2o8 A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. Book IL 



charge his office of miffionary among them. Now, without the 

 knowledge of the language of a people, it is not eafy to know 

 perfe6tly the manners and charavflers of any nation. I have fet 

 down, in many fheets of paper, what he told me concerning them, 

 of which I will here give the reader the fummary, with the addition 

 of fome fads, which 1 learned from others, who had rcfided in the 

 country as well as Monfieur Roubaud, and had had a good deal of 

 intercourfe vv'ith the Indians ; not fo much^ indeed, as Monfieur 

 Roubaud, but enough to make them furc of the facls they related. 



Defcribing their character, Monfieur Roubaud faid, that they 

 have a gravity and compofure of Mind which, nothing can 

 diftui'b ; hein^g neither elated by good, nor depreffed by ill for- 

 tune. Thofe common human paffi.ons of joy and grief, they feem 

 not liable to ; and they have a prefence of Mind which is never 

 difconcerted by any event, however furprifmg or unexpected. 

 They are as cautious and deliberate in councij, as ardent in fight — 

 fuch lovers of liberty, that it never yet has been poffible to make a 

 Have of any of them — as faithful in the obfervation of treaties, as 

 wife and prudent in making them ; and abhorring our perfidy fo 

 much, as to make it a common proverb, *' As falfe and treache- 

 " rous as a white man." — They ihow fuch a magnanimity and con- 

 tempt of death, in the midfl of the moft exquifite torments, as al- 

 together exceeds the belief of thofe who have not feen it. At the 

 fame time that they have this ftrength and firmnefs of Mind,, they 

 have a great deal of tendernefs in their nature ; and, particularly, 

 in natural affedion to their children, and even their adopted chil- 

 dren, there are no people who exceed them. — A gentleman of the 

 army told me that he faw a parting betwixt an Indian father and a 

 Britiih officer, whom he had taken prifoner and adopted as his fon, 

 and who was one of the very few inflances of a man who had 

 been any time among them, that could be perfuaded to leave them ; 

 and he told me he never faw a more tender fcene. 



Their 



