"... He was among the first Europeans to acquire a working knowledge of a North American language—in this case, —and by means of it to understand and record indigenous culture at the time of first contact with Europeans. Outgoing and amiable, he made friends with the people, hunted and feasted with them, learned their methods of agriculture, canoe building, and fishing, and clearly enjoyed much about their way of life. As a general rule, he recorded what he saw with the detachment of a physicist and the engagement of a linguist and ethnologist, describing rather than judging religious practices and cultural ceremonies that were completely alien to him, and observing in context the details of Algonquian life."