The habitant “enjoys what he has got,” writes Charlevoix, “and often makes a display of what he has not got.”  He was also fond of honors, even minor ones, and plumed himself on the slightest recognition from official circles.  Habitants who by years of hard labor had saved enough to buy some uncleared seigneury strutted about with the airs of genuine aristocrats while their wives, in the words of Governor Denonville, “essayed to play the fine lady.”  More than one intendant was amused by this broad streak of vanity in the colonial character.  “Every one here,” wrote Meulles, “begins by calling himself an esquire and ends by thinking himself a nobleman.”

Yet despite this attempt to keep up appearances, the people were poor.  Clearing the land was a slow process, and the cultivable area available for the support of each household was small.  Early marriages were the rule, and families of a dozen or more children had to be supported from the produce of a few arpents.  To maintain such a family as this every one had to work hard in the growing season, and even the women went to the fields in the harvest-time.  One serious shortcoming of the habitant was his lack of steadfastness in labor.  There was a roving strain in his Norman blood.  He could not stay long at any one job; there was a restlessness in his temperament which would not down.  He would leave his fields unploughed in order to go hunting or to turn a few sous in some small trading adventure.  Unstable as water, he did not excel in tasks that required patience.  But he could do a great many things after a fashion, and some that could be done quickly he did surprisingly well.

One racial characteristic which drew comment from observers of the day was the litigious disposition of the people.  The habitant would have made lawsuits his chief diversion had he been permitted to do so.  “If this propensity be not curbed,” wrote the intendant Raudot, “there will soon be more lawsuits in this country than there are persons.”  The people were not quarrelsome in the ordinary sense, but they were very jealous each one of his private rights, and the opportunities for litigation over such matters seemed to provide themselves without end.  Lands were given to settlers without accurate description of their boundaries; farms were unfenced and cattle wandered into neighboring fields; the notaries themselves were almost illiterate, and as a result scarcely a legal document in the colony was properly drawn.  Nobody lacked pretexts for controversy.  Idleness during the winter was also a contributing factor.  But the Church and the civil authorities frowned upon this habit of rushing to court with every trivial complaint. Cures and seigneurs did what they could to have such difficulties settled amicably at home, and in a considerable measure they succeeded.