Perhaps not coincidentally, what really struck him about the ‘primitive’ societies he was most familiar with was their tolerance of eccentricity. This, he concluded, was simply the logical extension of that same rejection of coercion that so impressed the Jesuits in Quebec.
it would never occur to them to punish him, or that anyone should try to force him into conformity – for instance, by blaming him for a bad hunt and therefore refusing to share food with him until he agreed to perform the usual rituals.
