Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01Champlain, Samuel de
History
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01
Champlain, Samuel de
America -- Discovery and exploration -- French; Indians of North America -- Canada; New France -- Discovery and exploration
All these people suffer so much sometimes from hunger, on account of the
severe cold and snow, when the animals and fowl on which they live go away
to warmer countries, that they are almost constrained to eat one another. I
am of opinion that if one were to teach them how to live, and instruct them
in the cultivation of the soil and in other respects, they would learn very
easily, for I can testify that many of them have good judgment and respond
very appropriately to whatever question may be put to them. [141] They have
the vices of taking revenge and of lying badly, and are people in whom it
is not well to put much confidence, except with caution and with force at
hand. They promise well, but keep their word badly.
Most of them have no law, so far as I have been able to observe or learn
from the great Sagamore, who told me that they really believed there was a
God, who created all things. Whereupon I said to him: that, "Since they
believed in one sole God, how had he placed them in the world, and whence
was their origin." He replied: that, "After God had made all things, he
took a large number of arrows, and put them in the ground; whence sprang
men and women, who had been multiplying in the world up to the present
time, and that this was their origin." I answered that what he said was
false, but that there really was one only God, who had created all things
upon earth and in the heavens. Seeing all these things so perfect, but that
there was no one to govern here on earth, he took clay from the ground, out
of which he created Adam our first father. While Adam was sleeping, God
took a rib from his side, from which he formed Eve, whom he gave to him as
a companion, and, I told him, that it was true that they and ourselves had
our origin in this manner, and not from arrows, as they suppose. He said
nothing, except that he acknowledged what I said, rather than what he had
asserted. I asked him also if he did not believe that there was more than
one only God. He told me their belief was that there was a God, a Son, a
Mother, and the Sun, making four; that God, however, was above all, that
the Son and the Sun were good, since they received good things from them;
but the Mother, he said, was worthless, and ate them up; and the Father not
very good. I remonstrated with him on his error, and contrasted it with our
faith, in which he put some little confidence. I asked him if they had
never seen God, nor heard from their ancestors that God had come into the
world. He said that they had never seen him; but that formerly there were
five men who went towards the setting sun, who met God, who asked them:
"Where are you going?" they answered: "We are going in search of our
living." God replied to them: "You will find it here." They went on,
without paying attention to what God had said to them, when he took a stone
and touched two of them with it, whereupon they were changed to stones; and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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