As long ago as 1724, the Jesuit Father Lafitau wrote of the Indians, and stated that to his own experience he added that of Father Garnier, who had lived sixty years among them: "They are possessed," says he, "of sound judgment, lively imagination, ready conception, and wonderful memory. All the tribes retain at least some trace of an ancient religion, handed down to them from their ancestors, and a form of government. They reflect justly upon their affairs, and better than the mass of the people among ourselves. They prosecute their ends by sure means; they evince a degree of coolness and composure which would exceed our patience; they never permit themselves to indulge in passion, but always, from a sense of honor and greatness of soul, appear masters of themselves. They are high-minded and proud; possess a courage equal to every trial, an intrepid valor, the most heroic constancy under torments, and an equanimity which neither misfortunes nor reverses can shake. Toward each other they behave with a natural politeness and attention, entertaining a high respect for the aged, and a consideration for their equals which appears scarcely reconcilable with that freedom and independence of which they are so jealous. They make few professions of kindness, but yet are affable and generous. Toward strangers and the unfortunate they exercise a degree of hospitality and charity which might put the inhabitants of Europe to the blush."
Father Lafitau does not disguise the fact that the Indians have great faults. He says they are "suspicious and vindictive, cruel to their enemies."
Père Lallemant, a missionary among the Hurons, says: "In point of intellect they are not at all inferior to the natives of Europe; I could not have believed that, without instruction, nature could have produced such ready and vigorous eloquence, or such a sound judgment in their affairs as that which I have so much admired among the Hurons. I admit that their habits and customs are barbarous in a thousand ways; but, after all, in matters which they consider as wrong, and which their public condemns, we observe among them less criminality than in France, although here the only punishment of a crime is the shame of having committed it."
In a history of New France, published in 1618, it is stated of the Indians that "they are valorous, faithful, generous, and humane; their hospitality is so great that they extend it to every one who is not their enemy. They speak with much judgment and reason, and, when they have any important enterprise to undertake, the chief is attentively listened to for two or three hours together, and he is answered point to point, as the subject may require."
In 1656 the Jesuit missionaries among the Iroquois reported: "Among many faults caused by their blindness and barbarous education, we meet with virtues enough to cause shame among the most of Christians. Hospitals for the poor would be useless among them, because there are no beggars; those who have are so liberal to those who are in want, that everything is enjoyed in common. The whole village must be in distress before any individual is left in necessity."
Captain Carver, who travelled in 1766 among the wildest tribes, describes them as "cruel, barbarous, and revengeful in war, persevering and inflexible in pursuit of an enemy, sanguinary in their treatment of prisoners, and sparing neither age nor sex." On the other hand, he found them temperate in their mode of living, patient of hunger and fatigue, sociable and humane to all whom they looked on as friends, and ready to share with them the last morsel of food they possessed, or to expose their lives in their defence. In their public character he describes them as "possessing an attachment to their nation unknown to the inhabitants of any other country, combining as if actuated by one soul against a common enemy, never swayed in their councils by selfish or party views, but sacrificing everything to the honor and advantage of their tribe, in support of which they fear no danger, and are affected by no sufferings. They are not only affectionately attached, indeed, to their own offspring, but are extremely fond of children in general. They instruct them carefully in their own principles, and train them up with attention in the maxims and habits of their nation. Their system consists chiefly in the influence of example, and impressing on them the traditionary histories of their ancestors. When the children act wrong, their parents remonstrate and reprimand but never chastise them."—Halkett's Hist. Notes.
The very idea of corporal punishment of little children seems to have been peculiarly obnoxious to the native North American. In the "Relation de Nouvelle France," published in 1633, there is a curious story of an incident which took place at Quebec. A party of Indians, watching a French drummer-boy beat his drum, pressed more closely around him than he liked, and he struck one of the Indians in the face with his drum-stick so sharply that the blow drew blood. The Indians, much offended, went to the interpreter and demanded apologies and a present, according to their custom. "No," said the interpreter, "our custom is to punish the offender; we will punish the boy in your presence." When the Indians saw the child stripped for the flogging they began immediately to beg for his pardon; but as the soldiers continued their preparations for whipping the lad, one of the Indians suddenly stripped himself and threw his robe over the boy, crying out, "Scourge me, if you choose, but do not strike the boy!" The good Father Le Jeune, who tells this story, adds that this unwillingness of the Indians to see any child chastised "will probably occasion trouble to us in the design we have to instruct their youth."
As far back as 1587 we find evidence that the Indians were not without religion. Thomas Hariot, an employé of Sir Walter Raleigh's, writing from the Virginia colony, says of the Virginia Indians: "Theye beleeve that there are many gods, which theye call Mantaoc, but of different sorts and degrees; one onely chief and Great God, which hath been from all eternitie; who, as theye affirme, when hee proposed to make the world, made first other gods of a principall order, to bee as means and instruments to bee used in the creation and government to folow; and after the sunne, moone, and starres as pettie gods, and the instruments of the other order more principall."
"In general," says Hunter, "a day seldom passes with an elderly Indian, or others who are esteemed wise and good, in which a blessing is not asked, or thanks returned to the Giver of Life, sometimes audibly, but more generally in the devotional language of the heart."
All the employés of the North-west Fur Company bear the same testimony to the fidelity and honesty of the Indians.