though he pragmatically converted later. ‘To imagine one can live in a country of money,’ he said, ‘and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake.’ In 1703, when Lahontan published his conversation with Kandiaronk, entitled Curious Dialogues with a Savage of Good Sense Who has Travelled, it inspired a new generation to question European authority and the origins of civilization.
