“February, 1735 … I was treated very well when I was with them (in their maple sugaring camps), and learn’d more of their manners and language than ever I had before. They are altogether without compliments in their treatment one of another. Children shew no sort of deference to their parents, either in word or carriage, more than to anybody else. They are very modest and the women and children bashful. They are kind to another, and make everybody welcome in their way, that comes to their houses. When a stranger comes into one of their houses he does it as if it were his own, and without any compliments at all sits down with the rest; buts ays nothing. The housekeeper immediately offers him some victuals, which he receives as tho’ he were at home; eats freely, and then begins to talk, to tell his business or relate a piece of news; but will enter, before he has eat, into no discourse. Sometimes, when friends meet, they say to one another, o brother, or cousin, or use some such word expressing some relation. But they have terms expressive of more particular and quite different relations, from any we use. Their children, born of the same parents, stand in three relations to one another; the eldest calling all the younger, whether brothers or sisters, Nheesumuk. The younger children all the elder brothers Netokhaunut; and there are other like relative terms, to which there are none in our language synonymous. And indeed their language, so far as I perceive as yet, is extremely different from all the European languages that I have any acquaintance with, and seems, as far as I can judge, in the genius, phraseology and pronunciation of the words (which about with gutturals) to be most like the language of the east (Hebrew); tho’ I confess I am as yet a very incompetent judge.

“Their women have a custom which is, for aught I know, peculiar to the aboriginal Americans; for they tell me it is common to all North America at least, viz.: their girls, at the first flux of their menses, separate themselves from all society, live alone in the woods, some fourteen, some twenty and some forty days; must do no work at all, nor be seen by any man — for it is reckon’d

ominous for a man to see them in their separation. They cut off their hair when they go out, and some of their women go out afterwards, at the return of their terms, and stay three or four days. What they mean by this custom, or whence they deriv’d it, I cannot tell.

“August 31, 1735 … The parting of man and wife I a very common thing among them. Indeed it us’d rarely to happen that a married couple live together till they are old. And as they use but little ceremony in the business of marriage, so they make a less thing of parting. In such a case ‘tis their law that the children and all the household stuff belong to the woman; and indeed everything else but the Gun, for that is the man’s livelihood. The man, according to their custom, has no right to the children, any more than any other person whatever.”