ge of the Indians
by cunning and treacherous methods. The agents of the chartered
companies and the land owners first started the trick of getting the
Indians drunk, and then obtaining, for almost nothing, the furs that
they had gathered--for a couple of bottles of rum, a blanket or an axe.
After the charters of the companies were annulled or expired, the
landgraves kept up the practice, and the merchants improved on it in
various ingenious ways. "The Indians," says Felt,[35] "were ever ready
to give up their furs for knives, hatchets, beads, blankets, and
especially were anxious to obtain tobacco, guns, powder, shot and strong
water; the latter being a powerful instrument enabling the cunning
trader to perpetuate the grossest frauds. Immense quantities of furs
were shipped to Europe at a great profit."

This description appropriately applied also to New York, New Jersey, and
the South. In New York there were severe laws against Indians who got
drunk, and in Massachusetts colony an Indian found drunk was subject to
a fine of ten shillings or whipping, at the discretion of the
magistrate. As to the whites who, for purposes of gain, got the Indians
drunk, the law was strangely inactive. Everyone knew that drink might
incite the Indians to uprisings and imperil the lives of men, women and
children. But the considerations of trade were stronger than even the
instinct of self-preservation and the practice went on, not infrequently
resulting in the butchery of innocent white victims and in great cost
and suspense to the whole community.

Strict laws which pronounced penalties for profaneness and for not
attending church, connived at the systematic defrauding and swindling of
the Indians of land and furs. Two strong considerations were held to
justify this. The first was that the Indians were heathen and must give
way to civilization; that they were fair prey. The demands of trade,
upon which the colonies flourished was the second. The fact was that the
code of the trading class was everywhere gradually becoming the dominant
one, even breaking down the austere, almost ascetic, Puritan moral
professions. Among the common people--those who were ordinary wage
laborers--the methods of the rich were looked upon with suspicion and
enmity, and there was a prevalent consciousness that wealth was being
amassed by one-sided laws and fraud. Some of the noted sea pirates of
the age made this their strong justification for preying upon
c