Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/386

366 was in great trouble. "I did my utmost to prevent his going," he consoled himself by saying, "but he went in opposition to all orders and advice; so if he is killed, the responsibility does not rest upon me."

By-and-by my messenger arrived with the order for more whisky. Sublet took the letter and read it. "Ho!" said he, "Jim is not dead yet. He has sent for more fire-water. Who will take it to him?" Four men volunteered for the errand, and arrived with it next day. The Indians took their horses away from them, and they became alarmed; but when they shortly after saw me up to my neck in buffalo robes, their fear subsided. These two kegs went off as actively as the preceding, and the robes fairly poured in. The whole village moved on toward the post, singing, dancing, and drinking, and when I had approached within five miles, I had to send for two kegs more.

In short, the sixty gallons of fire-water realized to the company over eleven hundred robes and eighteen horses, worth in St. Louis six thousand dollars.

This trading whisky for Indian property is one of the most infernal practices ever entered into by man. Let the reader sit down and figure up the profits on a forty-gallon cask of alcohol, and he will be thunder-struck, or rather whisky struck. When disposed of, four gallons of water are added to each gallon of alcohol. In two hundred gallons there are sixteen hundred pints, for each one of which the trader gets a buffalo robe worth five dollars! The Indian women toil many long weeks to dress these sixteen hundred robes. The white trader gets them all for worse than nothing, for the poor Indian mother hides herself and her children in the forests. until the effect of the poison passes away from the husbands, fathers, and brothers, who love them when they have no whisky, and abuse and kill them when they have. Six thousand dollars for sixty gallons of alcohol! Is it a wonder that, with such profits in prospect, men get rich who are engaged in the fur trade? or is it a miracle that the poor buffalo are becoming gradually exterminated, being killed with so little remorse that their very hides, among the Indians themselves, are known by the appellation of a pint of whisky!