Note 52 — III THE UNPROTECTED FRONTIER

“It is a matter of history that whiskey is, and has been since the advent of white men in this country, the ‘bane of the Indians,’ and that there is scarcely a tribe or an individual Indian but that would at times give all his possessions for whiskey. When under its influence he knows not what he does. All of the depredations committed by them upon the whites; all murders among themselves; or personal injuries inflicted by them upon each other, are perpetrated while under the influence of that destructive bane, or to revenge acts done while laboring under intoxication ... men will wonder why the agent will let whiskey go into the Indian country, as has been heretofore reported, ‘without let or hindrance.’ The same men, being in the Indian country ostensibly, solely for the good of the ‘poor Indian,’ will pass an Indian with a five or ten gallon keg on his back, and not attempt to destroy it; knowing at the same time that he has an equal authority for so doing as the agent, and just as much money furnished for expenses of prosecutions.”—Report of D. B. Herriman, Chippewa Agent, September 15, 1857, in Senate Documents, 1st Session, 35th Congress, Vol. II, Pt. I, pp. 341, 342.