F THE

SAVAGES of NORTH-AMERICA,

EXTRACTED FROM

A LETTER of the Father CHARLEVOIX,

TO

A LADY of Distinction,

To give you, Madam, a summary sketch of the character of the savages in
this country, I am to observe to you, that under a savage appearance,
with manners and customs, that favor entirely of barbarism, may be found
a society exempt from almost all the faults that so often vitiate the
happiness of ours.

They appear to be without passion, but they are in cold blood, and
sometimes even from principle, all that the most violent and most
unbridled passion can inspire into those, who no longer listen to
reason.

They seem to lead the most miserable of lives, and they are, perhaps,
the only happy of the earth. At least those of them are still so,
amongst whom the knowledge of those objects that disturb and seduce us,
has not yet penetrated, or awakened in them, those pernicious desires
which their ignorance kept happily dormant: it has not, however,
hitherto made great ravages amongst them.

There may be perceived a mixture in them of the most ferocious and the
most gentle manners; of the faults reproachable to the carnivorous
beasts, with those virtues and qualities of the head and heart, that do
the most honor to human-kind.

One would, at first, imagine, that they had no sort of form of
government, that they knew no laws nor subordination, and that living in
an entire independence, they suffered themselves to be entirely guided
by chance, or by the most wild, untamed caprice: yet they enjoy almost
all the advantages, which a well-regulated authority can procure to the
most civilized nations. Born free and independent, they hold in horror
the very shadow of despotic power; but they rarely swerve from certain
principles and customs, founded upon good-sense, which stand them in the
stead of laws, and supplement in some sort to their want of legal
authority. All constraint mocks them; but reason alone hold them in a
kind of subordination, which, for its being voluntary, does not the less
answer the proposed end.

A man, whom they should greatly esteem, would find them tractable and
ductile enough, and might very nearly make them do any thing he had a
mind they should; but it is not easy to gain their esteem to such a
point. They grant it only to merit, and that merit a very superior one,
of which they are as good judges as those, who, amongst us, value
themselves the most upon being so. They are,