A miserable Nation, more void of the Light of Heaven, and even that of Nature, than so many other Nations in the _East Indies_, who, tho’ brutal and stupid as to the Knowledge of the Deity, yet are not without some Sort of Worship, and have their Hermits and _Fakirs_ who endeavour by the Practice of horrid Penances, to gain the Favour of that Godhead, and thereby shew they have some real Notion of it. Nothing of that Sort is to be found among our _American_ Savages, and in Conclusion, it may be said of them in General, that they are a People without a God.
Our _French_, who are born in Canada all of them well shap’d, and Men of Sense and Worth, cannot endure to have their Savages thus run down. They affirm they are like other Men, and only want Education and being improv’d; but besides that we may believe they say so to save the Honour of their Country, we advance nothing here but what is grounded on the Report of many able and worthy Persons, who have writ of it, after being well inform’d on the Spot. We are therefore apt to believe, that there is a Distinction to be made at present between two Sorts of Savages in _Canada_, _viz._ those who have been conversant among the Europeans for sixty or eighty Years past, and the others who are daily discover’d; and it is of the latter that we speak here more particularly, and to whom we assign all those odious and wretched Qualities of the Savages of _North America_; for it is well known, that the first Sort of them, as for Instance, the _Hurons_, the _Algonquins_, the _Iroquois_, the _Illinois_ and perhaps some others are now pretty well civiliz’d, so that their Reason begins to clear up, and they may become capable of Instruction.
Amazing and incomprehensible, but at the same Time adorable Disposition of Divine Providence! We see here a vast Tract of the Earth, of an immense Extent, of a wonderful Soil for Tillage and Fertility in all Sorts of Fruit and Grain; of an admirable Temperature as to the Air, which appears by the very numerous Inhabitants being scarce subject to any Diseases, and in that the Sex, which among us is weak, is there Strong and Vigorous, bringing forth their Children with little or no Pain, and suckling them amidst Labour and Fatigues, without any of those Miseries they are liable to in our Countries. Yet that vast and beautiful Country, describ’d in this Journal, so much favour’d with Worldly Blessings, has been for so many Ages destitute of the Heavenly.
