The Indian Law, it is well known, puts a restraint, not only upon
the purchase of liquor by the Indian, but upon its sale to him by the
liquor-seller, or its supply, indeed, in any way, by any one. It forbids,
as well, the introducing or harboring of it, in any shape, under any
plea, on the Reserve. The law, in this respect, frequently proves a dead
letter, since, where the Indian has not the assurance and hardihood to
boldly demand the liquor from the hotel-keeper, or where the latter,
imbued with a wholesome fear of the penalty for contravening the law,
refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily
secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object
compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling,
if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of
detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than
suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is
to be applied, permit rapacity to overpower righteous compunction or
scruple, and lend themselves, likewise, though indirectly, to the law's
infraction. Happily, the penalty is now so heavy ($300) that the evil is,
I think, being got under control.
The effect of drink on the Indian is: to dethrone his; reason; cloud,
even narcotize, his reasoning faculties; annul his self-control; confine
and fetter all the gentler, enkindle and set ablaze, all the baser,
emotions; of his nature, inciting him to acts lustful and bestial; and,
with direful transforming power, to make the man the fiend, to leave him,
in short, the mere sport of demoniac passion. It may be thought that
this is an overdrawn picture, and that, even if it were true, which
I aver that it is, to have withheld a part of its terribleness would
be the wiser course. I wish, however, in exposing all its frightful
features, to secure the pointing of a moral to all who lend themselves
to the draughting of such a picture, or, in any way, hold in favor the
draughts which lead to its draughting. Let not the Indian, then, resent
this picturing of him in such unpleasing and repugnant light, but let him
rather apply and use the lesson it is sought to teach, that it may turn
to his enduring advantage. Let him overmaster the enslaving passion; let
him foreswear the tempting indulgence; let him recoil from the envenomed
cup, which savors of the hellish breath and the ensnaring craft of the
Evil One, ever seeking to draw chains of Satanic forging about him. The
Indian will plead utter obliviousness of the _fracas_, following
some drunken bout, and during the progress of which the death-stroke has
been dealt to some unhappy brother. He will disavow all recollection of
the apparently systematic doing to death, when drunk, under circumstances
of the most revolting atrocity, of an unfortunate wife.
Though the proximate result of drink is with the Indian more alarming than
with the white, the ultimate evils and sorrows wrought by continued excess
in drink are, of course, identical in both cases: moral sensibilities
blunted; manhood degraded; mind wrecked; worldly substance dissipated;
health shattered; strength sapped; every mendacious and tortuous bent
of one's nature stimulated, and given free scope.