Of the three brothers who had invited him to join the party, one was the hunter Mestigot; another the sorcerer; and the third, Pierre, whom Le Jeune always mentions as the Apostate. From the antogonism of their respective professions, the sorcerer hated the priest, who lost no opportunity of denouncing his incantations, and who ridiculed his perpetual singing and drumming as puerility and folly. The former, being an indifferent hunter and disabled by a disease, depended for subsistence on his credit as a magician; and in undermining it. Le Jeune not only outraged his pride, but threatened his daily bread. He used every device to retort ridicule on his rival. At the outset, he offered his aid to Le Jeune in his study of the Algonquin; and palmed off upon him the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he was interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws. And now as Le Jeune took his place in the circle, the sorcerer bent upon him his malignant eyes, and began that course of rude bantering which filled to overflowing the cup of the Jesuit’s woes. All took their cue from him, and made their afflicted guest the butt of their inane witticisms….

There was one point touching which Le Jeune and his Jesuit brethren had as yet been unable to solve their doubts. Were the Indian sorcerers mere imposters, or were they in actual league with the Devil? That the fiends who possess this land of darkness make their power felt by action direct and potential upon the persons of its wretched inhabitants there is, argues Le Jeune, good reason to conclude…. Thus prone to believe in the immediate presences of the nether powers, Le Jeune watched the sorcerer with an eye prepared to discover in his conjurations the signs of a genuine diabolic agency. His observations, however, led him to a different result; and he could detect in his rival nothing but a vile compound of imposter and dupe…. Towards the close of the winter, Le Jeune fell sick, and, in his pain and weakness, nearly succumbed under the nocturnal uproar of the sorcerer, who, hour after hour, sang and drummed without mercy — sometimes yelling at the top of his throat, then hissing like a serpent, then striking his drum on the ground in afrenzy, then leaping up, raving about the wigwam…with the charitable object to conjure down his malady or drive away the evil spirit that caused it….Besides his incessant endeavors to annoy Le Jeune, the sorcerer now and then tried to frighten him. …

As Christmas approached, their condition grew desperate. Beavers and porcupines were scarce, and the snow was not deep enpough for hunting the moose. Night and day the medicine-drums and medicine-songs resounded from th ewigwams, mingled with the wail of starving children. The hunters grew weak and emaciated; and, as after a forlorn march the wanderers encamped once more in the lifeless forest, the priest remembered that it was the eve of Christmas. ‘The Lord,’ he wrote, ‘gave us for our supper a porcupine, large as a suckling pig, and also a rabbit. It was not much, it is true, for eighteen persons, but the Holy Virgin and St. Joseph were not so well treated on this very day in the stable in Bethlehem.’ On Christmas Day, the despairing hunters, again unsuccessful,came to pray succor from Le Jeune. Even the Apostate had become tractable, and the famished sorcerer was ready to try the efficacy of an appeal to the deity of his rival. [Le Jeune composed two prayers, affixed a crucifix to the wall, and instructed the Indians to kneel and pray]… promising to renounce their superstitions, and obey Christ, whose image they saw before them, if he would give them food and save them from perishing. He dismissed the hunters with abenediction. At night they returned with game enough to relieve the immediate necessity….

Repeatedly, before the spring, they were thus threatened with starvation. Nor was their case exceptional. It was the ordinary winter life of all these Northern tribes who did not till the soil, but lived by hunting and fishing alone. The desertion or the killing of the aged, sick, and disabled, occassional cannibalism, and frequent death from famine, were natural incidents of an existence which, during half the year, was but a desperate pursuit of the mere necessaries of life under the worst conditions of hardship , suffering, and debasement.