but I thought myself secure in the consideration of her engagements, a
defence however which I found grow weaker every day.

But to my savages: other nations talk of liberty, they possess it;
nothing can be more astonishing than to see a little village of about
thirty or forty families, the small remains of the Hurons, almost
exterminated by long and continual war with the Iroquoise, preserve
their independence in the midst of an European colony consisting of
seventy thousand inhabitants; yet the fact is true of the savages of
Lorette; they assert and they maintain that independence with a spirit
truly noble. One of our company having said something which an Indian
understood as a supposition that they had been _subjects_ of
France, his eyes struck fire, he stop'd him abruptly, contrary to
their respectful and sensible custom of never interrupting the person
who speaks, "You mistake, brother," said he; "we are subjects to no
prince; a savage is free all over the world." And he spoke only truth;
they are not only free as a people, but every individual is perfectly
so. Lord of himself, at once subject and master, a savage knows no
superior, a circumstance which has a striking effect on his behaviour;
unawed by rank or riches, distinctions unknown amongst his own nation,
he would enter as unconcerned, would possess all his powers as freely
in the palace of an oriental monarch, as in the cottage of the meanest
peasant: 'tis the species, 'tis man, 'tis his equal he respects,
without regarding the gaudy trappings, the accidental advantages, to
which polished nations pay homage.

I have taken some pains to develop their present, as well as past,
religious sentiments, because the Jesuit missionaries have boasted so
much of their conversion; and find they have rather engrafted a few of
the most plain and simple truths of Christianity on their ancient