government will sustain the agents in a dignified discharge of
their duties. Let us proceed in the accomplishment of this object
with firmness, and with a determination never to relinquish it,
until ardent spirits are entirely excluded from the Indian country.

I am sir,
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

P.S. Capt. Jouett, commanding at this post, has recently seized
sixteen kegs of high-wines. His prompt, decisive, and correct
conduct in this, and other transactions relating to Indian affairs,
merits the approbation of government.

The Petite Corbeau has requested that no trader may be located at
the mouth of the St. Croix.

The following picture of the present condition of the Winnebagoes, given
in the St. Louis Bulletin, shows the deplorable results of the
intercourse of the whites with the Indians--the baneful effects of
spirituous liquors upon their morals and habits. The Winnebagoes were
neighbors of the Sacs and Foxes, and long intimately associated with
them. Twenty years ago, all of these tribes, raised annually more corn,
beans and other vegetables, than were needed for their own consumption.
Now they are miserable, squalid beggars, without the means of
subsistence. The faithlessness of the Government, the perfidy and
avarice of its agents and citizens, have brought this race of people to
the horrible condition, in which they are represented in the statement
that follows.

An agent of the Temperance Society, in a journal of a late tour to
the region of the Upper Mississippi, presents a picture, melancholy
indeed, of the present condition of the Indian tribes in that
quarter, which must deeply rouse the commiseration of every
benevolent man. From our own personal observation one year since,
we would corroborate the assertion, that were the world ransacked
for a subject in which should be concentrated and personified
injustice, oppression, drunkenness, squalid filth, and degradation,
one would point to the straggling Indian on the banks of the Upper
Mississippi for the aptest exemplification.

There were some two or three hundred of these
stragglers--Winnebagoes, chiefly, about Prairie du Chien