of
one was the famine of the whole, and the smallest portion of food
was distributed in fair and equal partition. Upbraidings and
complaints were unheard; they bore each other's foibles with
wondrous equanimity; and while persecuting Le Jeune with constant
importunity for tobacco, and for everything else he had, they never
begged among themselves.
When the fire burned well and food was abundant, their conversation,
such as it was, was incessant. They used no oaths, for their
language supplied none,--doubtless because their mythology had no
beings sufficiently distinct to swear by. Their expletives were foul
words, of which they had a superabundance, and which men, women, and
children alike used with a frequency and hardihood that amazed and
scandalized the priest.6 Nor was he
better pleased with their postures, in which they consulted nothing
but their ease. Thus, of an evening when the wigwam was heated to
suffocation, the sorcerer, in the closest possible approach to
nudity, lay on his back, with his right knee planted upright and his
left leg crossed on it, discoursing volubly to the company, who, on
their part, listened in postures scarcely less remote from decency.
There was one point touching which Le Jeune and his Jesuit brethren
had as yet been unable to solve their doubts. Were the Indian
sorcerers mere impostors, or were they in actual league with the
Devil? That the fiends who possess this land of darkness make their
power felt by action direct and potential upon the persons of its
wretched inhabitants there is, argues Le Jeune, good reason to
conclude; since it is a matter of grave notoriety, that the fiends
who infest Brazil are accustomed cruelly to beat and otherwise
torment the natives of that country, as many travellers attest. "A
Frenchman worthy of credit," pursues the Father, "has told me that
he has heard with his own ears the voice of the Demon and the sound
of the blows which he discharges upon these his miserable slaves;
and in reference to this a very remarkable fact has been reported to
me, namely, that, when a Catholic approaches, the Devil takes flight
and beats these wretches no longer, but that in presence of a
Huguenot he does not stop beating them."
| ["Surquoy on me rapporte vne chose tres remarquable,
c'est que le Diable s'enfuit, et ne frappe point ou
cesse de frapper ces miserables, quand vn Catholique
entre en leur compagnie, et qu'il ne laisse point de les
battre en la presence d'vn Huguenot: d'où vient qu'vn
iour se voyans battus en la compagnie d'vn certain
François, ils luy dirent: Nous nous estonnons qua le
diable nous batte, toy estant auec nous, veu qu'il
n'oseroit le faire quand tes compagnons sont presents.
Luy se douta incontinent que cela pouuoit prouenir de sa
religion (car il estoit Caluiniste); s'addressant donc à
Dieu, il luy promit de se faire Catholique si le diable
cessoit de battre ces pauures peuples en sa presence. Le
vœu fait, iamais plus aucun Demon ne molesta Ameriquain
en sa compagnie, d'où vient qu'il se fit Catholique,
selon la promesse qu'il en auoit faicte. Mais retournons
à nostre discours."--Relation, 1634, 22.] |
Thus prone to believe in the immediate presence of the nether
powers, Le Jeune watched the sorcerer with an eye prepared to
discover in his conjurations the signs of a genuine diabolic agency.
His observations, however, led him to a different result; and he
could detect in his rival nothing but a vile compound of impostor
and dupe. The sorcerer believed in the efficacy of his own magic,
and was continually singing and beating his drum to cure the disease
from which he was suffering. Towards the close of the winter, Le
Jeune fell sick, and, in his pain and weakness, nearly succumbed
under the nocturnal uproar of the sorcerer, who, hour after hour,
sang and drummed without mercy,--sometimes yelling at the top of his
throat, then hissing like a serpent, then striking his drum on the
ground as if in a frenzy, then leaping up, raving about the wigwam,
and calling on the women and children to join him in singing. Now
ensued a hideous din; for every throat was strained to the utmost,
and all were beating with sticks or fists on the bark of the hut to
increase the noise, with the charitable object of aiding the
sorcerer to conjure down his malady, or drive away the evil spirit
that caused it.
He had an enemy, a rival sorcerer, whom he charged with having
caused by charms the disease that afflicted him. He therefore
announced that he should kill him. As the rival dwelt at Gaspé, a
hundred leagues off, the present execution of the threat might
appear difficult; but distance was no bar to the vengeance of the
sorcerer. Ordering all the children and all but one of the women to
leave the wigwam, he seated himself, with the woman who remained, on
the ground in the centre, while the men of the party, together with
those from other wigwams in the neighborhood, sat in a ring around.
