, the
simplicity, moral honesty, and ignorance if these Canaanites and
Amalekites were made the most of financially. Ignorant of the benefits
of wise restraint, and unused to such wiles as were practised upon them
by the traders, the unsophisticated natives had a hard time indeed
between the two.

Demoralized by the white man's fire-water, they were cheated while under
its influence. Though the sale of rum to the Indians was forbidden by
law, and illicit traders were prosecuted, "conviction in liquor cases"
was no easier then than now. The word of a heathen had small weight
against the oath of a Christian, and fear of the traders often prevented
the victims from pressing their complaints.

Before the advent of the whites the natives seem to have been thrifty
and provident, laying up stores for contingencies. With English
implements and weapons, their facilities for planting and hunting were
greatly increased, and their products should have been correspondingly
larger. The unlimited demand for furs should have stimulated the chase,
and their sale should have added to their comforts in food and shelter.
By their contact with the whites, their lives should have been changed
for the better. Was this the effect? The contrary is notoriously true.
The increased income was squandered in liquors. Like thousands to-day,
they would give their most costly possessions to gratify their appetite
for strong drink. When the corn crop was short, and gave out in the
spring, or had been squandered for rum, they borrowed of the traders,
paying two hundred per cent for it at harvest. They became poor,
shiftless, and dependent. They even pledged their children as security,
to be held as slaves in default of contract. They knew they were
debased, and despised by the superior race, and felt their degradation.
To this condition had come the remnant of the Pocomtucks; a power which
within a generation had humbled the fierce Mohawks, and scattered in
battle the armies of Uncas the Mohegan.

To the natives, the English fur-trader was the representative of his
race; and as they gradually found themselves no match for his methods or
his morals, their simple faith in the white man's honesty, their
debasing fear of his prowess, their reverence for him as a superhuman
being, little by little died out. They saw themselves wronged,
despoiled, and abused, with less and less power to assert their rights
and maintain their independence; and their hearts b