Note 223 — WISCONSIN TRADE IN 1820.[221]

Wis. Fur Trade MSS. Cf. Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 377, and Amer. State Papers, Ind. Affs., II., 360. The amount of liquor taken to the woods was very great. The French Jesuits had protested against its use in vain (Parkman's Old Régime); the United States prohibited it to no purpose. It was an indispensable part of a trader's outfit. Robert Stuart, agent of the American Fur Company at Mackinaw, once wrote to John Lawe, one of the leading traders at Green Bay, that the 56 bbls. of whiskey which he sends is "enough to last two years, and half drown all the Indians he deals with." See also Wis. Hist. Colls., VII., 282; McKenney's Tour to the Lakes, 169, 299-301; McKenney's Memoirs, I., 19-21. An old trader assured me that it was the custom to give five or six gallons of "grog"—one-fourth water—to the hunter when he paid his credits; he thought that only about one-eighth or one-ninth part of the whole sales was in whiskey.