more manifest in man himself than any other creature or thing.
Their enemies they esteem as the more special incarnation of this principle, and next to them they regard a worthless, mean, and cowardly individual of their own people. They also look upon creatures of an injurious and hurtful nature, as the greater or less impersonation of evil.
Their notions of right and wrong are equally simple.
It is right to be brave, to do good to friends, to relieve the needy, to feed the hungry, and to worship the Great Spirit, —these are acts of general morality. There are various other duties taught by their code relative to intercourse with each other, —to children and parents, husbands and wives deference to age, chastity etc., the performance of which is essential to virtue.
The line of demarkation between virtue and vice is yet more simple and comprehensive; —every thing derelict of right is wrong.
I shall recur to several points, connected with the foregoing subjects, in another place.
CHAPTER IX.
Dangers connected with the liquor trade. Difficulty with Bull Eagle. Scenes of bloodshed and horror. Cheating in the fur trade. How the red man becomes tutored in vice. A chief's daughter offered in exchange for liquor. Indian mode of courtship and marriage. Squaws an article of traffic. Divorce. Plurality of wives.
THE difficulty and danger, not to say crime and bloodshed, connected with the illicit trade in alcohol, as conducted among our western Indians, is great and imminent. To illustrate this point, I need only to place before the reader a summary of facts which occurred, many of them under my own observation, during the winter of 1842.
Soon after our arrival at White river a man was sent to a neighboring village with a keg of diluted alcohol, for the purpose of barter. The Indians, feeling more disposed to drink than pay for it, demanded the keg as a gift "on the prairie." This was refused. They threatened —a fight ensued, (the soldiers and trader defending the keg and the Indians trying to take it.) Weapons were used, and the result was, both soldiers and trader were beaten off, —the latter, after being dragged through the lodgefire three or four times, narrowly escaped with his life.
A party of Indians under the excitement of strong drink, attacked and took a trading house of the American Fur Company, near by, —robbing it of both liquor and goods.
Two parties in the Fur Company's employ, from different posts, met at a neighboring village, — one having goods and the other alcohol. The Indians, as usual, got drunk, and commenced a fight among themselves; because the goods-trader happened to be in the lodge of one of the weaker party, they attacked him. He was compelled to flee, and barely escaped with his life through the friendly interference of the squaws. His goods
