Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7 — John Shaqi
Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7Joutel, Henri
History
Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7
Joutel, Henri
La Salle, Robert Cavelier, sieur de, 1643-1687; Louisiana -- History -- To 1803; Mississippi River -- Discovery and exploration
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.
[Sidenote: _Strong Women._]
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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