Thus it is the Juggler has the art of imposing on these simple credulous creatures, and even often succeeds by it in his divinations.  Sometimes he does not need all this ceremonial.  He pretends to foretell off-hand, and actually does so, when he is already prepared by his knowledge, cunning, or natural penetration.  His divinations chiefly turn on the expedience of peace with one nation, or of war with another; upon matches between families, upon the long life of some, or the short life of others; how such and such persons came by their deaths, violently or naturally; whether the wife of some great Sagamo has been true to his bed or not; who it could be that killed any particular persons found dead of their wounds in the woods, or on the coast.  Sometimes they pretend it’s the deed of the Manitoo, for reasons to them unknown:  this last incident strikes the people with a religious awe.  But what the Jugglers are chiefly consulted upon, and what gives them the greatest credit, is to know whether the chace of such a particular species of beasts should be undertaken; at what season, or on which side of the country; how best may be discovered the designs of any nation with which they are at war; or at what time such or such persons shall return from their journey.  The Juggler pretends to see all this, and more, in his bowl of water:  divination by coffee-grounds is a trifle to it.  He is also applied to, to know whether a sick person shall recover or die of his illness.  But what I have here told you of the procedure of these Jugglers, you are to understand only of the times that preceded the introduction of Christianity amongst these people, or of those parts where it is not yet received:  for these practices are no longer suffered where we have any influence.

Amongst the old savages lately baptized, I could never, from the accounts they gave me of the belief of their ancestors, find any true knowledge of the supreme Being; no idea, I mean, approaching to that we have, or rather nothing but a vague imagination.  They have, it is true, a confused notion of a Being, acting they know not how [Who does?], in the universe, but they do not make of him a great soul diffused through all its parts.  They have no conception or knowledge of all the attributes we bestow on the Deity.  Whenever they happen to philosophize upon this Manitoo, or great spirit, they utter nothing but reveries and absurdities. [Are not there innumerable volumes on this subject, to which the same objection might as justly be made?  Possibly the savages, and the deepest divines, with respect to the manner of the Deity’s existence, may have, in point of ignorance, nothing to reproach one another.  It matters very little, whether one sees the sun from the lowest valley, or the highest mountain, when the immensity of its distance contracts the highest advantage of the eminence to little less than nothing.  Surely the infinite superiority of the Deity, must still more effectually mock the distinction of the mental eye, at the same time that his existence itself is as plain as that of the sun, and like that too, dazzling those most, who contemplate it most fixedly; reduces them to close the eye, not to exclude the light, but as overpowered by it.]