Thought want of clothes disgrace.”
In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (ch. iv.) there is a very graphic account of the missionary Le Jeune’s experience among the Algonquins, in which he describes the interior of the wigwam on a winter’s evening. “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.” Le Jeune says, “Les filles et les jeunes femmes sont à l’exterieur tres honnestement couvertes, mais entre elles leurs discours sont puants, comme des cloaques;” and Parkman adds, “The social manners of remote tribes of the present time correspond perfectly with Le Jeune’s account of those of the Montagnais.” See also Voyages of Champlain, Prince Soc., vol. iii. pp. 168-70.
[35] Parkman says that “chastity in women was recognized as a virtue by many tribes.” (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxiv.) Of the New England Indians Williams remarks,—“Single fornications they count no sin, but after marriage then they count it heinous for either of them to be false.” (Key, p. 138.) Judging by an incident mentioned by Morton, however, adultery does not seem to have been looked upon as a very grave offense among the Indians of the vicinity in which he lived. (Infra, [*32].) On the general subject of morality among young Indian women, especially in the vicinity of trading-posts, see Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (pp. xxxiv, xlii) and the letter from Father Carheil to the Intendant Champigny, in The Old Régime in Canada (p. 427).
[37] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 62.
[38] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 478.
[39] Hazlitt’s Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, p. 121. See also on this subject, Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, p. 352.
[41] Bradford, p. 237.
[42] Bradford, p. 238.