Mestigoit, the sorcerer's brother, then brought in the charm,
consisting of a few small pieces of wood, some arrow-heads, a broken
knife, and an iron hook, which he wrapped in a piece of hide. The
woman next rose, and walked around the hut, behind the company.
Mestigoit and the sorcerer now dug a large hole with two pointed
stakes, the whole assembly singing, drumming, and howling meanwhile
with a deafening uproar. The hole made, the charm, wrapped in the
hide, was thrown into it. Pierre, the Apostate, then brought a sword
and a knife to the sorcerer, who, seizing them, leaped into the
hole, and, with furious gesticulation, hacked and stabbed at the
charm, yelling with the whole force of his lungs. At length he
ceased, displayed the knife and sword stained with blood, proclaimed
that he had mortally wounded his enemy, and demanded if none present
had heard his death-cry. The assembly, more occupied in making
noises than in listening for them, gave no reply, till at length two
young men declared that they had heard a faint scream, as if from a
great distance; whereat a shout of gratulation and triumph rose from
all the company.
| ["Le magicien tout glorieux dit que son homme est
frappé, qu'il mourra bien tost, demande si on n'a point
entendu ses cris: tout le monde dit que non, horsmis
deux ieunes hommes ses parens, qui disent auoir ouy des
plaintes fort sourdes, et comme de loing. O qu'ils le
firent aise! Se tournant vers moy, il se mit à rire,
disant: Voyez cette robe noire, qui nous vient dire
qu'il ne faut tuer personne. Comme ie regardois
attentiuement l'espée et le poignard, il me les fit
presenter: Regarde, dit-il, qu'est cela? C'est du sang,
repartis-ie. De qui? De quelque Orignac ou d'autre
animal. Ils se mocquerent de moy, disants que c'estoit
du sang de ce Sorcier de Gaspé. Comment, dis-je, il est
à plus de cent lieuës d'icy? Il est vray, font-ils, mais
c'est le Manitou, c'est à dire le Diable, qui apporte
son sang pardessous la terre."--Relation, 1634, 21.] |
There was a young prophet, or diviner, in one of the neighboring
huts, of whom the sorcerer took counsel as to the prospect of his
restoration to health. The divining-lodge was formed, in this
instance, of five or six upright posts planted in a circle and
covered with a blanket. The prophet ensconced himself within; and
after a long interval of singing, the spirits declared their
presence by their usual squeaking utterances from the recesses of
the mystic tabernacle. Their responses were not unfavorable; and the
sorcerer drew much consolation from the invocations of his brother
impostor. [See Introduction. Also, "Pioneers of France," 315.]
Besides his incessant endeavors to annoy Le Jeune, the sorcerer now
and then tried to frighten him. On one occasion, when a period of
starvation had been followed by a successful hunt, the whole party
assembled for one of the gluttonous feasts usual with them at such
times. While the guests sat expectant, and the squaws were about to
ladle out the banquet, the sorcerer suddenly leaped up, exclaiming,
that he had lost his senses, and that knives and hatchets must be
kept out of his way, as he had a mind to kill somebody. Then,
rolling his eyes towards Le Jeune, he began a series of frantic
gestures and outcries,--then stopped abruptly and stared into
vacancy, silent and motionless,--then resumed his former clamor,
raged in and out of the hut, and, seizing some of its supporting
poles, broke them, as if in an uncontrollable frenzy. The
missionary, though alarmed, sat reading his breviary as before.
When, however, on the next morning, the sorcerer began again to play
the maniac, the thought occurred to him, that some stroke of fever
might in truth have touched his brain. Accordingly, he approached
him and felt his pulse, which he found, in his own words, "as cool
as a fish." The pretended madman looked at him with astonishment,
and, giving over the attempt to frighten him, presently returned to
his senses.
| [The Indians, it is well known, ascribe mysterious
and supernatural powers to the insane, and respect them
accordingly. The Neutral Nation (see Introduction, "The
Huron-Iroquois Family" (p. xliv)) was full of pretended
madmen, who raved about the villages, throwing
firebrands, and making other displays of frenzy.] |
Le Jeune, robbed of his sleep by the ceaseless thumping of the
sorcerer's drum and the monotonous cadence of his medicine-songs,
improved the time in attempts to convert him. "I began," he says,
"by evincing a great love for him, and by praises, which I threw to
him as a bait whereby I might catch him in the net of truth."7
But the Indian, though pleased with the Father's flatteries, was
neither caught nor conciliated.
