their land
according as each has means to contribute to the eighteen thousand
guilders which they have promised to those who had sent them out;
whereby they have their freedom without rendering an account to any
one; only if the King should choose to send a governor-general they
would be obliged to acknowledge him as sovereign overlord. The maize
seed which they do not require for their own use is delivered over to
the governor, at three guilders the bushel, who in his turn sends it in
sloops to the north for the trade in skins among the savages; they
reckon one bushel of maize against one pound of beaver's skins; the
profits are divided according to what each has contributed, and they
are credited for the amount in the account of what each has to
contribute yearly towards the reduction of his obligation. Then with
the remainder they purchase what next they require, and which the
governor takes care to provide every year. They have better sustenance
than ourselves, because they have the fish so abundant before their
doors. There are also many birds, such as geese, herons and cranes,
and other small-legged birds, which are in great abundance there in the
winter.

The tribes in their neighborhood have all the same customs as already
above described, only they are better conducted than ours, because the
English give them the example of better ordinances and a better life;
and who also, to a certain degree, give them laws, in consequence of
the respect they from the very first have established amongst them.

The savages [there] utilize their youth in labor better than the
savages round about us: the girls in sowing maize, the young men in
hunting. They teach them to endure privation in the field in a singular
manner, to wit:

When there is a youth who begins to approach manhood, he is taken by
his father, uncle, or nearest friend, and is conducted blindfolded into
a wilderness, in order that he may not know the way, and is left there
by night or otherwise, with a bow and arrows, and a hatchet and a
knife. He must support himself there a whole winter with what the
scanty earth furnishes at this season, and by hunting. Towards the
spring they come again, and fetch him out of it, take him home and feed
him up again until May. He must then go out again every morning with
the person who is ordered to take him in hand; he must go into the
forest to seek wild herbs and roots, which they know to be the most
poisonous an