Of the influence of the white man on the Indians the less said the better. They eradicated none of his vices and they lent him many of their own. They found him abstinent, and they made him a guzzler of fire water. They found him hospitable, and they made him suspicious and vindictive. They found him in freedom, the owner of a great country: they robbed him of the one, and crowded him out of the other. The Dutch were too much beer drinkers, became with speed rum consumers, and opposed prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. William Penn wrote in 1683: "Ye Dutch, Sweed and English have by brandy and specially rum almost debauched ye Indians all." On arriving at a trading post an Indian hunting party would trade perhaps a third of their peltries for fine clothes, ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg of brandy would be purchased and the council held to decide who was to get drunk and who was to stay sober. All arms and clubs were taken away and hidden and the orgie would begin, all the Indians in the neighborhood being called in. It was the task of those who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones from killing one another, a task always hazardous and frequently unsuccessful, sometimes as many as five being killed in one night. When the keg was empty brandy was brought by the kettle full and ladled out with large wooden spoons, and this was kept up until the last skin was disposed of. Then, dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and nothing but the ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start off down the river to hunt, and begin again the same round of alternating toil and drudgery. Nevertheless, with all their rage for brandy they sometimes showed a self control quite admirable in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a friendly visit their entertainers regaled them with rations of the coveted liquor, so prudently measured out that they could not be the worse for it, they would unite their several portions in a common stock, which they would then divide among a few of their number, thus enabling them to attain that complete intoxication which, in their view, was the true end of all drinking. The objects of this benevolence were expected to requite it on a similar future occasion. In 1708, of the sixty-three settlers at Detroit, thirty-four were traders, and the only profitable articles of trade were ammunition and brandy, the English being able to undersell the French in all other commodities. At the time of the sales of furs every house in Montreal was a drinking shop. In a letter of Governor Halderman to Captain Lernoult, dated July 23, 1729, Halderman says: "I observe with great concern the astonishing consumption of rum at Detroit, amounting to seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty gallons a year."