It seems that the attempts of Christianization of the Donnacona and his people was met with limited success, so the captain told Taignoagny and Dom Agaya to tell them they would be back on the next voyage priests and holy oil for a proper baptism. It is very obvious at this point that Cartier has very little respect for these people or their way of life from their marriage practices down to the way they dress and the food they farm. He did mention that the people including the children were very resistant to the cold, this alone seem to impress him. He makes a lot of reference to the need of these people for change, and his desire to “tame” them. The text gets a bit confusing after this, there is reference to distrust of the leader as well as Taignoagny and Dom Agaya. There is a mention of the leader of another talent warning the captain the Donnacona one to take the three children they gave them. In fact the largest of the girls fled the shipped, so it is said the captain had the other children taken care of. It is unclear with the author means by “taken care of”. There is some conflict between the captain and the people, and eventually the Donnacona returns the girl to them saying that she left because some cabin boys beat her. Apparently the captain agreed to take her back and a tentative peace remain between the two groups. As an aside I have to say I am confused by the desperateness that people seem to have regarding pleasing the Frenchman, or the very least pleasing their captain. I’m unsure why they seem so desperate to please them, and because we’re seeing everything through an outsiders point of view there is no way to tell why the Donnacona does this.
The section after this is a lot of travel, talking about the land, the animals, and passing areas where people live but not interacting with them. Later on they mention friendly relations with some people, in conflict with others, which made the “good people” sorry and angry. They did reach the river Saguenay and traveled it, but found its depths did not work well with their boats. The people they meet make mention there are people dressed like the Frenchman in towns as they have a great quantity of gold and copper. They mentioned the river leads to several great lakes of freshwater, but no mention of the sea. They also mentioned a land where there is no ice and snow, with the people dressed in skins and furs like them, and who constantly war with each other.
It seems in the month of December scurvy hits the people in the Frenchman’s fort, spreading across the three ships, after apparently hitting some of the people of the area as well. Many people died and were buried under the snow as fear of the unknown gripped everyone. The captain made the sick man work hard to hide their weakness from the people of the land, for fear upon seeing their weakness the “savages” would take advantage of the situation. Apparently they eventually found a cure when they actually bothered talking to the “savages”, seeing that Dom Agaya was well, they asked how he was cured. The people showed the Frenchman how using the bark of a particular tree would cure the sickness. Scholars argue whether it was white spruce or white pine the medicine came from, but the white spruce is supposed to be a better treatment for the scurvy.
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