Nowhere was his magic in more requisition than in procuring a
successful chase to the hunters,--a point of vital interest, since
on it hung the lives of the whole party. They often, however,
returned empty-handed; and, for one, two, or three successive days,
no other food could be had than the bark of trees or scraps of
leather. So long as tobacco lasted, they found solace in their
pipes, which seldom left their lips. "Unhappy infidels," writes Le
Jeune, "who spend their lives in smoke, and their eternity in
flames!"
As Christmas approached, their condition grew desperate. Beavers and
porcupines were scarce, and the snow was not deep enough for hunting
the moose. Night and day the medicine-drums and medicine-songs
resounded from the wigwams, mingled with the wail of starving
children. The hunters grew weak and emaciated; and, as after a
forlorn march the wanderers encamped once more in the lifeless
forest, the priest remembered that it was the eve of Christmas. "The
Lord gave us for our supper a porcupine, large as a sucking pig, and
also a rabbit. It was not much, it is true, for eighteen or nineteen
persons; but the Holy Virgin and St. Joseph, her glorious spouse,
were not so well treated, on this very day, in the stable of
Bethlehem."
| ["Pour nostre souper, N. S. nous donna vn Porc-espic
gros comme vn cochon de lait, et vn liéure; c'estoit peu
pour dix-huit ou vingt personnes que nous estions, il
est vray, mais la saincte Vierge et son glorieux Espoux
sainct Ioseph ne furent pas si bien traictez à mesme
iour dans l'estable de Bethleem."--Relation, 1634, 74.] |
On Christmas Day, the despairing hunters, again unsuccessful,
came to pray succor from Le Jeune. Even the Apostate had become
tractable, and the famished sorcerer was ready to try the efficacy
of an appeal to the deity of his rival. A bright hope possessed the
missionary. He composed two prayers, which, with the aid of the
repentant Pierre, he translated into Algonquin. Then he hung against
the side of the hut a napkin which he had brought with him, and
against the napkin a crucifix and a reliquary, and, this done,
caused all the Indians to kneel before them, with hands raised and
clasped. He now read one of the prayers, and required the Indians to
repeat the other after him, promising to renounce their
superstitions, and obey Christ, whose image they saw before them, if
he would give them food and save them from perishing. The pledge
given, he dismissed the hunters with a benediction. At night they
returned with game enough to relieve the immediate necessity. All
was hilarity. The kettles were slung, and the feasters assembled. Le
Jeune rose to speak, when Pierre, who, having killed nothing, was in
ill humor, said, with a laugh, that the crucifix and the prayer had
nothing to do with their good luck; while the sorcerer, his jealousy
reviving as he saw his hunger about to be appeased, called out to
the missionary, "Hold your tongue! You have no sense!" As usual, all
took their cue from him. They fell to their repast with ravenous
jubilation, and the disappointed priest sat dejected and silent.
Repeatedly, before the spring, they were thus threatened with
starvation. Nor was their case exceptional. It was the ordinary
winter life of all those Northern tribes who did not till the soil,
but lived by hunting and fishing alone. The desertion or the killing
of the aged, sick, and disabled, occasional cannibalism, and
frequent death from famine, were natural incidents of an existence
which, during half the year, was but a desperate pursuit of the mere
necessaries of life under the worst conditions of hardship,
suffering, and debasement.
At the beginning of April, after roaming for five months among
forests and mountains, the party made their last march, regained the
bank of the St. Lawrence, and waded to the island where they had
hidden their canoes. Le Jeune was exhausted and sick, and Mestigoit
offered to carry him in his canoe to Quebec. This Indian was by far
the best of the three brothers, and both Pierre and the sorcerer
looked to him for support. He was strong, active, and daring, a
skilful hunter, and a dexterous canoeman. Le Jeune gladly accepted
his offer; embarked with him and Pierre on the dreary and
tempestuous river; and, after a voyage full of hardship, during
which the canoe narrowly escaped being ground to atoms among the
floating ice, landed on the Island of Orleans, six miles from
Quebec. The afternoon was stormy and dark, and the river was covered
with ice, sweeping by with the tide. They were forced to encamp. At
midnight, the moon had risen, the river was comparatively
unencumbered, and they embarked once more. The wind increased, and
the waves tossed furiously. Nothing saved them but the skill and
courage of Mestigoit. At length they could see the rock of Quebec
towering through the gloom, but piles of ice lined the shore, while
floating masses were drifting down on the angry current. The Indian
watched his moment, shot his canoe through them, gained the fixed
ice, leaped out, and shouted to his companions to follow. Pierre
scrambled up, but the ice was six feet out of the water, and Le
Jeune's agility failed him. He saved himself by clutching the ankle
of Mestigoit, by whose aid he gained a firm foothold at the top,
and, for a moment, the three voyagers, aghast at the narrowness of
their escape, stood gazing at each other in silence.
