their wandering manner of life, before they became christians, was
the same.

If I thought it necessary to suppose they were not natives of the
country, and that America was peopled later than the other quarters of
the world, I should imagine them the descendants of Tartars; as nothing
can be more easy than their passage from Asia, from which America is
probably not divided; or, if it is, by a very narrow channel. But I
leave this to those who are better informed, being a subject on which I
honestly confess my ignorance.

I have already observed, that they retain most of their antient
superstitions. I should particularize their belief in dreams, of which
folly even repeated disappointments cannot cure them: they have also an
unlimited faith in their _powawers_, or conjurers, of whom there
is one in every Indian village, who is at once physician, orator, and
divine, and who is consulted as an oracle on every occasion. As I
happened to smile at the recital a savage was making of a prophetic
dream, from which he assured us of the death of an English officer whom
I knew to be alive, "You Europeans," said he, "are the most
unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief in dreams,
and yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible."

Their general character is difficult to describe; made up of
contrary and even contradictory qualities, they are indolent, tranquil,
quiet, humane in peace; active, restless, cruel, ferocious in war:
courteous, attentive, hospitable, and even polite, when kindly treated;
haughty, stern, vindictive, when they are not; and their resentment is
the more to be dreaded, as they hold it a point of honor to dissemble
their sense of an injury till they find an opportunity to revenge it.