cial necessity. This opinion invaded the Indian Department of the government, and the laws of the United States forbade the sale of liquor to Indians. It was also forbidden to manufacture whiskey in the Indian country.
This regulation of the department was alike for the good of the native man, who, when intoxicated, sold his furs for a fishhook, and for the welfare of the white trapper who did the same. It was intended also to save lives of both races. That was plain enough; but that the sale or gift of liquor on the British side of our boundary should have the effect to ruin the rich and powerful American company on our side, was not at the first glance so apparent to every one. That was the danger that threatened the company, however, when the tribes near the line were drawn away from their allegiance to the Americans by the rum allowed them on the British side. Driven to despair, the agent at Fort Union erected a still, but being betrayed by an employee was compelled to resort to fiction of the most yellow complexion and finally to abandon his manufacture.
The other companies south of the Missouri who carried their goods in trains from the mouth of the Platte, and who had no headquarters, experienced the same, or even greater difficulties, having to outwit the keen-eyed agents at Fort Leavenworth, where their cargoes underwent inspection.
The companies' chiefs, while they honestly admitted and deplored the evil that liquor worked to white men and Indians, could not prevent traders from the British territory bringing it across the line, nor could they resist the temptation to use the stuff to get the better of a rival of their own nationality. Hence, the trapper went about his business with his alcohol bottle as regularly as the soldier with his canteen, to the horror and indignation of the missionary traveler in the mountains. In time the
