134 PRIEST AND PAGAN. '[1638-40. 



that beautiful blank which, some have represented 

 it, there was much to be erased as well as to be 

 written. They must renounce a host of supersti- 

 tions, to which they were attached with a strange 

 tenacity, or which may rather be said to have been 

 ingrained in then- very natures. Certain points of 

 Christian morality were also strongly urged by the 

 missionaries, who insisted that the convert should 

 take but one wife, and not cast her off without 

 grave cause, and that he should renounce the gross 

 license almost universal among the Hurons. Mur- 

 der, cannibalism, and several other offences, were 

 also forbidden. Yet, while laboring at the work of 

 conversion with, an energy never surpassed, and 

 battling against the powers of darkness with the 

 mettle of paladins, the Jesuits never had the folly 

 to assume towards the Indians a dictatorial or over- 

 bearing tone. Gentleness, kindness, and patience 

 were the rule of then' intercourse.^ They studied 

 the nature of the savage, and conformed themselves 

 to it with an admkable tact. Far from treating 

 the Indian as an alien and barbarian, they would 

 fain have adopted him as a countryman ; and they 



1 The following passage from the " Divers Sentimens," before cited, 

 will illustrate this point. " Pour conuertir les Sauuages, il n'y faut pas tant 

 de science que de bonte et vertu bien solide. Les quatre Elemens d'vn 

 homme Apostolique en la Nouuelle France sont rAffabilite, I'Humilite, 

 la Patience et vne Charite genereuse. Le zele trop ardent brusle plus 

 qu'il n'eschauffe, et gaste tout ; il faut vne grande magnaniraite et conde- 

 scendance, pour attirer peu a peu ces Sauuages. lis n'entendent pas bien 

 nostre Theologie, mais ils entendent parfaictement bien nostre humilite 

 et nostre affabilite, et se laissent gaigiier." 



So too Brebeuf, in a letter to Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits 

 (see Carayon, 163) : " Ce qu'il faut demander, avant tout, des ouvriers 

 destines a cette mission, c'est une douceur inalterable et une patience a 

 toute e'preuve." 



