therefore requested Champlain to
convoke a meeting of six inhabitants, to discuss the best means of
furthering the interests of the mission. Champlain was chosen president
of the meeting, and although the missionaries were present they took no
part in the deliberations.

The resolutions adopted at this first council meeting in the new
settlement were preserved. It was decided that the nations down the
river and those of the north were, for the present, at least, incapable
of civilization. These tribes included the Montagnais, Etchemins,
Bersiamites, Papinachois and the great and little Esquimaux. They dwelt
in an uncultivated, barren and mountainous country, whose wild game and
fur-bearing animals sufficed to support them. Their habits were nomadic,
and excessive superstition was their only form of religion. By the
report of those who had visited the southern coasts, and had even
penetrated by land to Cadie, Cape Breton and Chaleurs Bay, Ile Perce and
Gaspe, the country there was more temperate, and susceptible of
cultivation. There would be found dispositions less estranged from
Christianity, as the people had more shame, docility and humanity than
the others.

With regard to the upper river and the territory of the numerous tribes
of Indians visited by Monsieur de Champlain and Father Joseph
themselves, or by others, besides possessing an abundance of game, which
might attract the French there in hopes of trade, the land was much more
fertile and the climate more congenial than in the Indian country down
the river. The upper river Indians, such as the Algonquins, Iroquois,
Hurons, Nipissirini, Neuters, Fire Nation, were sedentary, generally
docile, susceptible of instruction, charitable, strong, robust, patient;
insensible, however, and indifferent to all that concerns salvation;
lascivious, and so material that when told that their soul was immortal,
they would ask what they would eat after death in the next world. In
general, none of the savages whom they had known had any idea of a
divinity, believing, nevertheless, in another world where they hoped to
enjoy the same pleasures as they took here below--a people, in short,
without subordination, law or form of government or system, gross in
religious matters, shrewd and crafty for trade and profit, but
superstitious to excess.

It was the opinion of the council that none could ever succeed in
converting them, unless they made them men before they made them
Chris