It was three o'clock in the morning when Le Jeune knocked at the
door of his rude little convent on the St. Charles; and the Fathers,
springing in joyful haste from their slumbers, embraced their long
absent Superior with ejaculations of praise and benediction.
1 "Iamais il ne fut si bien laué, il changea de
peau en la face et en tout l'estomach: pleust à Dieu que son ame
eust changé aussi bien que son corps!"--Relation, 1634, 59.
2 "S'il arriuoit quelque dégel, ô Dieu quelle
peine! Il me sembloit que ie marchois sur vn chemin de verre qui se
cassoit à tous coups soubs mes pieds: la neige congelée venant à
s'amollir, tomboit et s'enfonçoit par esquarres ou grandes pieces,
et nous en auions bien souuent iusques aux genoux, quelquefois
iusqu'à la ceinture. Que s'il y auoit de la peine à tomber, il y en
auoit encor plus à se retirer: car nos raquettes se chargeoient de
neiges et se rendoient si pesantes, que quand vous veniez à les
retirer il vous sembloit qu'on vous tiroit les iambes pour vous
démembrer. I'en ay veu qui glissoient tellement soubs des souches
enseuelies soubs la neige, qu'ils ne pouuoient tirer ny iambes ny
raquettes sans secours: or figurez vous maintenant vne personne
chargée comme vn mulet, et iugez si la vie des Sauuages est douce."--Relation,
1634, 67.
3 "Ie ne laissois perdre aucune occasion de le
conuaincre de niaiserie et de puerilité, mettant au iour
l'impertinence de ses superstitions: or c'estoit luy arracher l'ame
du corps par violence: car comme il ne sçauroit plus chasser, il
fait plus que iamais du Prophete et du Magicien pour conseruer son
credit, et pour auoir les bons morceaux; si bien qu'esbranlant son
authorité qui se va perdant tous les iours, ie le touchois à la
prunelle de l'œil."--Relation, 1634, 56.
4 Relation, 1634, 207 (Cramoisy). "Ils me
chargeoient incessament de mille brocards & de mille injures; je me
suis veu en tel estat, que pour ne les aigrir, je passois les jours
entiers sans ouvrir la bouche." Here follows the abuse, in the
original Indian, with French translations. Le Jeune's account of his
experiences is singularly graphic. The following is his summary of
his annoyances:--
"Or ce miserable homme" (the sorcerer), "& la fumée m'ont esté les
deux plus grands tourmens que i'aye enduré parmy ces Barbares: ny le
froid, ny le chaud, ny l'incommodité des chiens, ny coucher à l'air,
ny dormir sur un lict de terre, ny la posture qu'il faut tousiours
tenir dans leurs cabanes, se ramassans en peloton, ou se couchans,
ou s'asseans sans siege & sans mattelas, ny la faim, ny la soif, ny
la pauureté & saleté de leur boucan, ny la maladie, tout cela ne m'a
semblé que ieu à comparaison de la fumée & de la malice du Sorcier."--Relation,
1634, 201 (Cramoisy).
5 "Leur vie se passe à manger, à ire, et à
railler les vns des autres, et de tous les peuples qu'ils
cognoissent; ils n'ont rien de serieux, sinon par fois l'exterieur,
faisans parmy nous les graues et les retenus, mais entr'eux sont de
vrais badins, de vrais enfans, qui ne demandent qu'à rire."--Relation,
1634, 30.
6 "Aussi leur disois-je par fois, que si les
pourceaux et les chiens sçauoient parler, ils tiendroient leur
langage. . . . Les filles et les ieunes femmes sont à l'exterieur
tres honnestement couuertes, mais entre elles leurs discours sont
puants, comme des cloaques."--Relation, 1634, 32.--The social
manners of remote tribes of the present time correspond perfectly
with Le Jeune's account of those of the Montagnais.
7 "Ie commençay par vn témoignage de grand amour
en son endroit, et par des loüanges que ie luy iettay comme vne
amorce pour le prendre dans les filets de la verité. Ie luy fis
entendre que si vn esprit, capable des choses grandes comme le sien,
cognoissoit Dieu, que tous les Sauuages induis par son exemple le
voudroient aussi cognoistre."--Relation, 1634, 71.
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
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