Question: What were some of the native impressions of the Europeans?

Positive

or negative? Cite specific passages from the documents.

Native Americans Discover Europeans

When referring to the Native Americans most Europeans would say (or

eventually say) that they are filthy, primitive, lawless, or even downright barbaric;

that these people live without god and suffer from the lack of comforts that the

Europeans had at the time. Yet the natives had their own opinions about their

lifestyle and criticism of the Europeans. The document “Native Americans

Discover Europeans” was written by French missionary Chrestien Le Clercq in

1676 transcribing the response of a Micmac chieftain of French criticism.

The natives at least by this chieftain’s words find the French’s description of

their civilization to be utterly moronic; saying that their tall large immovable

house are wastes of space and highly impractical in the event of needing to move

saying “But why now do men of five to six feet in height need houses which are

sixty to eighty?...hast thou as much ingenuity and cleverness as the Indians, who

carry their houses and their wigwams with them so they may lodge wheresoever

they please, independently of any seignior whatsoever?” (Native Americans

Discover Europeans, Le Clercq). That they don’t need to attach roots to one

particular spot in order to have a home and doing otherwise is foolish.

Luxuries like bread and wine were things the French tried enticing the

natives with; that they could have more and be so much happier by living like the

French do and give them an image that France was a paradise. But the chieftain

had rebuttals for this as well; he states that while the French may see them as

miserable can’t they see that they ( the natives) are happy with what they have?

That if France was such a paradise as they claim it to be then why would they

leave at all? He claims that if it is true than they are lacking in mental capacity.

(Native Americans Discover Europeans, Le Clercq)

With all points being more or less shot down the chieftain is not to

impressed with the French. The luxuries of a modern (at the time) society have no

luster to him, the practices of these people are idiotic and wasteful, and he is

content in his current lifestyle. So comfortable in fact he offers this question at

the end of his dialogue “if thou hast any sense: Which of these two is the wisest

and happiest--he who labours without ceasing and only obtains, and that with

great trouble, enough to live on, or he who rests in comfort and finds all that he
needs in the pleasure of hunting and fishing?” (Native Americans Discover

Europeans, Le Clercq). He has no further words.