Summary

After an introduction in which the narrator promises to tell her story with simple, clear, undecorated truth, the first part of this section is taken up with descriptions of how the native inhabitants of Surinam in the West Indies (where the action of the story is set) interact with the colonizers. There are lengthy lists of the trade that goes on between the two communities, and descriptions of the simple, uncorrupted, natural morality and behavior of the native community, contrasted glancingly with corruption caused by the religion and law of the colonizers. The narrator also describes how skilled the natives are at finding and hunting food, navigating various waterways, and shooting arrows – so skilled, he adds, that the colonizers “find it absolutely necessary to caress them as friends … nor dare we do otherwise, their numbers so far surpassing ours." This section concludes with a...