32 LE JEUNE AND THE HUNTERS. [1633-34. 



had a superabundance, and which men, women, and 

 children alike used with a frequency and hardihood 

 that amazed and scandalized the priest.-^ Nor was 

 he better pleased with their postures, in which 

 they consulted nothing but their ease. Thus, of 

 an evening when the wigwam was heated to suffo- 

 cation, 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, dis- 

 coursing volubly to the company, who, on their 

 part, listened in postures scarcely less remote from 

 decency. 



There was one point touching which Le Jeune 

 and his Jesuit brethren had as yet been unable to 

 solve their doubts. Were the Indian sorcerers 

 mere impostors, or were they in actual league with 

 the Devil] That the fiends who possess this land 

 of darkness make their power felt by action direct 

 and potential upon the persons of its wretched in- 

 habitants there is, argues Le Jeune, good reason 

 to conclude ; since it is a matter of grave notoriety, 

 that the fiends who infest Brazil are accustomed 

 cruelly to beat and otherwise torment the natives 

 of that country, as many travellers attest. " A 

 Frenchman worthy of credit," pursues the Father, 

 "has told me that he has heard with his own ears 

 the voice of the Demon and the sound of the blow^s 



1 "Aussi leur disois-je par fois, que si les pourceaux et les chiens 

 sqauoient parler, ils tiendroient leur langage. . . . Les filles et les ieunes 

 femmes sont a I'exterieur tres honnestement couuertes, mais entre elles 

 leurs discours sont puants, comme des cloaques/' — Relation, 1634, 32. — 

 The social manners of remote tribes of the present time correspond per« 

 fectly with Le Jeune's account of those of the Montagnais. 



