y the clergy and the
missionaries, put a stop to crimes and disorders. However, for the
purpose of gain, certain men infringed this wise prohibition, and Mgr.
de Laval, aware of the extensive harm caused by the fatal passion of the
Indians for intoxicating liquors, hurled excommunication against all who
should carry on the traffic in brandy with the savages. "It would be
very difficult," writes M. de Latour, "to realize to what an excess
these barbarians are carried by drunkenness. There is no species of
madness, of crime or inhumanity to which they do not descend. The
savage, for a glass of brandy, will give even his clothes, his cabin,
his wife, his children; a squaw when made drunk--and this is often done
purposely--will abandon herself to the first comer. They will tear each
other to pieces. If one enters a cabin whose inmates have just drunk
brandy, one will behold with astonishment and horror the father cutting
the throat of his son, the son threatening his father; the husband and
wife, the best of friends, inflicting murderous blows upon each other,
biting each other, tearing out each other's eyes, noses and ears; they
are no longer recognizable, they are madmen; there is perhaps in the
world no more vivid picture of hell. There are often some among them who
seek drunkenness in order to avenge themselves upon their enemies, and
commit with impunity all sorts of crimes under the pretext of this fine
excuse, which passes with them for a complete justification, that at
these times they are not free and not in their senses." Drunken savages
are brutes, it is true, but were not the whites who fostered this fatal
passion of intoxication more guilty still than the wretches whom they
ignominiously urged on to vice? Let us see what the same writer says of
these corrupters. "If it is difficult," says he, "to explain the
excesses of the savage, it is also difficult to understand the extent of
the greed, the hypocrisy and the rascality of those who supply them with
these drinks. The facility for making immense profits which is afforded
them by the ignorance and the passions of these people, and the
certainty of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the
attraction of gain acts upon them as drunkenness does upon their
victims. How many crimes arise from the same source? There is no mother
who does not fear for her daughter, no husband who does not dread for
his wife, a libertine armed with a bottle of brandy; they rob a